Becoming a Strategist (Part 2 corrected)

A Three Part Series

This part of Becoming a Strategist focuses on building underlying skills.

Enhance Your Judgment by Reading Widely and Often

A valued skill for strategy is the ability to judge what may happen next and how an action may alter this outcome. There are various levels of skill and sophistication in making these judgments. The simplest judgments are about what another person will do or how they will react to a comment, suggestion, or directive. A more complex skill involves assessing the actions and reactions of a team or group. Predicting how customers will respond to a new product may be even harder. At an even higher level is judgment on how political actors, the economy, the larger public, and even whole nations will act or react to an event or proposition.

Thanks for reading The Strategeion! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Good strategists build such skills through practice and by a keen interest in the experiences of other leaders, companies, armies, societies, and nations. Much can be learned from other people, both privately and at gatherings. Still, there is no substitute for steadily consuming newspapers, selected articles, and books. In doing so, beware of the Internet’s memory hole: the World Wide Web first awoke in 1991, and browsers did not appear until 1993. It can be a struggle to research events that occurred before 1995.

Once people can read books, they can educate themselves on almost anything. When I went to college in 1960, I had to read a book a week in my history and literature courses. By 2012, when I asked graduate students at UCLA to read a book, they went to the dean to complain. If schools won’t educate you, then you must educate yourself.

In A Strategist’s Basic Bookshelf, I provide a reading list that mixes military, political, and business strategy sources. Some are easy and inviting, while others demand more concentrated attention to unfamiliar background events or archaic narrative styles. One reason for reading books rather than outlines or listening to podcasts is to see the myriad of details about events, people, and their interactions. These supplement your real-world experience and hone your judgments about how people appraise and react to others’ actions and to events. In addition to building judgment, steady reading will build your knowledge base about ideas and events. This will strengthen your ability to reason by analogy and to use ideas and facts in advancing your arguments.

For example, Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War is somewhat challenging for the modern reader, yet it reveals valuable insights into human and political interactions. Demosthenes (the Athenian general, not the orator) is a fascinating case. Skilled in light-infantry tactics and ambush, he was respected for his success against Sparta at the Battle of Pylos (425 BC). He was sent to Sicily to reinforce the struggling Sicilian Expedition after political enemies had recalled General Alcibiades to face trial. In Sicily, Demosthenes attempted a surprise nighttime attack but failed due to a lack of organization and coordination. He then suggested a withdrawal, but co-general Nicias refused. Subsequently, almost all of the Athenian forces were destroyed, and the two Athenian generals were captured and executed. The failure of the Sicilian Expedition was a strategic defeat for Athens. That weakness played a significant role in its eventual defeat a decade later by Sparta (405 BC). A modern parallel is German General Friedrich Paulus (Stalingrad, 1942-42). To a lesser extent, so is General William Westmoreland (Vietnam).

Cohen and Gooch’s Military Misfortunes is a gripping analysis of military failure that offers profound lessons for all types of organizations. The chapter on antisubmarine strategy resonates with me because of my mother. In 1942, she worked in Washington, D.C., and later recounted standing on Virginia Beach, near the north end around Cape Henry Lighthouse, and seeing the fires of burning U.S. ships in the near distance. “Men were dying right there on our coast,” she recalled, “and it seemed no one could stop it.” That year, sinkings outpaced new construction and threatened U.S. support for Britain and, consequently, for the war in Europe. Cohen and Gooch attribute this catastrophe to a failure to adopt the already well-developed methods of antisubmarine warfare established by the British. During 1940, they had developed a centralized clearing house for all possible intelligence on submarine locations, which coordinated air and naval forces against them. They also developed depth charges, the slow-sinking bombs featured in naval war movies. However, the U.S. Navy only adopted the depth charges; the remainder of the system conflicted with the Navy’s disdain for coordination with aircraft and its doctrine of independent command for each captain. You will find parallels for this in nearly all business attempts to learn from the practices of other firms.

Clayton Christensen’s The Innovator’s Dilemma is a must-read. He writes: “the logical, competent decisions of management that are critical to the success of their companies are also the reasons why they lose their positions of leadership.” Not all his background on disk drives has stood the test of time, but the basic thesis has. Firms become captive to serving their existing customers with their existing methods, resisting new, usually less profitable innovations. Apply this concept to the U.S. government if you dare.

To become a strategist, it is good to expose yourself to ideas about the concept of strategy itself. But, as in most professional fields, real skill grows from studying the skilled performances of others. This explains the importance of histories and biographies in this list. In the Bookshelf, I include only a few books on business strategy. When reading about business strategy, you should avoid works that claim to provide “winning” strategies and other simple formulas for success and profit. The idea that we can all be like the winners if we only follow their example is the oldest scam in popular culture. Also, avoid modern books on “leadership”—these are almost all about perfecting oneself to project a compelling vision. They are not about actually leading anyone.

Know Something Well

In Part 1 of this series, I argued that the best real-world strategists begin by managing. A complementary starting point is developing expertise and deep experience in a field grounded in reality rather than abstractions. The purpose is to cultivate mental muscles for solving real-world problems by manipulating and combining known elements, sometimes in innovative ways, to meet tough constraints.

I have been a tinkerer since the age of 13, designing and building radio transmitters, receivers, reflecting telescopes, and various other gadgets and machines. With no budget, I combed junk yards and factory discard heaps for materials.

I earned an M.S. in electrical engineering, writing a thesis on optimal lifting entry in the Martian atmosphere. That got me a job at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory as a spacecraft designer. At JPL, we designed and built unmanned spacecraft on missions to the Moon (Ranger, Surveyor) and Mars (Mariner). At JPL, I learned real engineering from people who designed, built, and flew actual things. On what seemed to be a whim, I was asked to do a conceptual design for a mission to Jupiter. Given a weight constraint of 1600 pounds, how should a spacecraft bound for Jupiter look? A larger antenna weighed more but required less electrical energy. On the other hand, the larger antenna required more accurate pointing at the Earth to communicate, which, in turn, required more attitude control gas. A radioisotope electrical generator using Plutonium-238 would last a decade or more, but had to be shielded to protect other electrical and scientific instruments. Or, one could use less shielding and put it on an arm, holding it at a distance. However, that, in turn, would require more work for the attitude control system. Fussing with these and other design problems developed my own skills at problem definition and crafting solutions.

I developed an ambition to lead the NASA manned Mars project, which was expected to launch in 1984. So, I left JPL in the fall of 1965 to study management at the Harvard Business School. At that moment, a Caltech Ph.D. student, Gary Flandro, discovered that a rare alignment of the outer planets—Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune—would occur in the 1970s. This event happens about once every 175 years. With clever guidance, a spacecraft could swing by each planet, using its gravity to change direction to visit the next. That turned my Jupiter study into a real mission called Voyager, and the rest is history.

Some strategists cut their teeth as project managers, real estate developers, video game designers, engineers, and more. Their accomplishments as strategists usually echoed and built directly on their practical experience.

• Henry Ford was a self-taught mechanic as a boy, worked as a machinist, and became chief engineer at Edison Illuminating before turning his attention to automobiles.

• Marc Benioff built his first computer at age 12 and sold a program he wrote (“How to Juggle”) at 14. At 15, he started Liberty Software, developing video games for the Atari. He interned at Apple during college, writing assembly language programs for Macintosh. All this, plus his work at Oracle, prepared him for starting and building Salesforce.com.

• Elon Musk earned two college degrees at the University of Pennsylvania: a BS in Physics and a BA in Economics. He learned about business as a founding partner of PayPal. This experience and technical background were essential in building his strategic insight, leading to Tesla, SpaceX, and Starlink.

• James Dyson meticulously created, constructed, and evaluated more than 5,000 vacuum prototypes prior to finalizing his cyclone vacuum. He then worked to establish global intellectual property protections and position his vacuum as fundamentally different rather than just a minor upgrade. The combination of sleek design and superior performance altered consumer expectations, leading to the emergence of a new premium segment in a previously saturated market.

• Fred Smith took to the skies in his youth, learning to fly as a boy, and at 15, he was operating crop dusters. While in Vietnam as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Marine Corps, he led a platoon on search-and-destroy missions. Following a transfer, he conducted hundreds of counterintelligence missions flying Broncos and A-4 Skyhawks. Upon returning to the U.S., he assumed control of his father-in-law's aircraft maintenance business, transitioning it from maintenance to buying and selling pre-owned corporate jets. Then, he conceived a bold strategy—Smith imagined a fleet designed to transport packages overnight between airports, with sorting and distribution handled at a central hub. To circumvent federal shipping regulations, the new venture would have to own its aircraft. The proposal eventually raised $91 million in venture capital. FedEx transformed the quick delivery of envelopes and packages, becoming a name recognized in every household.

• John D. Rockefeller began trading agricultural products early in his career, learning about storage and transportation. By the 1860s, he was working in oil refining in Cleveland, finding ways to cut costs through quality control and scale economies. While the romance in the business lay in drilling for oil, Rockefeller’s experiences in refining and logistics led him to believe that significant gains could be made by restructuring the fragmented refining and distribution businesses. He bought out small mom-and-pop refiners, began to consolidate distribution, and systematically eliminated less efficient competitors. Widely disparaged as a “robber baron,” you are almost never told how his efficiencies cut the price of a gallon of kerosene from 58 to 7 cents a gallon.

• General George S. Patton trained in military history, tactics, and leadership at West Point and was strongly influenced by classical military historians and theorists. He maintained detailed notebooks on his analyses and reactions to the ancient Greek and Roman historians (Thucydides, Xenophon, Polybius), Clausewitz’s On War, Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, and works on Napoleon. He learned important strategic lessons from General Pershing during WWI, where he led the first U.S. tank units in combat.

The critical point is to have practical experience with analysis, creativity, and problem-solving within constraints. Studying books and articles or listening to lectures can be informative, but they are not sufficient.

Practice by Analyzing Current Strategic Situations

Would-be strategists usually spend too much time studying strategy concepts and theories. The best way to develop the intellectual skills needed for strategy work is to practice. Short of running a company or being an advisor, the best practice is to work on a complex current situation at least twice a month.

• Choose a current issue and identify the key forces at work—economic, social, political, and/or technological.

• What key paradox or challenge must be resolved to move ahead?

• What are your forecasts for how the situation will evolve over the next few months and years?

• What would be your advice to one of the key actors?

Here is an example from recent news stories (May 2025):

The EU strives for a sustainable future, targeting net-zero emissions by 2050. Central to this shift are electric vehicles (EVs), solar panels, and wind turbines, all of which rely on key raw materials such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, and various rare earth elements (REEs). Currently, more than 85% of these materials are processed or mined in China. African nations, particularly the DRC, South America (especially Chile), and Indonesia, are key mining regions but are politically somewhat unstable or present challenges for the EU’s “ethical” sourcing regulations. Domestic European mining faces significant environmental pushback and regulatory delays. Meanwhile, China is cutting exports of certain minerals in response to EU and U.S. trade moves.

Analyze this situation, identify the key challenge, and recommend a course of action to the EU Head of Energy Transformation. (Get a Hint).

Here is another example of a current problem:

In 2024, Apple rolled out its new AI system, “Apple Intelligence,” featuring a built-in assistant called CoreAI that runs directly on devices like iPhones, Macs, and the Vision Pro, supported by a private cloud backend. While the experience feels smooth and secure — in classic Apple fashion — developers and tech observers have found it surprisingly limited. CoreAI lacks the ability to combine images, text, and voice like some of its competitors and struggles with tasks that require deeper reasoning or creativity. It’s also quite closed off: customization is minimal, and API access is restricted. Apple seems more focused on keeping everything efficient and private rather than pushing the boundaries of what AI can do. Meanwhile, Google’s Gemini 2 delivers rich, multimodal interactions; OpenAI is building a full developer ecosystem with GPT; and Meta’s LLaMA 3 is open-sourced and widely adaptable. All this raises a tough question: Is Apple falling behind in the AI race?

What is the conflict at the core of this challenge? What would you advise Tim Cook to do? [Get a Hint]

And, here is a third current problem:

IBM aims to be a frontrunner in “Trusted AI for the Enterprise.” Its pitch to CIOs is “Run trusted AI, your way, without losing control.” Its core products are:

• WatsonX, a platform for building, training, tuning, deploying, and governing AI models, especially in enterprise situations.

• Granite Models are IBM’s family of foundation AI models trained on public and enterprise-relevant data for enterprise AI. They are not better than GPT-4 on reasoning, but are smaller, cheaper, deployable in sensitive environments, and auditable by enterprises.

• OpenShift + Red Hat is IBM’s key cloud deployment backbone giving its clients the option to run cloud systems where they want, with full control.

Despite the quality of these product offerings, IBM is confronted with significant challenges. OpenAI and Microsoft lead mainstream AI adoption, while Google DeepMind excels in research advancements. Anthropic and Meta are gaining developer attention through their open models and APIs. Additionally, IBM’s brand is often linked to legacy systems and “slow innovation." While its AI products are accurate, auditable, and compliant, they lack cutting-edge appeal and broad visibility.

As a strategy advisor to the Chief Product Officer at IBM, your role is to evaluate IBM’s position in the AI landscape and propose a strategic approach to enhance adoption, shift perceptions, and safeguard long-term competitive advantage. [Get a Hint]

As you engage in these practice sessions, be sure to write down your analysis and recommendations. (Don’t wait too long after May 2025). This will allow you to compare your judgment with events as they unfold in the future. When people or organizations do not record their expectations, no matter what actually happens next, they tend to say, “I thought that might happen.” Having a proper record of expectations is essential for learning from errors and mistakes.

Helicopter Judgment

A common weakness in strategy work is a fascination with the “big picture,” forgetting the importance of the detailed issues and opportunities at the working level. I call the ability to work at both levels helicopter judgment. Can you soar above the trees to view the whole forest and then plunge back down for a boots-on-the-ground perspective?

For instance, take the IBM AI practice case discussed in the previous section. From a height of 5,000 feet, one can observe the present competitive landscape in AI highlighted in that example. Ascend even higher, and you may gain an even broader perspective. Companies such as IBM and PwC have conventionally capitalized on their expertise in data processing. However, AI models that harness open-source or readily available data could diminish the competitive advantage that consulting firms have historically relied upon. Expertise and analytical capabilities become broadly and cheaply accessible, eliminating consultants’ primary competitive advantage. As AI reasoning approaches or surpasses human capabilities, the reliance on human judgment may be greatly reduced, particularly in structured or semi-structured decision-making tasks.

Now, take the helicopter down to ground level. Imagine you can interview IBM technical specialists who deliver solutions to clients and interview the clients as well. At AT&T, for example, you find that IBM helped the company migrate its internal software applications to its own private cloud. Here, AT&T uses “AI” to help schedule network maintenance. However, its main gains from AI have been in code generation, a tool developed with Microsoft, and in fraud detection, using tools developed by H2O.ai, a developer of open-source machine learning systems. This should give you a different view of the challenges facing IBM. Go down even further and sit next to a technician working to access WatsonX. What issues does she face?

You develop helicopter judgment by practicing it in your own work. If you do not yet have that kind of access, the poorer alternative is to practice helicopter judgment by reviewing and analyzing historical records. Here are two places to start:

• Despite having over 50 percent of the global smartphone business in 2007, Nokia lost the battle to Apple. Get mixtures of high-level and low-level views by reading “The Strategic Decisions That Caused Nokia’s Failure,” “Who Killed Nokia? Nokia Did,” and “What Could Have Saved Nokia, and What Can Other Companies Learn?”

• Operation Market Garden was an Allied battle fought during World War II in the German-occupied Netherlands in the fall of 1944. It featured the first major combat use of British and American airborne forces. The aim was to seize bridges across the Rhine to gain access to northern Germany. It is generally considered to have been a dramatic failure. Read about the high-level and low-level views on HistoryNet.

Think Again

A fundamental tool for sharpening your reasoning is applying contrary thinking to your ideas. When you struggle with a complex challenge, the idea of a way through or around it rushes into your mind with a welcome feeling. It is a great feeling, and you are sure it is an excellent idea because ... well … it is your idea. A difficult but valuable discipline is to critique your own ideas. This practice is the secret to much better thinking. (This thinking tool is not new, but has been recently popularized by Adam Grant.¹)

For example, I recently asked an economist friend about President Trump’s tariffs. He immediately said that tariffs ran against sound economic theory. Free trade, he said, made everyone better off. A week later, he called me and said he had second thoughts about the free trade concept. He said that he realized the theory did not include national security considerations. It had nothing to say about becoming dependent on critical inputs from a large military competitor.

The “think again” tool is usually applied to one’s own ideas. However, it holds equal value when considering the statements and assumptions of others. Most people quickly formulate an alternative thought or opinion when they disagree with someone else’s argument or position. The more unusual skill is thinking critically about arguments that you initially accept. For example, here is a quote from the Webpage of a consulting company:

[We have] been studying the relationship between strategy and execution for years. We have found that the most iconic enterprises — companies such as Apple, Amazon, Danaher, IKEA, Starbucks, and the Chinese appliance manufacturer Haier, all of which compete successfully time after time — are exceptionally coherent. They put forth a clear winning value proposition, backed up by distinctive capabilities, and apply this mix of strategy and execution to everything they do. Any company can follow the same path as these successful firms, and an increasing number of companies are doing just that.

This quote contains two arguments. The last one is that any company can do this. This is obviously not true. Diversified companies like Honeywell International cannot magically become coherent.

The paragraph’s main argument is that success and strategic coherence go together. This sounds reasonable and will be familiar to most MBA students. Business strategy courses are replete with these firms. Coherence among policies is given much credit for their competitive success and for the size of their economic moats. Michael Porter has written several times about how coherent “activity systems” are a key to effective strategy.² (Southwest Airlines, Progressive Insurance, IKEA, Zara).

But is coherence a secret sauce for success? This argument may be an example of survivorship bias: focusing analysis on the successful rather than those who have failed and disappeared. To see this, consider Kodak. Its strategy was to standardize and dominate the film and chemical photography ecosystem. Its distinctive capabilities in film chemistry, processing, and retail distribution provided unmatched coherence for decades. However, Kodak’s coherent film-based strategy became obsolete during the digital photography revolution.

Or consider Pan American Airways or Pullman Company (railway sleeping cars). Both had carefully designed coherent strategies for luxury transportation. The rise of non-coherent but lower-cost competitors drove both out of business.

(These cases are examples of the thinking tool counterexample. It is a powerful way of analyzing the truth of a proposition in argument, formal logic, and mathematics. A truth claim can be disproved by citing a counterexample.)

By questioning this common argument about coherence and success, one can uncover the idea that strong coherence may hinder adaptation when the world changes around you. (See my Substack article on Intel about this.)

Bullet Time

The larger parts of the human brain deal with cognition, vision, hearing, language, memory, and reasoning. The smaller limbic portions deal with fear, anger, threat, and flight—specifically the amygdala, hypothalamus, and the hippocampus. Limbic bypass is the skill of short-circuiting your own emotional over-reactions without deadening this part of your senses. Your emotional response to what is happening tells you (a) about what other people think and intend and (b) about your midbrain’s assessment of the threat to you. You need to be aware of the emotions in the situation, but you also need to keep your limbic system from triggering a strong limbic response—anger, fear, or withdrawal.

There are several tricks for performing limbic bypass. (a) Give yourself a pause of five or six seconds before responding to an emotional trigger. This lets the instant adrenaline-fueled surge fade. (b) Ground your senses: take a sip of water, or feel your feet on the floor, or examine the wall's texture. (c) Name your emotion and analyze it: “I feel angry because he insults me. He does it to build his credibility. He may be insecure about something.”

Functional Analysis is the skill of being aware of the emotions and purposes of other people in a small group setting. Like limbic bypass, a key part of functional analysis is disabling your value judgment (good or bad) about what others say. If Melanie proposes a new committee, skip over your immediate dislike of the suggestion. Why is she doing this? How does she feel about it? What does she hope to gain? By not judging, but analyzing, you gain perspective on what is happening. Basically, functional analysis is understanding each person’s interests, being aware of their emotional state, and recognizing their coping strategy. For example, Bob may be interested in having his forecast accepted as good work and may be annoyed at the criticism implicit in the discussion. He may be coping (poorly) by offering a false choice: “Well, if you don’t like the forecast, we can start over from the beginning.”

Developing the skills of limbic bypass and functional analysis will help you become a more effective manager, advisor, or leader. The only way to gain these skills is through practice. Choose a task-based small group of which you are a member. Choose a short time interval (10 minutes) and work on both functional analysis and limbic bypass. As you gain practice at these skills, you may experience a sense of time slowing down, allowing you more time to understand what is going on in the group. I call this slowdown “bullet time,” after the time slowdown as Neo dodges bullets in The Matrix.

Speaking

The strategist, whether leader or advisor, must speak effectively. There are many sources for advice on this, but it is hard to do better than Aristotle’s treatise Rhetoric, written about 2600 years ago. He defined rhetoric as the art of persuading an audience. The core principles are

• Ethos (credibility). Speakers should establish credibility and trustworthiness through sincerity, expertise, and evidence of good moral character.

• Pathos (emotion). Speakers must recognize and appeal to the audience’s emotions and values.

• Logos (logic). Speakers should support their arguments with evidence, facts, and reasoning.

Four less well-understood tricks of effective speaking are: (1) Speak more slowly than your normal pace. (2) Don’t just gaze at the room. Look directly at the eyes of a person in the audience, pause, then another, pause, and so on around the room, synchronizing your gaze with your spoken sentences or clauses. (3) See yourself as a character in a play. You are not your everyday self, but a character actor playing the part of a great speaker. (4) To the extent possible, prepare the room in advance. You want the audience to engage with you, not some monitor or screen. The ideas come from you, not the visual aids.

Learn Your Strengths and Weaknesses

Knowing yourself, especially your strengths and weaknesses, is essential in almost any professional role. Can you listen to both the substantive and emotional messages when interacting with someone else? Are you more of a talker or a writer? Are you drawn to analyzing and diagnosing complex situations? Can you read or hear a complex argument and boil it down to its essentials? Do others find you someone they can confide in? Do you deliver on your promises and commitments? Do you know what you want out of your life and career?

It would be convenient if we learned about our own strengths and weaknesses from experience. But most of us are biased observers of ourselves. The most powerful way to learn about oneself comes from a coach who has expertise and your interests at heart. General Dwight Eisenhower’s experience in North Africa in 1943 was a good example of this.³

In 1941, General George C. Marshall (4-star) served as Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army and was the principal military advisor to the president. In late 1941, he appointed Brigadier General Eisenhower (1-star) as his chief of staff. In this role, Eisenhower became the chief architect of U.S. strategy for the European and Pacific wars. Before the war, Eisenhower consistently advocated for relieving peace-time officers of their commands and replacing them with those who were capable and willing to lead the fight. Coached and supported by Marshall, Eisenhower advanced quickly, earning his second and third stars in March and July of 1942. 
     In February 1943, he was promoted to full General, gaining his fourth star, and was appointed to command Allied forces in North Africa. Eisenhower traveled to the Tunisian front to personally inspect defenses, morale, and evaluate commanders. At II Corps headquarters, he found that its commander, General Fredendall, had assigned his troops the task of constructing a vast underground bunker approximately 70 miles behind the front lines. Eisenhower observed the ineffective positioning of troops defending Kasserine Pass and noted that the tanks defending Sidi Bou Sid and Sbeitla were scattered in static positions, making them vulnerable to encirclement. Following this inspection, Eisenhower took no action, seeking solitude, hoping that Fredendall would rectify these issues.
     When German Field Marshall Erwin Rommel attacked Sidi Bou Sid and Sbeitla just five days later, U.S. forces were surrounded and overwhelmed. Over 170 tanks were lost. Rommel subsequently attacked Kasserine Pass, breaking through U.S. defenses and forcing them back 50 miles. In this battle, approximately 300 Americans were killed, 3,000 were wounded, and another 3,000 were taken prisoner. The Germans experienced about 1,000 casualties. General Omar Bradley described the battle as “a complete disaster.” It would take a year for Americans to overcome the scorn of the British.
     Following this defeat, General Eisenhower still refrained from taking action to relieve Fredendall. Instead, he asked General Harmon to “take over.” Harmon reported back that Fredendall “was no damn good. You ought to get rid of him,” but he declined the position after making that recommendation. Eisenhower hesitated again and reached out to his mentor, General Marshall.
     Marshall provided tough feedback, reprimanding Eisenhower for not taking swift action to remove an inadequate officer. He stressed the necessity of immediate action in combat (contrasted with staff work) and the importance of quickly learning from mistakes. After this conversation, Eisenhower quickly relieved Fredendall and replaced him with General George S. Patton. He then reorganized the command structures. With a clearer understanding of Eisenhower's strengths and weaknesses, Marshall began positioning Eisenhower as a “political” General, assigning him to lead the Allied war effort centered in Britain, where he had to coordinate among the Allied nations' political and military interests and plans. At this job, he distinguished himself greatly, but was never again given direct field command.

In the absence of such a trusted coach or advisor, the alternative is to keep a record of your expectations, actions, and their outcomes. This is an old idea, usually credited to Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556), the founder of the Jesuits. He practiced and taught daily journaling, reviewing decisions and actions, evaluating outcomes against intentions, and reflecting. Peter Drucker⁴ promoted this method as “feedback analysis” and argued that it is a powerful method of identifying one’s strengths and weaknesses. Drucker’s fascinating observation was: “I have been practicing this method for 15 to 20 years now, and every time I do it, I am surprised. The feedback analysis showed me, for instance—and to my great surprise—that I have an intuitive understanding of technical people, whether they are engineers or accountants or market researchers. It also showed me that I don’t really resonate with generalists.”

1. Grant, Adam. Think again: The power of knowing what you don't know. Penguin, 2023.

2. Porter, Michael E. On Competition. Harvard Business School Press,1996. Also, Porter, Michael E. On Competition. Harvard Business School Press, 1998. Also, Porter, Michael E., "Strategy and the Internet," Harvard Business Review, March 2001, pp. 63–78.

3. Martin Blumenson, Kasserine Pass (1967). Carlo D'Este, Eisenhower: A Soldier's Life (2002). Eisenhower, Dwight David. Crusade in Europe. JHU Press, 1997.

4. Drucker, Peter F. "Managing oneself (HBR classic)." Harvard Business Review 100 (2005): 0017-8012.