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Name: Smart Leadership
Rating: 4.3 (251 reviews)
Author: Mark Miller

Mark Miller

Four Simple Choices to Scale Your Impact

4.3 (251 ratings)

18 mins

Topics

Decision-Making Leadership

Table of Contents

Smart Leadership
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What’s in it for me? Learn how to make Smart Choices.

Have you ever seen the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade? If so, you’ll no doubt remember the scene where Indy has to choose the Holy Grail from a plethora of cups. Legend has it that whoever drinks from it will gain immortality. He’s struggling to choose when along comes the antihero who’s also after the cup. Indy allows him to pick first. Aided by his assistant, he plumps for a golden chalice and drinks from it. Within seconds the villain experiences an agonizing death. The knight who’s been guarding the cup then says his famous line, “He chose … poorly.”

Indy then picks out a simple cup – one that could have been made by a carpenter. The knight agrees with his choice and says, “You have chosen wisely.”

You’ll doubtless never face that kind of choice, but it illustrates how often choices can be difficult and how devastating the wrong choice can be. You want to make the right choice – the one that will have the most favorable impact, that will be most effective, that will add value After all, your choices affect everyone around you.

In this Blink, you’ll discover what the author, Mark Miller, calls the four Smart Choices together with some strategies and tactics to help you get started.

Ready to breathe new life into your leadership skills? Then let’s press on with some Smart Choices that will bring out the Smart Leader within you.

Smart choices will help you escape from the quicksand.

Do you ever feel like you’re swimming in quicksand? The harder you work, the deeper you sink? Progress and success seem out of reach? Your career and life somehow unfulfilling?

Many leaders have these thoughts, indeed most seem to be facing an ever-increasing list of challenges. Just like quicksand, they don’t see it coming and once they’re in they feel helpless and alone. That quicksand has a tight grip and it’s difficult to get out of. So what do many leaders do? They just find a way to cope – they learn to swim in the quicksand.

Everyone’s quicksand is personal. For some, it’s the endless – often unproductive – meetings; others are swamped with emails, text, and social media posts; some have colleagues interrupting their flow; and many find the complexity of life is simply escalating. Don’t relate to any of those? Well, what is it that’s holding you back? What’s stopping you from being impactful? The story of your own success? Complacency? A lack of inertia? Fatigue? Circumstances beyond your control?

No matter what your personal quicksand is, rest assured there is a way out.

First off, let’s pinpoint exactly what your quicksand is. Take a pen and notepad and jot down your top three impediments. Why not add them to your phone for quick reference, too? As you progress through this Blink, refer to these constantly. By the end, you should be able to formulate a plan to escape from these.

Viktor Frankl said that there’s a space between a stimulus and your response. In that space, you have the power to choose how you respond. Therein lies your path to growth and freedom. Sure, we may not all have the same degree of access to make choices, but the choices you can make give you both agency and opportunity.

In the next four sections, you’re going to learn about the four Smart Choices. These choices are ones that have a high impact and require you to focus. Individually, they each have their own value, but together, they’ll unleash your real power and multiply your impact.

Confront reality regularly and plan for your future reality.

“The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality.” So said Max Dupree, the former CEO of the furniture company Herman Miller. Although this may seem obvious, many leaders have difficulty confronting their reality. Why is this? Well, there are several reasons including a fear of failure, living in denial, arrogance, short-term thinking, and even being just too busy.

The thing is that if you want to stay grounded in truth and lead from strength, you must confront reality. The first step in doing that is to define your universe.

Grow your capacity and create margin for reflection.

In 1913, Henry Ford introduced the assembly line. This brought production time for the Model T down from twelve hours to a mere one hour and 33 minutes. This increased capacity heralded a new era of mobility for people and products.

In our modern world, computers have increased capacity to even higher levels and have allowed amazing feats such as the sequencing of the human genome to be completed with ease. At the time Smart Leadership was written, the fastest computer was in Japan and had 7.3 million cores and a speed of 415.5 petaflops. Baffled? Don’t worry, Miller is and so are we, but one thing we can be sure of is that with the capacity that creates, it’s sure to change the world.

Fueling your curiosity will create new opportunites.

Back in 2003, Miller met the CEO of grocery chain Superquinn in Ireland. At that time, Fergal Quinn had around 30 stores. Quinn talked to his customers – almost to the point of obsession. Indeed, you could argue that he was undertaking a weekly customer focus group. He had an insatiable curiosity and love for his customers.

Think for a moment about the last time you spoke to your customers or better, listened to them. If you want to be a leader who can achieve maximum impact, you need to learn to flex your curiosity muscles. Rather than suppress the curiosity beast inside you, fuel it.

Create change for a better future.

Management consultant and author Peter Drucker said that “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” And that neatly brings us to the fourth and final Smart Choice: create change for a better tomorrow. Ultimately, that is the role of a leader: to help move people and organizations toward a preferred future.

Like the fictional Luke Skywalker of Star Wars fame, you must learn to “use the Force” within you – your strength, insight, and abilities. Channel those and use them as a force for good in the world. In the end, it will be your thoughts that affect your actions and your actions that shape the outcome.

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What is Smart Leadership about?

Smart Leadership (2022) is your guide to making informed decisions that will shape your journey as a high-impact effective leader. It introduces the concept of "Smart Choices," which emphasizes how your decision-making abilities can boost your potential to lead. It provides insights that will not only improve your strategic thinking, but also enable you to create a positive influence, enhance the health of your organization, and contribute to shaping a remarkable personal legacy.

Who should read Smart Leadership?

Rookie leaders looking for guidance on how to boost effectiveness and impact
Established leaders who want to breathe new life into their leadership approach
Leadership development professionals seeking ideas to help improve their clients’ leadership skills

About the Author

Mark Miller is an international best-selling author, business leader, and communicator, who began his career over 40 years ago as an hourly team member at Chick-fil-A. He now serves as the vice president of high-performance leadership at the company. His primary focus is on serving leaders, facilitating their growth, and the development of their teams and organizations. He’s written multiple books on this subject including The Secret, which he coauthored with Ken Blanchard, Culture Rules, and Chess Not Checkers.

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