talk
to us

New York
250 Park Avenue,
14th Floor New York City, NY 10177

Connecticut
22 Thorndal Circle,
3rd Floor Darien, CT 06820

Paris
23 rue du Mail
75002 Paris – France

info@beperpetual.com

Perpetual: Reads | Your Next Five Moves

Our series of book recommendations to empower talent and fuel brands.

Your Next Five Moves

Why Perpetual recommends it

Patrick Bet-David’s Your Next Five Moves takes a chess metaphor and applies it directly to business strategy, arguing that the leaders who consistently win aren’t the ones reacting to the present move, they’re the ones already thinking several moves ahead about where a decision leads. Bet-David draws heavily on his own entrepreneurial experience building and scaling multiple companies.

The book moves through practical territory including self-assessment of your own leadership style, building genuine systems and processes rather than relying on personal heroics, and thinking several steps ahead about competitors, talent and market shifts rather than only planning the next single move.

Bet-David is particularly direct about the discomfort of long-range strategic thinking, most leaders default to reacting to the current crisis because it’s genuinely easier than the harder work of mapping five moves ahead, even though it’s the five-moves-ahead thinking that actually determines who wins over time.

We find this a useful, energetic companion to more academic strategy books, since it pushes leaders toward the discipline of anticipating consequences rather than only reacting to the present situation.

  • Strategic thinkers plan several moves ahead rather than reacting to the current one
  • Systems and processes matter more for sustained growth than individual heroics
  • Reacting to the current crisis is easier but less valuable than long-range thinking
  • Anticipating competitor and market moves is a discipline, not a natural instinct

A practical exercise is mapping out what happens after your next major decision, not just the immediate result, but the two or three moves your competitors or market are likely to make in response.

We give this book three out of five stars.

See more insights

Perpetual: Reads | Will It Make the Boat Go Faster?

Our series of book recommendations to empower talent and fuel brands. Why Perpetual recommends it Ben Hunt-Davis and Harriet Beveridge’s Will It Make the Boat Go Faster? tells the story of the British men’s rowing eight’s run to Olympic gold,...

Perpetual: Reads | HBR’s 10 Must Reads: On Making Smart Decisions

Our series of book recommendations to empower talent and fuel brands. Why Perpetual recommends it HBR’s 10 Must Reads: On Making Smart Decisions pulls together some of Harvard Business Review’s most influential articles on judgment and choice, spanning behavioural economics,...

Perpetual: Reads | Decisive

Our series of book recommendations to empower talent and fuel brands. Why Perpetual recommends it Chip Heath and Dan Heath’s Decisive starts from an uncomfortable observation: most advice about decision-making focuses on avoiding bias in the moment of choice, when...

Perpetual: Reads | How Great Leaders Think

Our series of book recommendations to empower talent and fuel brands. Why Perpetual recommends it How Great Leaders Think by Lee Bolman and Terrence Deal builds on their well-known ‘four frames’ model — structural, human resource, political and symbolic —...