Followers see life at ground level, and the situation right in front of them. Managers sit on their shoulders and see out to the next block. Leaders are way in front of them all and can see around the next corner. What’s your view right now?
Look at the relief map of a leader’s life, out there in real life, in the front of the pack: it’s not a flat plane of level ground. Highs. Lows. Uphill climbs. Downhill coasts. It’s no place for autopilot: constant attention to the road ahead is vital to complete your journey well.
Four installments on this theme this month. We looked at the day-after victory and the threat of the Doldrums. Last week, we saw the choice between replay and reimagine and relaunch. Will a do-over of yesterday’s victory be better than a reinvention for tomorrow’s breakthrough? Maybe it’s time for a Cocoon experience; that’s a choice only you can make.
Choose the Road Less Traveled, and you’ve already experienced a breakthrough. You’re now off to pursue the impossible and to prove it to be possible. If God isn’t in it, you’re toast; if He is, you’re in it to win it. Followers wait until the crowd changes course; Managers wait until all risks have been removed; Leaders eat uncertainty for breakfast and find energy in the unknowns. Don’t kid yourself; managers pretending to be leaders can ride their self-delusions to the corner office, but they aren’t fooling anyone (including themselves).
What’s next for you? You’re in a new field – in a new season – and you’re up against stiff competition. What’s your plan? That was Daniel’s challenge; what was his strategy for success?
The Babylonians had defeated Judah – in 586 BC – and took their elites back to Babylon. “Then the king ordered Ashpenaz, chief of his court officials, to bring into the king’s service some of the Israelites from the royal family and the nobility – young men without any physical defect, handsome, showing aptitude for every kind of learning, well informed, quick to understand, and qualified to serve in the king’s palace. He was to teach them the language and literature of the Babylonians. The king assigned them a daily amount of food and wine from the king’s table. They were to be trained for three years, and after that they were to enter the king’s service. But Daniel resolved not to defile himself with the royal food and wine, and he asked the chief official for permission not to defile himself this way. Now God had caused the official to show favor and compassion to Daniel, but the official told Daniel, ‘I am afraid of my lord the king, who has assigned your food and drink. Why should he see you looking worse than the other young men your age? The king would then have my head because of you.” Daniel then said… ‘Please test your servants for ten days: Give us nothing but vegetables to eat and water to drink. Then compare our appearance with that of the young men who eat the royal food and treat your servants in accordance with what you see.’ So he agreed to this and tested them for ten days.” (Daniel 1)
Fast forward: Daniel becomes biblically famous (the only version that really counts) with the rest of his lifetime. It all started with his decision to break from the crowd and take great risk, out front.
There has been no moment in your lifetime fraught with more risk and uncertainty than today, on all fronts. The recent past has been packed with unexpected disruption; the near future suggests that more unknowns have been cleared for landing. Barbarians at the Gate – or, Taliban at the Capitol – may be today’s headlines, but your own version of those invasive threats is underway as well. What’s next?
New Vision; new Strategy. Is it time for you to play outside the box and set a course on the road less traveled in your own life? Stop looking at your scrapbooks; look at your potential. How would you best set-in motion your own high-risk, high-potential effort that could become Heaven’s newsflash?
