A summary of things you should know about Anticipate according to Rob-Jan De Jong:

Introduction

In this episode Rob-Jan De Jong reveals all his insights on his book, Anticipate, where he discusses the 2 skills that are key to mastering the art of leading others.

In his book De Jong provides a guide with practical techniques and inspirational stories that are designed to show you how to expand your visionary capacity when it comes to leadership. The goal of the book is to help you see things more clearly, rejuvenate your imagination, and manage from a birds-eye view in order to develop a strategic advantage on your competitors.

This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who are managing the operations of a business and need help realigning their management strategy to predict the future of an organization.

The Book’s Unique Quality (3:58)

My book not only tells you how important having a vision is in a leadership role but more important I explain how you go about developing that vision.

The Best Way To Engage (5:47)

You can read the book straight through or jump in and out where needed.

The Reader’s Takeaway (15:25)

The core takeaway is that vision is not something you are born with, it’s something you can develop.

A Deep Dive Into The Book (7:06)

The book is broken down into four areas.

The first area is your visionary content – how you go about trading ideas.

The second area is your visionary development – how you go about growing that capacity. Here I propose a developmental framework that really consists of two different dimensions, one is your ability to see things early and the other is how to in a responsible way put that together in a big picture story. I talk about the importance of envisioning multiple futures as you’re developing your big picture through techniques such as scenario planning.

The third area is about yourself and the productive behaviors that you must master in order to make this work. So there are things that you need to reflect on in terms of what builds my capability of doing this from a behavioral and mindset point of view. As you are reflecting on yourself it is equally very important to understand what it is that you stand for as a leader and the things that you truly believe in.

We bring it all together in the fourth area of the book and look at what it requires in order to make your vision fly as you communicate about it. In order for a vision to become powerful you have got to look at three different dimensions which you will find in the book.

NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 07:06

Notable Quotes From The Book (16:52)

“Everything is the same until it is not.” – Ellen Langer

The Credibility/Inspiration Of The Author (0:35)

I am the father of twin 10 year old boys to whom I am also their soccer coach so I do a lot of work with leadership and put it to practice with 10 year olds. Professionally I work a lot with leadership teams and trying to get them to engage with their strategic agenda. The second thing I do is teach about this subject and I am involved in various executive education programs.

My inspiration comes from about seven or eight years ago while I was doing a lot of work in the field of leadership and at some point I asked the audience what’s the one word you find in the definition of leadership. Immediately they fired back the word vision. From there I asked all these leaders what their vision was and nobody could raise their hand and tell me because they didn’t have one. I didn’t understand how it could be that something we all know is important to have as a leader but yet we don’t have one. That fascinated me and was what inspired me to look into this subject and I wanted to share my discoveries of what I found over the eight years.

Other Books Recommended By The Author (18:17)

Mindfulness by Ellen Langer

More Information About This Book and The Author

Buy Anticipate by Rob-Jan De Jong on Amazon today
Visit RobJanDeJong.com to learn more about Rob-Jan and his book

More Information About This Episode

Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud

Related books:

The Prosperous Leader by Jacob Engel
Winning the Long Game by Steven Krupp
Own Your Future by Paul B Brown

Relevant advice and tips:

5 Characteristics of a Great Leader

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Wade Danielson

Wade is a 4-time serial entrepreneur and is the Founder/Host of The Entrepreneurs Library. With a long time passion for reading books, Wade created an online resource and podcast for entrepreneurs who love to read personal and business development books. His long-term goal in life is to start an entrepreneurial home schooling program for children of business-minded families.