Become a great strategic thinker | Ian Bremmer

(contemplative music) - Thinking

strategic

ally is metathinking. It is thinking about thinking. Does not respond to the headlines. It's not what CNN wants to talk to me about on any given day, nor does Fox News. In my opinion, it's more about thinking about where the world is going. That means pattern recognition, many different macro themes at the country level, at the company level, at the individual level, and how they create tradeoffs in leaders who are frequently affected by many of them, but who have very different priorities and needs. . and deadlines. It's very easy to say, okay, I just saw this headline and I have a lot of data and personal history, and that will allow me to immediately frame what I think it means, where I should place it in my current worldview.

And is there any information there that is dissonant? Is that completely anti-

strategic

thinking? Strategic thinking is: what happens outside of that? How do I create my worldview? What would change it? What are the pieces I prioritize? Which ones are not so important? Why do I prioritize them like that? Does that make sense today? What has changed in the last 10 or 20 years? The world changes very quickly and yet people do not revise their worldview as quickly as the world changes. And yet, of course, you should continually revise your worldview, not because you were wrong; I mean, you may have been wrong, but it's much more likely that you had some level of correctness.

You were not analytically wrong. The world moved, and if you don't move, you will make a mistake. I mean, one thing is that any analytical view will

become

erroneous over time, and I think strategic thinking is, at its core, an effort to prevent that from happening. (contemplative music) Great strategic

thinker

s are curious and open. They are okay with being wrong, admitting they are wrong, talking about what that means, and moving on. They are also people who are very curious about different visions of the world. People who respect and engage with worldviews and opinions and analyzes that are dramatically different from their own are people who tend to be good strategic

thinker

s.

I don't necessarily say opposite worldviews, because worldviews don't have to be opposite. They just need to be different. I happen to be born in the United States and that necessarily gives me a worldview from that context. But if I myself were born in China, would that give me an opposite worldview? No, he would be the same person, he would just have a different vision of the world. People who are much more comfortable simply following people who confirm their background may be outstanding tactical thinkers, but not good strategic thinkers. Of course, this is not easy to do.

I mean, it's like going to the gym. The first time is overwhelming. Once you do it every morning, stopping would be discouraging, but you actually have to develop that training, that practice, and it takes time because your brain doesn't like it when you start engaging with things you don't like. in accordance with. He finds it disconcerting. But if you do it enough and you start breaking down your own internal barriers to say: no, it's not that I don't like this person. Not that that opinion discourages me. It's just that they come from a different story. They're not villains, right?

Just because you are Israeli or Palestinian doesn't mean the other person is wrong, they are both heroes of their own stories, they just have different stories. If you are prepared to understand it, accept it and accept it, then you will tend to be a better strategic thinker. (contemplative music) Nelson Mandela would probably be at the top of my list in terms of global strategic thinkers. Not only is he someone of extraordinary moral courage and personal convictions, but he is also someone who recognized, for the long future of his country, that he needed to put aside personal vendettas, and even the desire to find immediate justice to ensure that his El country had a future.

He took a long-term view on values, ethics and human development in a way that very few political figures actually take. The only thing he regrets is never having had the opportunity to meet him in person. Maybe that will allow me to praise him more, because many world leaders whom I respect a lot and have spent a lot of time with personally

become

more humanized in ways that don't always match how much you respect them once you've spent time with them. This is not always true, but it often is. (contemplative music) - To learn even more from the world's

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