Strategic

PART IILeadership Fitness

“To each there comes in their lifetime a special moment when they are figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered the chance to do a very special thing, unique to them and fitted to their talents. What a tragedy if that moment finds them unprepared or unqualified for that which could have been their finest hour.”

—Winston Churchill, former prime minister of the United Kingdom

As the tale goes, a troop of Hungarian soldiers were on military maneuvers in the Alps when they became lost. It snowed for two days. They were cold and hungry, and as day three approached, they were resigned to the fact that they would not make it out alive. Then, on the brink of death, one of the soldiers found a map buried deep in his pack. The detachment got their bearings, pulled themselves up, and followed the map out of the Alps to safety. When they returned to camp, the commanding officer asked how they finally found their way back. The soldier pulled out the map and laid it on the table. The commanding officer discovered, to his astonishment, that it was not a map of the Alps, but a map of the Pyrenees, an entirely different mountain range.

We may not always have the right map to help us navigate, but we can always bring with us the right mindset and skills to get us from here to there.