I sat straight up when I read that the founder and then CEO of Nike, Phil Knight, was having a hard time finding leaders who could seize opportunities. I was shocked to read that they were having that same problem that many of my clients wrestle with.

Where are the opportunity leaders? Those who see what others don’t, they are the opportunity leaders. Not only are they able to discover what it possible for the business, they have the ambition to go after it.

You’re either going to see the world from today’s perspective or tomorrow’s and with low or high possibility. Draw out a two-by-two and label the x-axis as possibility: low on the left and high on the right. Then label the y-axis as time horizon: today being at the bottom of the axis and tomorrow at the top.

The lower left quadrant are the low possibility thinkers who see from today’s perspective. They see it as is. The high possibility thinkers who still see from today’s perspective (lower right quadrant), see it as is, plus some. They’re the incremental improvement crowd.

The dangerous bunch are the ones who see from tomorrow’s perspective but with low possibility (upper left quadrant). They tell you why it can’t be done. I’m sure you’ve met a few people who reside in that quadrant.

Opportunity thinkers are in the upper right quadrant. They see what’s possible and tell you what can be. Those are the leaders that Knight wanted.

In his biography, “Shoe Dog”, Knight tells the story of talking with Masaru Hayami, the president of Nissho Iwai, a sogo shosha (general trading company) based in Tokyo, Japan that is engaged in a wide range of businesses globally.

Nissho Iwai was an early supporter of Blue Ribbon Sports, which eventually became Nike (1971). When the banks became concerned by Knight’s continuous requests to borrow more funds to grow his inventory to keep up demand and never growing cash on hand, they shut him down.

That’s when Nissho Iwai jumped in and saved Nike from closing its doors.

Fast forward decades well after the listing of Nike on the stock exchange, Knight becoming a billionaire and Nike’s popularity at its peak. Knight recalls a particular conversation with Hayami, “I complained about my business. Even after going public, there were so many problems.

“We have so much opportunity, but we’re having a terrible time getting managers who can seize those opportunities. We try people from the outside, but they fail, because our culture is so different.”

I hear similar concerns nearly every day, “I want leaders who have courage, guts. Leaders who always see the opportunity and are willing to go after it.” Where are opportunity leaders is one of the recurring topics that CEOs bring up in coaching sessions.

They want leaders who are courageous like they are. They want leaders who aren’t afraid of growth, real growth. They want leaders who see what can be.

Hayami nodded, “See those bamboo trees up there?” he asked. “Yes.” replied Knight.

“Next year when you come they will be a foot higher.”

“I stared. I understood.”

Do you? Do you understand the point in the same way that Knight did?

When Knight returned to Oregon, he got busy cultivating and growing his management team, slowly, with more patience, with an eye toward more training and more long-term planning. He didn’t just like Hayami’s point. He did something about it.

If you want opportunity leaders, you’re going to have to do something about it. You need to own the responsibility for growing them.

Your leaders can change. They can become opportunity leaders. But you’ll have to do the hard work of nurturing them. So, my question to you is, “How much time do you spend doing this?”

Make cultivating opportunity leaders your prior. When you do this, then and only then, will you see them become a foot higher.

The next time Knight saw Hayami, he told him what he did. How he took the responsibility for cultivating his leaders and growing opportunity leaders. Hayami merely nodded, once, said “hai” (Japanese for agreement), and looked off.

— The writer is a CEO coach and author of “Leadership Dubai Style”. Contact him at tsw@tommyweir.com