Leadership: Vision
Posted: Fri Dec 08, 2006 12:26 pm
A leader must have his sights set for the future. Visions of the future come in many forms, whether it be administrative, financial, or diplomatic. However, for this example, I wish to curtail the theme to the battlefield only.
On the battlefield, your troops will look for answers and direction. They will wish for you to predict what the enemy will do. Often leaders state that they do not know, and to be ready for anything. This is unacceptable.
One must imagine the future, or else the timeline of the battle terminates before it even begins. Without a future, the now becomes pointless; why fight if there is no chance of success. Worse, a leader who does not dictate the future creates an environment of hopelessness and one without wanting. A fighter should always want to excel, else he becomes a weak link. His weakness is that he is unable to contemplate the results of his actions. Either he becomes the zealot, running off without a plan, leaving his compatriots to fend for themselves, or he becomes a coward afraid to act, incapable of taking chances, and paralyzed into inaction.
On this thought, a leader should not be afraid. Speak as though you know, you are the leader. You know what your troops can do, and they should trust in you even if you are wrong, for there is no way to know the future for sure, until it is the past.
Like anything else, vision on the battlefield also takes practice. One must remove his personal attachment from the battle, and envision it in almost a top-down view. Troop movements on both sides of the field are much like predicting the paths of water drops on a windshield. They will follow regular patterns, as if controlled by some force. Some travel straight down, while others may follow the same path, only to tear off into another direction. However, even the most chaotic a water drop is rarely a surprise. The battlefield should become as predictable.
A battlefield is nothing more than a predetermined number of scenarios that can possibly play out. Let us assume we name each of these scenarios a color, so your opponent in the way the line up to face you, could appear very red or very blue or somewhere very puplely in-between. An opposing force with any knowledge of battle, should know line itself up to appear as some thing else. So our enemy is a chameleon, able to appear yellow one minute, but set to morph to green at moment’s notice. Hence, our eyes deceive us. As a leader you must look beyond the spectrum, to learn to include colors that do not even exist. For they are there, I assure you. The key to discerning which are the only real possibilities lies not in trusting what you see with your eyes, but what you see with your mind.
Experience will guide you, but only trust the plan you can see with your eyes closed and your mind awake.
On the battlefield, your troops will look for answers and direction. They will wish for you to predict what the enemy will do. Often leaders state that they do not know, and to be ready for anything. This is unacceptable.
One must imagine the future, or else the timeline of the battle terminates before it even begins. Without a future, the now becomes pointless; why fight if there is no chance of success. Worse, a leader who does not dictate the future creates an environment of hopelessness and one without wanting. A fighter should always want to excel, else he becomes a weak link. His weakness is that he is unable to contemplate the results of his actions. Either he becomes the zealot, running off without a plan, leaving his compatriots to fend for themselves, or he becomes a coward afraid to act, incapable of taking chances, and paralyzed into inaction.
On this thought, a leader should not be afraid. Speak as though you know, you are the leader. You know what your troops can do, and they should trust in you even if you are wrong, for there is no way to know the future for sure, until it is the past.
Like anything else, vision on the battlefield also takes practice. One must remove his personal attachment from the battle, and envision it in almost a top-down view. Troop movements on both sides of the field are much like predicting the paths of water drops on a windshield. They will follow regular patterns, as if controlled by some force. Some travel straight down, while others may follow the same path, only to tear off into another direction. However, even the most chaotic a water drop is rarely a surprise. The battlefield should become as predictable.
A battlefield is nothing more than a predetermined number of scenarios that can possibly play out. Let us assume we name each of these scenarios a color, so your opponent in the way the line up to face you, could appear very red or very blue or somewhere very puplely in-between. An opposing force with any knowledge of battle, should know line itself up to appear as some thing else. So our enemy is a chameleon, able to appear yellow one minute, but set to morph to green at moment’s notice. Hence, our eyes deceive us. As a leader you must look beyond the spectrum, to learn to include colors that do not even exist. For they are there, I assure you. The key to discerning which are the only real possibilities lies not in trusting what you see with your eyes, but what you see with your mind.
Experience will guide you, but only trust the plan you can see with your eyes closed and your mind awake.