The Systems Leader: Mastering the Cross Pressures That Make or Break Today’s Companies
Robert E. Siegel
Crown Currency (June 2025)

How to juggle hand grenades while walking through a minefield during an electrical storm…wearing a blindfold

This book’s subtitle refers to “five key dimensions of cross-pressures” to which Robert Siegel refers in the Introduction. They are (1) the need to succeed at both execution and innovation, (2) to project both strength and empathy, (3) to focus both internally and externally, (4) to think both locally and globally, and (5) to pursue both ambition and statesmanship. Siegel wrote this book to help those who read it to “master the cross-pressures that make or break today’s companies. These pressures, of course,  don’t exist in silos.”

“Systems leadership begins with embracing how much you don’t know at any given moment, and gives you a way to move forward with reasonable confidence but not delusional overconfidence.”

Siegel shares what he learned while interviewing dozens of Systems Leaders who found themselves facing turbulent pressures during what he characterizes as “a perfect storm of chaotic forces.”  However different these leaders and their struggles may be in many respects, what unites these and other diverse Systems Leaders “is that none claim to be heroic role models whom the rest of us should emulate. They all face nonstop ambiguities, uncertainties, and problems that have no clear solution. They all recognize and admit that they don’t get every decision right. Yet they all have a lot to teach us — not what to think, but how to think about our own unique situations.”

Siegel offers specific recommendations as to what specifically must be done, then explains how to adopt and adapt them to each reader’s organization.  It remains for you and others who read The Systems Leader to determine which recommendations are most relevant, and, to determine also the nature and extent of how each recommendation should be executed.

Whatever their size and nature may be, all organizations need Systems Leaders at every level and in every operational area throughout the given enterprise. That is,  leaders who are guided and informed by a few essential principles:

o Know themselves
o Do the difficult jobs themselves
o Are brave enough to say “I don’t know”
o Listen to internal teammates they trust
o Find trusted partners outside the company
o Hold two or more truths at once
o Know where and how they spend their time and energy because their direct reports are watching
o Are mindful of the difference between skill and luck
o Ask themselves if they would rehire themselves today for their current job

Given the potential importance of mission leaders, I have decided to conclude this brief commentary with my favorite passage in Lao-tse’s Tao Te Ching:

“Learn from the people
Plan with the people
Begin with what they have
Build on what they know
Of the best leaders
When the task is accomplished
The people will remark
We have done it ourselves.”

* * *

Here are two suggestions while you are reading Robert Siegel’s The Systems Leader: First, highlight key passages. Also,  perhaps in a notebook kept near-at-hand (e.g. Apica Premium C.D. Notebook A5), record your comments, questions, and action steps (preferably with deadlines). Pay special attention to the set of “Questions tgomPonxdder” at the conclusion of each of the nine chapters. Also “A Systems Leader Checklist” on Pages 217-220.

These two simple tactics — highlighting and documenting — will expedite frequent reviews of key material later.