The path to Strategic Leadership

As a first-line manager, you directly assign work to individual contributors, measure their progress and deliver immediate results - e.g. specific product features, project releases and architectural designs. A lot of time is spent in directly managing these contributors within the team.

As a second-level manager, you're no longer directly managing individual engineers; instead you manage multiple teams, steering each towards success and eventual independence. At the end, your first-line managers are managing their teams autonomously and only highlighting risks and issues to you.

At the vice-president level, you work as an Executive. You're no longer steering teams directly. Instead, your job is to plant a flag and direct your teams towards that distant vision; create an environment that facilitates individuals in doing their jobs; and to identify specific bumps in the road ahead of time to smooth the way.

A specific algorithm for achieving VP-level success:

1. Set the overall Vision
2. Define Strategic objectives and Tactical goals (i.e. the criteria for success)
3. Measure key metrics to track progress towards those goals
4. Identify core blockers (people, processes, tools), current and future
5. Focus on achieving a solid, high-performance team

Who Am I?

Anthony Robbins suggests asking the question "Who Am I?", and thinking carefully about the answers.

Here are some of my answers:

• I'm a high-level thinker
• I'm a seeker of knowledge, in all its forms
• I'm a loving father
• I'm a compassionate person
• I'm not a quitter!
• I'm fun
• I'm a healthy person
• I appreciate that life is a gift!
• I'm connected

Daily tactical goals

The four strategic focus points are:

1. Health
2. Family and friends
3. Wealth
4. Giving back

The four tactical goals, on a daily basis, are:

1. Workout
2. Trading (preferably with an edge)
3. Business
4. Meditation

Strategic Objectives

Who am I? I'm the future chairman of the Enkayall group of companies.

The first step is to start the initial company and free myself out of a job; then on to a second one. Eventually, build a portfolio of companies. The kids can help when they are grown, if they so choose.

The strategic objective of these companies, whether public or private, will be two-fold:
(i) to increase profit now and in the future, and
(ii) to be socially responsible to everyone directly involved: investors, employees, customers, suppliers, the community and the world at large.

Item (ii) means, first and foremost, to make sure that all dealings are above-board and that each company does the right thing, even if at the cost of profits; second, it means some element of actively doing good without regard to profit. In the end, this is just good business.