The Essence of Leadership

Leading Organizations: Ten Timeless Truths – Scott Keller and Mary Meaney (Bloomsbury Business)

Think about it; how much time has been spent studying leadership and at what cost? Now add all of the words that have been written in countless studies, white papers, presentations and books. It’s mindboggling to even ponder.

Well that is the basic concept behind the new book Leading Organizations: Ten Timeless Truths, from McKinsey business consultants Scott Keller and Mary Meany. The pair utilized McKinsey and Company’s decades long experience and information database along with a catalog of articles from the Harvard Business Review to boil down a formidable mountain of accumulated leadership knowledge into a list of what they dubbed ten timeless truths about leading organizations.

The list of ten is disseminated in three categories:

Talent and teams

1. How do I attract and retain the right talent?

2. How do I develop the talent we need to win?

3. How do I manage performance to unlock our full potential?

4. How do I create a high-performing leadership team?

Decision making and design

5. How do I improve the quality and speed of decision making?

6. How do I reorganize to capture maximum value quickly?

7. How do I reduce overhead costs sustainably?

Culture and change

8. How do I make culture a competitive advantage?

9. How do I lead organization-wide transformational change?

10. How do I successfully transition into a new leadership role?

Just imagine, having the sheer volume of information distilled down to what amounts to the essence of leadership. This is a goldmine for leaders at every stage of their career and delivered in a easily accessible and ready to put into play format.

This is really the nuts and bolts side of leadership in a how to format. Will this make you the ultimate leadership machine? Probably not, but it does give you a starting point to tackle many of the issues leaders are charged with dealing with a regular basis.