The two-second advantage.

I anticipate the future.
I’m not saying that arrogantly as if I have some God given special ability.
I’ve got what Vivek Ranadivé calls a “talented brain”.
Ouch – that could sound arrogant as well.

To make it sound not so arrogant but perhaps more mysterious if not just plain odd - I have “memory of the future” (as Swedish researcher David Ingvar dubbed it).
I have the ability to know what is going to happen based upon what my memory has previously stored.

It’s amazing.
I can actually anticipate the future.

Here’s what’s even more amazing – I’m not the only person with this ability.

In their fascinating book The Two-Second Advantage, Ranadivé and Kevin Maney present some neat research on the predictive ability of the human brain.
This is what made Wayne Gretzky the greatest hockey player of all time.
And it is what distinguishes a top level successful leader and others.

Enter what they term “Ones” and “Twos”. Top level leaders are one of these two types.

Think through which one you are.

Ones tend to be founders.
They are bullheaded and courageous. They tell people what they think, not what they think people want to hear. They see openings and get flashes of creativity. They can take in everything that is happening and see it from a higher level, the details blurring into instinct.
Ones have ‘feelings’ about something and if the feeling is right – they go with it.

Twos pay attention to detail; they get things done, but what they do is based upon the right data, enough data, more data.
For Twos, ‘we think this is right’ never trumps ‘we know this is right.’ They move when they know it is the right thing based upon accessing and sorting the right information.

It is this constantly returning to the mountains of data that most distinguishes Ones from Twos.
Ones frequently make decision on incomplete information. Ranadivé and Maney suggest they generally have less than 10% of the information Twos require to make decisions).
Yet with not enough time, or all the data, what the Ones have that makes them different than the Twos is this two-second advantage – otherwise called predictive capabilities. Ones have an efficient agile mental ability that can quickly predict what’s going to happen despite not having all the data available – and they can be right most of the time.
They anticipate the future.
They have memory of the future.

At the neurological level, Ones have neuron activity going on in their brains that fire together (everyone’s brain does this), but then their brains simultaneously wire that pattern together to enable them to predict what is going to happen ….and when the prediction is correct their brains get strengthened (their firing neurons connected by axons gets a neurological workout that strengthens the bond) and they grow strong in this predictive capability.

Is this a ‘hardware’ genetic ability, or a ‘software’ learned ability?
Interestingly, research is pointing to a learned ability!!

So, I’m off now to get my neurons firing on topics that are central to effective leadership – strategic analysis; contextual awareness; new research; old facts; comparative reasoning – it’s that fuel that will hopefully enable me to anticipate the future and make the right impactful decisions.

I’m off now to read Jim Collins’ new book Great by Choice……