Charles Farkas, Philippe De Backer and Allen Sheppard.

In the crowded world of leadership books, we have great pleasure in picking out a really absorbing and insightful book on the practice of leadership. Written by the consultant duo of Bain & Co. alongwith the chairman of Unipart (Allen Sheppard) the book is based on interviews with the heads of 160 of the world's top corporation. It really offers revealing insights into the leadership styles and methods of today's top performing executive and what they really do to add value to their organisations. The book truly offers a global perspective and a strategic approach to the practice of leadership in the modern corporate world.

The authors have basically identified 5 distinct approaches the CEOs adopt in leading the global corporations. The approaches are not a function of the CEO's personality but are based on business situation, market dynamics, company culture, its competitive position etc.

The five main approaches are

1. The strategic Approach: In which the chief executive manages for success by acting as the company's top strategist, systematically envisioning the future and specifically mapping out how to get there.

2. The Human Assets Approach: In which the CEO manages for success through people policies, programmes and principles.

3. The Expertise Approach: In which the chief executive manages for success by becoming the champion of a specific, proprietary expertise and using it to focus the organisation.

4. The Box Approach: In which the CEO manages by building a set of rules, systems, procedures and values that essentially control behaviour and outcomes within well-defined boundaries.

5. The Change Agent Approach: In which the chief Executive manages for success by acting as an agent of radical change, transforming bureaucracies into organisations that embrace the new and different.

The last chapter of the book revisits the 5 approaches and introduces a CEO who has just taken the helm at a large company. What lessons can be drawn from the stories in the book as he considers how to mange his organisation?

So, the book offers range of stories on each of these approaches and that makes the book really brilliant source of reading on leadership.

We, at Leadership Digest, strongly recommend this book to all our readers.
Pradeep Kumar

No Management success can compensate for failure in leadership. But leadership is hard because we are often caught in a management paradigm.

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