Are you a visionary leader?
We spend too much time looking for “Visionary” leaders.
The word implies that the job of a leader is to hallucinate a future and then charisma-roll the organization into chasing it. Like if you can’t see around corners, you aren’t qualified to lead?
There is a lot of winner’s bias in telling the heroic stories of visionary leaders. The worst part is that “be visionary” is simply not repeatable and therefore, useless as a leadership lesson.
I’m much more interested in the lessons that are repeatable. Nvidia’s breathtaking 2016 pivot provides such a lesson. It suggests a different, much more accessible model:
Your job isn’t to be a prophet.
Your job is to be an architect.
An architect doesn’t “predict” that a building will stand. They understand the laws of physics (gravity, tension, compression, etc.) and they design a structure that aligns with those laws.
That’s exactly what Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang did.
Maybe he saw AI earlier than most of us. But their rise also had a much more grounded reason: It was very well architected. And phenomenally well communicated.
My newest essay on “What the Best Leaders Say” takes a very precise look at how exactly Huang did this.
If you ever needed to orient your team under uncertainty but didn’t have a crystal ball, this one is for you. What Huang did is very much repeatable.
It drops tomorrow morning.
Keep lighting the path,
Michael
PS: If you use this link, you’ll get access to the essay series free for a month and you can cancel anytime.