Winning the Long Game: How Strategic Leaders Shape the Future (Paul J. H. Schoemaker and Steven Krupp, 2014)

Strategic leader

1. Anticipate changes in the market environment.
2. Challenge assumptions and the status quo.
3. Interpret a wide array of data and viewpoints.
4. Decide what to do after examining their options.
5. Align the interests and incentives of stakeholders.
6. Learn from success and failure by experiments.

Tuning in to customer's signal

1. Put yourself in your customer's shoe.
2. Make customer's order as your own.
3. Grow together with your customers.

Action plan to see sooner

1. Go through all the pass over threats and opportunities.
2. Bring yourself to your customers, suppliers and other partners to solve their problems.
3. Run a war-game to understand your competitors, legislators and other key stakeholders.
4. Study emerging rivals, especially those who innovates.
5. Envision future technology will redefine your market.

Scan wider

1. Identify the weak signals at the edge of your current business model.
2. Play different realistic future scenarios.
3. Identify and learn from other start-ups beyond your industry and sectors.
4. Attend more conferences, workshops, training course outside your comfort zone.
5. Leverage on your current networks and be part of new community.

Opening the window

1. To constantly look for different views of a complex and difficult problem.
2. Ensure to have procedures to remove complacency.
3. Challenge long-standing assumptions in the multiple dimensions.
4. Gladly welcome constructive criticism and creative thinking.
5. Purposely reframe important problems from several angles to understand root causes.
6. Manage yours and your team's biases.

Actions to open window

1. Test our long-standing assumptions.
2. Challenge dubious assumptions and outdated mental models from the outside in.
3. Explore outside your organisation.
4. Engage mavericks and respect contrarians.
5. Form diverse teams for major initiatives.
6. Break from the pack.

Amplify signals

1. Develop deep insights about customers experience, competitive perspective and the changing dynamics of the market in a systematic manner.
2. Create a fluid process to move between details and big picture.
3. Focus on key signals and avoid getting misinterpretations.
4. Ensure data, analysis, intuition and judgement approach is ready to go.

Actions to amplify signals

1. Start with the end in mind.
2. Define how precise the interpretations according to the importance of the tasks.
3. Not down customer behaviour assumptions.
4. Walk in your customer's or supplier's shoe with your organisation key points in mind.
5. Challenge your hypothesis.
6. Improve on your critical thinking and interpreting skills while reduce on cognitive biases.

Actions to connect dots

1. Generate competing hypothesis from observations.
2. Get outsiders opinions on the hypothesis.
3. Refresh yourself when you are at your wits' end.
4. Dig deeper into problems and search for the main component.
5. Make use of fishbone diagram or flowchart to connect the dot.
6. Read material outside your normal interests.

Decision making

1. Evaluate multiple options to your strategic vision.
2. Assess the trade-offs, risks and unintended consequences.
3. Adopt speed and rigor decisions.
4. Make tough choice during adversity.
5. Using innovation and risk-taking.
6. Weigh the long-term investments against the short-term pressure for results.

Actions toe explore options

1. Look for other alternatives in a binary decisions.
2. Use more meetings to generate additional options
3. Have alternatives options to weigh and rank the options.
4. Break big decisions into pieces.
5. Get others to be involved to make such decisions.

Actions to show courage

1. Determine the situation if it is worth it.
2. Make tough decisions.
3. Get feedbacks from your peers on the consequences, missing risks or overestimations.
4. Form an interdisciplinary team to identify gaps from from different angles.
5. Break the decisions into long-term and short-term goals.

Leadership behaviour

1. Create a compelling strategy to win the long game.
2. Identify and reach out those who have a significant stakes in the game.
3. Communicate soonest, concise and constantly to all the stakeholders.
4. Pinpoint and address conflicting interests among stakeholders.
5. Identify the need of stakeholders and bridge their interest.
6. What are the cultural differences that would affect the collective actions.

Actions to rally key players

1. Set clear and compelling strategies.
2. Map the stakeholders that is affected by the big decision.
3. Know those can influencers your decisions.
4. Know the right time to engage the stakeholders.
5. Constant check in with the stakeholders even after you have achieve the alignment.

Actions to bridge differences

1. Create a win-win situation by identifying mutual interest.
2. Openly discuss resistance.
3. Look for approach signs of resistance.
4. Understand and diagram matrix relationships and weak links.
5. Learn to listen.
6. Host deep dialogues with the team.
7. Learn cross-cultural dynamics.

Actions to experiment widely

1. Make commitment to explore beyond your comfort zone.
2. Take chances, try things, and worry less about protocol.
3. Check out pilot programs rather than big bets, have checkpoints to determine if there is a need for expansion, continuation or cease the experiment.
4. Measure and evaluate the projects, investments or decisions.
5. Know when to pull the plug for bad experiment.
6. Study other companies and leaders outside your industry.
7. Study competitors with open mind and no defensive posture.

Actions to delve deeply

1. Understand how difficult or unprecedented the task is.
2. Conduct after-action review (AAR).
3. Mistakes can be a source of new learning.
4. Communicate with your peers on the new learnings.
5. Reach out for the first sign of trouble.
6. Publicise stories that lead to innovative solutions.
7. Deliberately make mistakes to test if people appreciate the value of mistakes.

Nelson Mandela

• Make tough decisions under uncertainty, aligning people and speaking truth to power.

Strategic leadership assessment

1. Anticipate
• Scan wider, from outside in (market).
• See sooner, from the future back (customers).
2. Challenge
• Open the window to seek diverse views.
• Look in the mirror to reframe problems.
3. Interpret
• Amplify signals to develop deep insights.
• Connect the dots to explore multiple working hypothesis.
4. Decide
• Explore and evaluate multiple options.
• Show courage to make tough choices.
5. Align
• Rally key players (team) around a compelling strategic vision.
• Bridge differences to address different stakeholders.
6. Learn
• Experiment widely and fail fast.
• Delve deeper with regular checkpoints.