The Art Of Leading By Looking Ahead

Anticipate: The Art of Leading by Looking Ahead, gives readers practical guidance and concrete techniques to help leaders become more visionary. In his new book, Rob-Jan de Jong provides the developmental framework for visionary capacity, focusing on two key skills:

• The ability to see change early
• The ability to connect the dots

Rob-Jan de Jong

De Jong makes a clear distinction between the company vision and your personal vision. And, in this book, he helps you increase your personal visionary capacity for your personal leadership whether or not you are hierarchically in a senior position.

The book includes many exercises and examples, along with QR codes to access videos with additional content that can be viewed on your smartphone.

Some of de Jong's tips for how to think like a visionary and be a source of inspiration to your organization and teams include:

• Deliberately break your normal, everyday patterns.
• Develop a set of appreciative questions aimed at discovering what is going well, and why.
• Regularly engage with a subgroup that is profoundly different from the usual suspects you hang out with.
• Ask often, "What other options exist?" And, "What are we not seeing or saying?"
• Engage in pure listening conversations. That means listening and not taking over the conversation with your views or ideas, no matter how much you want to.

De Jong is one of five faculty members in Wharton's flagship executive program "Global Strategic Leadership." He lives in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Thanks to the book's publisher for sending me an advance copy of the book.