Skip to main content

The Leadership Moment

The Leadership Moment by Michael Useem views leadership through the lens of 9 stories - most of which I was not familiar with - because the stories are not the typical cliched leadership stories one mostly hears about.

Except for the story of the Apollo 13, all the other 8 stories were new to me. And unlike many other books, it does not make the leader seem bad when things go awry - and that is an interesting lesson - because most leaders, like most human beings, do try their best given a particular circumstances.

The way the book looks at the leaders and draws lessons from each story into different actions and ties it all together is unique.

And it also takes a non-conventional approach to leadership - Mountaineering, Forest Fires, Non-profit and so on and with varying scales of problems and with human life costs involved - which are vastly different from corporate leadership - where the scale and costs are vastly different.

This is a book that makes you pause and think.

I especially enjoyed reading the mountaineering and the fire story - these are the kind of things that are never replicated in our genteel corporate surroundings. And I definitely recommend this book for someone who wants to really reflect on leadership!
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Be Civil. Make nice!

Popular posts from this blog

No conferences

Decided not to attend any conferences this year. Atleast not the typical ones I have often ranted about here. Will be both choosy and intentional about which ones to attend.  The ones to attend are the ones put up by practitioners of a craft. The rest is marketing one way or other. 
Post a Comment
Read more

And the unconference happened

 Most conferences have an agenda. No, not the stated agenda, but an agenda of marketing, airtime to sponsors, ensuring the past and future customers are invited, of ensuring that the "stars" of the industry are invited and attention showered of them. All in all it is a your scratch my back, I scratch your back syndrome. Some of these become cliques and claques and therefore the real point behind a conference is lost. And then there is the unconference - organised and run by the alumni of the ISABS ODCP program. And as the name suggests, this is truly an un-conference organised by the alumni, for the alumni. No funders - except the alumni themselves. No sponsors. Just the team.  I havent seen a more tastefully organised conference (yes, its an unconference).  To begin with - the location - not a typical star hotel, but an outdoorsy place. The food - simple. The welcome - personal. It was like a homecoming. The setting was warm and welcoming. It was a smaller conference. Ju...
Post a Comment
Read more

The power of jotting down ideas

 Long long ago, I always used to carry a small letterpad with me. To jot down ideas that might occur. Over the years, it has changed from a notepad to evernote to google keep, but the power of jotting down ideas is immense.  Small ideas go into keep.  Anything to be quickly typed goes into whatsapp as a self message.  Bigger or better formed ideas go into Google docs A few are still written, but I manage to copy them into a digital format sooner rather than later.  But the power of jotting down is immense. My google keep is an encyclopedia of ideas - most of which may never get implemented. 
Post a Comment
Read more