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Smart Leadership
Book

Smart Leadership

Four Simple Choices to Scale Your Impact

Mark Miller
BenBella, 2022
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Editorial Rating

9

Qualities

  • Well Structured
  • Engaging
  • Inspiring

Recommendation

The word “quicksand” encapsulates many leadership challenges. You can get mired in quicksand without realizing it. You might not expect functions you don’t even manage to delay your work and blunt your ability to meet your goals or influence others, but unforeseen complications always loom. However, fast-food executive Mark Miller, also the author of The Heart of Leadership and Chess, Not Checkers, explains that you also have a remarkable way to deal with such problems, a skill you use constantly without thinking about it: the ability to make the right decision.To control the quicksand, he says, make these choices: “confront reality,” increase your capacity, encourage curiosity and promote change.

Summary

Pick the right cup.

In the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Indy Jones finds a concealed room that supposedly contains the sacred chalice, the Holy Grail itself. Myth suggests that Christ drank from this chalice at the Last Supper, and that whoever drinks from it will never die. The room holds many fancy cups. Jones has to select the right one.

An opponent who also wants the cup shows up. At a loss about which cup to choose, Jones lets the bad guy make the first choice. The miscreant chooses an ornate cup embedded with jewels. He drinks from it and dies. Jones, demonstrating his common sense, chooses an austere cup that a carpenter might have used. The figure of the Knight, who has guarded the grail for 700 years, speaks his now-famous line, “You have chosen wisely.”

Leaders often get bogged down in “quicksand” challenges.

Most leaders confront numerous obstacles that could leave them stymied and stuck. You can lump these problems together in one apt classification: quicksand. Leaders can get mired in quicksand without realizing it, but once you are bogged down...

About the Author

Mark Miller is vice president of high-performance leadership at Chick-fil-A. He also wrote The Heart of Leadership and Chess, Not Checkers.

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