Friday, July 24, 2009

Decisive Leadership -- a Story


I've been asked to be involved in the leadership development task force for a major business school, so I'm diving back into leadership development materials. An interesting book I just ran into is Decisive Leadership: The Vision to See Beyond by Anthony Jackson.

Like a number of other leadership books, it communicates its message through a story based, partially, we presume, on the author's experience. A small firm is struggling after years of success. Revenues are down and profits are down even more. The CEO is frustrated and doesn't know what to do. The COO seems to be undermining the CEO, even though they've worked together for over 10 years, since the founding of the company. What to do?

The CEO happens to have read a book by a leadership coach and reaches out to him. The coach comes in, faces the typical rejection by the troops, etc. You get the picture.

While somewhat predictive, this is an excellent book to communicate the value of clear decision making. How to make those decisions? It's a question of balance in one's life. This is a quick read (an afternoon) but highly entertaining and informative.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I often talk to my clients about something I call "garbage can decision making". Some people have a real knack for making hurried, shoot-from-the-hip, not- enough-data-to-base-a-decsion-on decisions. I am looking forward to reading this book and, perhaps, recommending it to my clients.