Why are new skills essential?

This book is for leaders grappling with a transforming business environment and challenged by goals that are complex, dynamic and contradictory. If you feel the need to develop or enhance your skills and capabilities to confront fast-changing circumstances, you've come to the right place.

Three Skills of Advantage

When you read this book, you will develop the ability to observe the complexity of your workplace and your environment from completely new perspectives. You may be attempting to control the wrong variables in an ineffective way, leading to sub-optimal results. My book will provide you with a new toolkit to help you:

• Perceive complexity and learn to accurately describe it to yourself and others
• Act in a world of uncertainity. You will learn and develop wisdom by doing the right things
• Improve the speed, quality and effectiveness of your decisions

Why you need to read this book

Three Skills of Advantage lays out three essential skills you need to master to gain advantage. They are the skills of quality, agility and decision-making. The more I practice them, the more I understand how far away I am from perfection and the more enthusiastically I pursue it.

It is extraordinary how little leaders practice the theory, technique and creative adaptation of their skills. Every professional musician has a more impressive record of rehearsing their performances that the average leader has of practicing leadership. Musicians rehearse their performance techniques as the basis for achieving perfection. They release all of their creative energies when they deliver a unique musical experience that transcends a routine performance. Because of their flawless basic techniques, performances by top-tier musicians seem effortless, even when their skills are stretched to the limits of their capabilities.

The skill of quality means recognizing what is important and pursuing excellence in those areas. The skill of agility means acting effectively in uncertain circumstances. The skill of decision-making involves making wise choices and implementing them effectively. All three are fundamental skills that allow those who have mastered them to focus their creative energy on motivating others to be inspired, to believe and to participate.

Three Skills of Advantage will teach you to