Imagine a surf instructor who sits on the beach but has never taken a single wave.

Would you follow them out into the ocean?

Of course you wouldn’t.

Zero trust.

Zero integrity.

The days of the ivory tower leader never existed.

They are not here today.

It will never be here.

Ever.

If you want to become a true leader (as opposed to a con artist)...

...your first job as a leader is to GO THERE FIRST.

Spend your life in the trenches.

Your job is NOT to ask others to go where you have gone before.

Your job as a leader is NOT to ask someone to trust your plan that you have not executed yourself.

The physician must take his own medicine.

The surfing instructor must be a real surfer.

The sky dive instructor should not be a 85 year old veteran who parachuted into Vietnam.

And - today - we’re in an even more interesting environment.

Recency matters more than ever.

Because you see, in modern day leadership, two things matter if you want to be a relevant leader.

RECENCY + INTENSITY = RELEVANCY.

You can’t lean on “back in my day”.

War stories from a different battlefield don’t count in today’s landscape.

Most of the premises and assumptions that those great men and women operated from in the past are no longer true in most of our modern day environments.

Great people - yes.

Successful in their heyday - yes.

A true leader? No.

Rusty, dull blades in a world where hand to hand combat is no longer a thing.

The rate and speed of change today is faster than ever.

The difference in the rate of change between today and 30 years ago is staggering.

We shifted from ... linear, predictable pace of progress.

Today it’s exponential. Compounding on itself.

Buckminster Fuller’s knowledge doubling curve is one of the most referred to frameworks in this space.

Until 1900, all of human knowledge doubled roughly ONCE every century. A hundred fucking years.

By the end of WWII, it doubled every twenty five years.

By the early 1980s, it was once a year.

Today, IBM is projecting it to be once every twelve hours.

Things are changing.

Fast.

So, if you want to be a true leader:

1 / have you done the thing? (entry)

2 / are you STILL doing the thing? (relevancy)

Leadership expires.

What you did ten years ago, five years ago, hell, even six months ago, yes, it is a nice story and who doesn’t like to hear it, but it’s not enough.

If you’re NOT in the arena NOW, you’re a historian, NOT a leader.

If you’re NOT in the trenches taking shots, you’re a has been.

That’s the reality of the game today.

Get in the game.

Win.