The Long Game

Hi there ????. Ready to lead? "Acts of Leadership" helps people, (irrespective of title or tenure), expand their leadership range one experiment at a time. Each issue shares a [pro/e]vocative definition of leadership, an idea and an experiment.

Staying in the game

Consistency is the (not so) secret ingredient to creating value.

Consistency is your competitive advantage, because most people quit too soon.

• 90% of podcast creators don’t get past episode 3.
• 2/3 of podcasts don't get past 10 episodes
• 90% of that 10% will quit after 20 episodes.

To be in the top 1% of podcasts in the world you only need to publish 21 episodes of your podcast.

In the coaching industry today 82% of coaching businesses fail within the first 2 years.

I crossed 10 marathon finish lines with 8 PB's because each day of the training cycle I ran only what was required each and every day I could.

Success and Failure is playing small

Success is transient.

Failure, when lessons are learned and applied, becomes success over time.

Winning and losing aren't the point— it's fleeting and ego-based. The real win is staying in the game for as long you want to. The real win is being the person you aspire to be.

We're all playing the long game.

And the truth is, you already have the resources and the access to everything you need to play.

A Definition…

"Leadership is... a numbers game."

An Idea…

Littlewood's Law of Miracles

A miracle is an event with a low probability of happening, colloquially a one-in-million chance.

Cambridge University Professor John Littlewood was a mathematician who looked into miracles, and came to the insight that a human can expect a miraculous event about once a month.

This is based on a frequency of events of about one per second, and an average span of alertness of an individual of about eight hours a day.

With that being true you are witness to a million events every 35 days.

Serendipity

If you're looking for that one-in-a-million occurrence to propel you in creating the future you want, then you can help yourself by creating more events. Build a serendipity engine. Create events.

Coach Robert Ellis offers 3 useful takes on this.

1. Curiosity and Experimentation
2. Being open
3. Networking

Curiosity and experimentation is about looking under the stones, asking more questions, expanding the conversation.

If experimentation is the DOing, then BEing open is the mindset and attitude. To go wandering and wondering. Being open to what is present and what is emergent.

Networking is about creating connections. The bigger your network the more events you become witness to.

It's a numbers game

Every 35 days something occurs that is a one-in-a-million event.

Littlewood didn’t set out to prove the existence of miracles. He wanted to prove that extraordinary events are commonplace because there are so many events. Life is, to a greater degree than we might like to admit, a numbers game.

• It's about showing up.
• It's about staying in the game.
• It's about consistency.

When you put in the work; when you stay in the game; when you pay attention; when you create more events;

...then success is inevitable.

"Success is inevitable. It's not metaphysics, it's statistics" — (Robert Ellis)

An Experiment…

?? Rapid Journal : How are you with consistency? What are the conditions in which you find consistency? And when you don't?

?? Do/Think/Be : three times this week undertake an act of curiosity and experimentation, making connections or wandering and wondering.

An invitation to explore…

?? Book: The Infinite Game | Simon Sinek

?? Ted: An underappreciated inspirational quality — Consistency | Shubhra Chaturvedi (08:12)

Leadership needn't be lonely!

Lead when ready!

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