Unquestioned Brilliance: Navigating a Fundamental Leadership Trap

Book excerpt: It does not matter if you are an experienced leader or are just starting out as a new manager or entrepreneur, the techniques outlined in Unquestioned Brilliance can improve your decision making and critical thinking. The book outlines ten techniques, built from research and validated through application, designed to help leaders and their teams become better strategic thinkers. For less than the price of a single dinner at a restaurant, this book offers the same content found in executive education strategic thinking courses. Unquestioned Brilliance is best viewed as a handbook for the aspiring leader. It provides a variety of tools for leaders of teams at all levels of an organization. Techniques included in this book include: -Uncertainty Vectoring: Sort and manage environmental uncertainties to use them for strategic insight and competitive advantage. -TAP Analysis: Align team expertise and task requirements in a manner that develops teams and improves performance. -Tension Tracking: Understand and manage prevailing interests that create stress and paralyze employees within your organization. -Blind-Spot Centering: Stress test strategic initiatives to identify limiting mindsets and strategic blind-spots. -GSO Decision-Making: Diagnose a decision process with a quick heuristic for finding the missing step. -Stakeholder Mapping: Identify the key individuals and groups early enough in a process to draw on their perspectives and expertise. -HERE Snapshot: Use a quick situational assessment when executing a strategic initiative in a new environment. -Backward-Forward Flip: Learn from past industry mistakes to improve odds of success of new organization innovations. The techniques outlined in this book can help leaders and their teams begin building their strategic thinking muscles and help them to better navigate around the unquestioned brilliance trap.