Seeing around the corner
Often times, a genius comes along and shows to the world what has been there the whole time right in front of everyones eyes. They quickly get named a visionary. Someone that saw it coming. Someone that can paint a crystal clear picture out of fog and chaos.
Photo by Riccardo Annandale
Greatness shines when one can harvest in anticipation what is around the corner, what can not be seen in plain sight. It happens in sports, it happens in business, it happens in life.
Let's take Tom Brady as an example, the best football player of all time by any measure. Last year, we saw Tom leave the Patriots and decided to take his talents to Tampa. Together with Bill Belichick, he built one of the most amazing football dynasties at New England, with so much success winning 6 championships and going to 9 super bowls in his 19 years with the Patriots. Unprecedented. Did I mention he's 43, a dinosaur by NFL standards. At end of last season, when everyone was expecting Tom to hang it up and go into the sunset, he restructured his deal, took less money, and became un-franchisable which means the Patriots could not keep him even if they wanted. He saw it. He saw it before anyone else that the Patriots are entering a rebuild mode, and he did not want to lead a mediocre team to the first round of the playoffs for his remaining playing years. He took a chance, and joined a stacked team that was just missing a piece. A quarterback.
He was not lucky. He put himself in a position to be successful.
Another good example is Steve Jobs. He saw it coming before anyone. He built the iPhone before any of us knew we couldn't live without it.
See around the corner is when great innovation and success comes to life. It's when one follows the leading indicators to make a decisions, not revenue, KPIs, ROIs, etc. which are all results from decisions that were made in the past.
It's not enough to see around the corner. You must act on it. Be the visionary of your own life!
