In the research I did on strategic thinking, / I identified six key mental disciplines / that underlie your ability to recognize, / prioritize, / and mobilize. // Pattern recognition is a foundational discipline / of strategic thinking. / The ability to find the signal / the important information / in what can be a sea of noise. // Not just absorbing what's happening, / but thinking about why, / thinking about connection. // When grandmasters look at a chessboard, / they don't just see pieces. / They don't just see the layout of the board. / They see the most important patterns that exist in that configuration. / They see opportunity. / They see concentrations of power. / They see potential vulnerabilities. // At the heart of your ability as a leader / to navigate complexity / is the discipline of systems analysis. // It's absolutely essential, of course, / that systems models capture / the most important features and dynamics / of the system that you're talking about. // But given the very, very high levels of complexity today, / no human being / and indeed, so far, no computer / is able to flawlessly model / the entire set of variable and interactions / that constitute a complicated system. // One example I use is climate, / where today we have very good models of climate, / but they're absolutely simplifications of reality. // They model large chunks of the atmosphere, / for example, / in ways that are really kind of crude, almost. // But they do capture the most important features / of the overall climate system / in a way that lets you make good predictions. //