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networks expanded, and consumer behavior changed, the trend became clear. The business model of long-distance carriers was about to be disrupted. The question was only how soon it would happen, and how the carriers would respond to losing their main source of profits and revenues.

      These lessons are just as true at the government level as they are in business. The same process helped me to see a path for Emmanuel Macron to become the president of France long before he announced his run in late 2016. Most people considered him a long shot. The first time I met him, when he was economy minister for President François Hollande, I called up Elaine to say that I’d just met a future president of France. (By the way, he won the election, 65 percent to 35 percent.) My instincts had nothing to do with French party politics: Macron was, in my opinion, an economic and social reformer in a socialist government who ran as an independent. I was struck by what I was seeing in communities across France: a hunger for the kind of innovation that Macron had helped to stoke under Hollande, business leaders talking about inclusive growth, entrepreneurs lobbying to compete with the rest of the world instead of turning away from it, and media pundits arguing for the need to create inclusive wealth, not redistribute it. The people I met were dissatisfied with the status quo, but not in a way that made them fearful of outsiders or nostalgic for some romanticized view of the past. Macron was speaking the language of entrepreneurship and innovation in a nation that was becoming more entrepreneurial. If you only saw the restlessness, the threat of a nationalist victory might loom large. When you connected it to what people were saying and doing across France, it was hard for me to imagine a victory for anyone but Macron.

      I don’t want to diminish the challenges. What the Harvard editors identified as one of my greatest strengths grew out of a weakness that I’ve struggled with my whole life. As I mentioned before, I was diagnosed with a learning disability at the age of eight. While researchers were starting to pay more attention to learning disabilities and how they affected kids’ brains in the 1950s, they didn’t understand dyslexia the way they do now. There was no support system in my public school to help me. Instead, my parents hired a “reading coach” named Lorene Anderson who worked with me after school for a couple of years to teach me new strategies. I owe a lot to Mrs. Anderson. In addition to being amazingly patient, she helped me identify my own learning style and develop strategies to compensate for my weaknesses. Like my parents, she made sure I knew that dyslexia had nothing to do with my intelligence or capacity to learn. I just had to tackle the information differently. She taught me to treat how I process letters as a curve ball that breaks the same way every time. Along with demystifying the problem, Mrs. Anderson found solutions that played to my strengths. Once I recognized the pattern, I could map out a strategy to use again and again.

      Even so, it was a slow and painstaking process. There was no magic pill that could change the way my brain worked. I read backward and in reverse order. I had to figure out other ways to learn and find ways to work around the areas in which I was weak. I’ve learned to become a more active listener and more adept at communicating verbally, using voice, video, and texts to get my ideas across. When giving speeches, I don’t use notes. I accept that there are some things I will never be good at, which has made me a world-class delegator (and talent scout!) when it comes to tasks like preparing written material and translating concepts into a detailed step-by-step process. If I hadn’t learned to accept my weaknesses and complement my strengths early on, I would not have gone very far.

      While I learned to deal with my dyslexia, I rarely talked about it. How many CEOs really want to admit that they struggle to read? I certainly didn’t view it as a strength. That changed about two decades ago when I spoke at an event for Cisco’s Take Your Children to Work Day. One little girl raised her hand to ask me a question but was unable to get out the words. As I listened to her struggle to make herself understood, I was immediately transported back to that classroom in West Virginia. My heart went out to her. When she tearfully stammered that she had a learning disability, I told her that I did, too. I walked her through all the things that Mrs. Anderson had taught me: slow down, take your time, don’t worry about what anyone else is thinking, just sound it out and focus on the concepts, realize that everyone else in the room has strengths and weaknesses, too. As I talked about my own strategies, I could see that I was helping her relax. Then I notice that the room was oddly silent. I paused for a second, realizing I’d just shared an intimate and little-known detail about my own life in front of 500 employees and their kids. Now, it was me who felt a bit nervous and embarrassed. I continued taking questions but, inside, I wondered if I might have shared too much.

      When I got home that evening, there were several dozen messages from employees. Many just wanted to thank me for talking about my dyslexia. Some were employees who’d struggled with it themselves but had never shared that fact with their colleagues. Others were parents, trying to figure out what they could do to help a child. A lot of them were people who might have otherwise felt too intimidated to reach out to the CEO of Cisco. Here I was worried that my colleagues might think less of me for having a learning disability, and instead I found that they were complimenting me for my courage and my candor. I realized then the power of admitting my vulnerabilities and sharing my own story. Among other things, it demonstrated the power of surrounding yourself with a team that balances your weaknesses and complements your strengths.

      As I grew more comfortable with talking about my dyslexic way of thinking, it became clear that the way I processed data had actually helped me as a business leader. My brain is naturally wired to visualize vast amounts of data and draw connections at a fast pace. I can absorb the details of what’s going on around me—the chatter, the personalities, the activity on the sidelines—and still remain focused on the task at hand. I’m constantly asking questions to fill in gaps and find out more. It’s more like plotting a graph than plotting a story. The concept of “information overload” is something I’ve never experienced. What I see kids buy in Silicon Valley might bring to mind what a political leader told me in Jordan a month earlier, and one of our sales leaders reinforced. Each anecdote becomes a point of comparison in the broader landscape, creating a visual map. When I came across research that suggests dyslexics are often better able to detect patterns in complex sets of data, it didn’t surprise me. I’d always been good at connecting the dots and at the same time very aware of my weaknesses.

      After years of encouraging people to develop expertise in a particular subject, we’re starting to recognize the benefits of teaching people to be agile learners who can connect the dots. It’s a particularly important trait to develop if you aspire to leadership. The impact of trends and technologies is a puzzle that’s hard for anyone to figure out. An ability to grasp the big picture and see how different trends intersect is a key skill in picking the right path to pursue. Maybe that’s why more than a fifth of CEOs are dyslexic. To create brands like Virgin, Charles Schwab, JetBlue, Ikea, CNN, Ford, or The Body Shop, you need to spot opportunities that others don’t see, pay attention to what’s around you, and think outside of the box.

      It’s hard to connect the dots if you don’t know where to look or whom to trust. The first step is to focus on the big picture and the possible end result. Instead of trying to synthesize facts and organize your argument like you’re going to present it in a written report, try to visualize everything as pictures or a graph. Where are the clusters? Are common themes emerging? What matters is the trend and the links that you find. Pay attention to broader shifts in the market, especially where two or more are related, and seek out data or experts to fill in the gaps. As new information comes in, step back and try to put it in the context of the bigger picture.

      The challenge is to figure out what matters. The volume of data at our disposal is already dizzying and, as more things get connected to the internet, that flow of information could become a flood. You have to learn to distinguish between what Nate Silver calls the signal and the noise. He’s the statistician who famously predicted the results of the 2008 presidential election in all but one state. Silver said he just looked at the data and the answers were right there. It probably helped that, unlike some pollsters, he wasn’t invested in the outcome. All of us can come up with examples of the age-old art of lying with statistics. It’s easy to find facts that tell a story that isn’t true. It doesn’t have to be deliberate; data can be deceiving, especially when you’re looking for “proof” that supports your point of view or protects your business model.

      I

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