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The one-sentence summary

We need to reassess the concept of talent, change executive remuneration and performance management, and redefine what it means to be an effective leader.

WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

• Modern business is obsessed with leaders, but although everyone talks about leadership, its real meaning is becoming more and more obscure.
• Today we define leaders more by how they seem, rather than the quality of their judgement or what they are able to do.
• The net result has been a failure of leadership precisely when we need all the good leaders we can find – in business and life generally.
• We urgently need to rethink the role of leadership to rebuild trust and confidence. That means redefining the talent and revaluing the experience and remuneration associated with the roles.
• The L’Oreal generation are obsessed with rewarding themselves ‘because they’re worth it’, and that includes leaders who feel they are owed a significant living and the lifestyle to go with it.
• The modern leader is egoistic, blind to their own faults, surrounded by people created in their own image, and committed to actions that enhance their self-image.

WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT

• The leadership advice industry is worth over $10bn in the USA alone.
• Leadership and management are not the same thing, but they are usually confused – most of what’s involved in managing companies is nothing to do with leadership.
• There is a damning list of what leaders do wrong: abuse of power, inflicting damage on others, over-exercise of control to satisfy personal needs, rule breaking, and more. Types of failure include:
• Leaders (values do not correspond to organisation)
• Companies changing (the challenge is too big)
• Companies failing entirely (accepted norms of behaviour undermine the creation of value)
• Moral authority comes from being authentic, demonstrating integrity, having self-belief, showing self-awareness, and demonstrating deep understanding of the business.
• The author believes we need to reassess the concept of talent to make it inclusive; change executive remuneration and performance management; and redefine what it means to be an effective leader to make it more collaborative.

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

• The proposed changes would require changes to the law and the majority of ambitious leaders to stop being greedy. Is this ever possible?

The one-sentence summary

Leadership has evolved over tens of thousands of years, and we still operate at home and work as if we are on the savannah.

WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

• This is another in a long line of books about leadership, which looks at why some people lead, why others follow, and why it matters.
• It takes a new slant by exploring how leadership has evolved over tens of thousands of years. We operate at home and work as if we are still on the savannah, leading to a ‘mismatch hypothesis’, in which there is a crucial difference between modern ideas of leadership and the kind our Stone Age brains are wired for.
• There are many different theories about why people become good leaders. They include:
• Great Man theory – true leaders are born, not made
• Trait theory – analysis of common traits in leaders reveals the formula
• Psychoanalytic – the boss takes the role of a father figure to a ‘primitive clan’
• Situational – leaders emerge in specific circumstances that make them shine
• Distributed – leadership works best when it is spread around
• Leaders often possess the Dark Triad of personality attributes: narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy – they tend to be selfish and economical with the truth. It’s a strategy that works because they get the money and the women.

WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT

• It is more interesting than most leadership books, because of its historical and anthropological take, along with a reasonably light writing style
• It looks in detail at followership, and suggests that this can be a great survival strategy. Backing the right person to follow has reaped great benefits over the millennia. Kellerman’s taxonomy of followership shows 5 types:
• Where leaders become too powerful, or even corrupt, followers develop strategies to overcome them (gossip, public discussions, satire, disobedience).
• It’s amusing to think that we still vote for tall politicians, and bosses who look athletically stronger than others, but it appears to be true.

1. Isolates – they are apathetic, but can be dangerous to the leader if ignored
2. Bystanders – little or no commitment to anyone
3. Middling – reasonably satisfied participants
4. Activists – highly engaged and consistently work hard
5. Diehards – they’ll do anything for the boss

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

• There are ten recommendations which pretty much amount to common sense – no bad thing, but not that new either.

The one-sentence summary

Strategic visual tools can help simplify any problem and suggest steps towards a decent decision.

WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

• The authors have gathered together fifty models for strategic thinking in one small book. Whether you need to plan a presentation, assess someone’s business idea or just get to know yourself better, the visual tools will help simplify any problem and suggest steps towards a decent decision.
• There is a wide range of material, from MBA courses and lighter business reading to personal improvement.
• In one diagram that performs the role of the contents page, they show how the models cover me v. others and thinking v. doing, which generates four quadrants: how to improve (myself/others), and how to understand better (myself/others). Highlights from each section are:
• Improve yourself: the Eisenhower priority matrix, the rubber band model (what is holding or pulling you?), the feedback model ((advice, compliment, criticism, suggestion), and the conflict resolution model (flight, fight, give up, evade responsibility, compromise, reach a consensus).
• Understand yourself better: the flow model (under/over challenged, or ‘in the flow’?), the Johari Window (what I know about others and what they know about me), the energy model (are you memory-, dream-, or reality-driven?), and the personal performance model (have to, able to, want to).
• Understand others better: the Swiss cheese model (in the analogy, mistakes only happen when all the holes in every slice line up and something slips through the layers), double loop learning (learning properly from your mistakes), long tails and black swans.
• Improve others: the Hersey-Blanchard model of situational leadership (adapt your approach from instruct to coach, support, delegate), and the Drexler-Sibbet team performance model 9they never seem to have normal names do they?). This one takes you from orientation to renewal in 7 steps.

WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT

• You should be able to select a model for almost any situation to provide a different perspective, or to get some structure round all the variables.
• There is a “Now it’s your turn” section at the back that encourages you to draw a range of possible solutions. Most models are inherently visual, and the authors believe it is good to draw while you talk, and use pictures to articulate what words cannot.

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

• You need to keep an eye on the old chestnuts and decide whether they are any good, not very helpful, or just plain overused: SWOT analysis, Maslow’s pyramids, thinking outside the box, the Pareto principle (80:20) rule, de Bono’s hats, and several others.

The one-sentence summary

We are driven by autonomy, mastery and purpose – the desire to direct our own lives, get better at something that matters, and be part of something bigger.

WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

• Using carrots and sticks to motivate people doesn’t work. We need to concentrate on autonomy, mastery and purpose
• When it comes to motivation, there’s a gap between what science knows and what business does. Our current business operating system (carrot and stick) doesn’t work and often does harm
• Autonomy is the desire to direct our own lives
• Mastery is the urge to get better and better at something that matters
• Purpose is the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves
• Baseline rewards (salary, contract and a few perks) have to be adequate. Beyond that, motivation comes from autonomy, mastery and purpose
• Type X behaviour is based on extrinsic desires such as external rewards
• Type I behaviour is interested in intrinsic rewards – the inherent satisfaction of the activity itself (so long as baseline rewards are adequate)
• ‘If-then’ rewards usually do more harm than good for creative, conceptual tasks (“If you do this, you’ll get that.”)
• ‘Now that’ rewards are offered after a task has been completed (“Now that you’ve done such a great job, let’s acknowledge the achievement”), and come as a surprise. These are more effective

WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT

• Low-profit limited liability corporations (L3Cs) are the new breed. They operate like a for-profit business and generate a modest profit, but their primary aim is to offer social benefits
• FedEx days (so-called because they have to deliver something overnight) allow employees to tackle any problem they want, and are hugely productive
• People like Goldilocks tasks best – not easy nor too hard. This is where people get ‘in the flow’ and do their best work
• The Sawyer Effect (inspired by the Mark Twain story in which Tom persuades his friends to pay to whitewash a fence) highlights two crucial effects:

1) Offering rewards can turn play into work (negative)

2) Focusing on mastery can turn work into play (positive)

• A ROWE is a Results-Only Work Environment, where employees don’t have schedules. They don’t have to be in the office at any particular time. They just have to get their work done.

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

• Nothing. It’s to the point and well summarised so you can get straight to it.

The one-sentence summary

Today everyone has an opportunity to start a movement – to bring together a tribe of like-minded people to do amazing things.

WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

• Today everyone has an opportunity to start a movement – to bring together a tribe of like-minded people to do amazing things.
• Too many people ignore the opportunity to lead because they are ‘sheepwalking’ their way through their lives and their work – too afraid to question whether their compliance is doing themselves, or their companies, any good. Nonsheep behaviour should be rewarded.
• Too many people are ‘stuck on stupid’. When the world changes, the rules change, and so must we. If you or your organisation is playing today’s game by yesterday’s rules, then you’re stuck.
• If you have a passion for what you do and the drive to make it happen, there is a tribe of employees, investors, customers or readers waiting for you to connect them with each other, and lead them where they want to go.
• Without leaders there are no followers. If you have a desire to do fresh and exciting work, then you’re a leader, and the rest of us need you.
• Tribes used to be local, but now the internet eliminates geography.
• The crucial question now isn’t ‘Is it possible for me to do that?’, it is ‘Will I choose to do it?’

WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT

• This is a great call to arms and confidence booster for anyone who wants to make changes and do more with what they enjoy.
• Tribes are all about faith, and many people are beginning to realise that it’s much more satisfying to do what you believe in. Heretics are prepared to go against the grain.
• Stability is an illusion, and the rush from it is a benefit to enterprising individuals who can now ‘lead from the bottom.’
• All a tribe needs is a shared interest and a way to communicate.
• Initiative = happiness.
• Fear of failure is overrated. If you work for someone, the organisation actually absorbs the cost of failure. People are more afraid of blame and criticism.

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

• There are no chapter divisions – it just rolls along, classic Godin-style