Leaders Leap: Transforming Your Company at the Speed of Disruption
Steve Dennis
Wiley (April 2024)
New realities have created an ever-widening transformation gap: How to close it
Steve Dennis carefully organizes the material within three Parts. In Chapters 1 and 2, he examines the emerging uncomfortable realities that organizations and their leaders must take into full account at a time when the business world is more volatile, more uncertain, more complex, and more ambiguous now than at any prior time that I can recall. Next, in Chapters 3-9, he recommends and explains seven “fundamental mind leaps” that leaders must complete in order to “navigate disruption’s churning waters.” Then in Part 3 (Chapter 10), Dennis concludes with advice as to HOW leaders can incorporate the leaps within their workplace culture, building a sustainable transformation engine, and further developing the skills they need to surf the inevitable waves of disruption we all encounter.”
I cannot recall a prior time when the business world was more volatile, more uncertain, more complex, and more ambiguous than it is today. High-impact technologies (notably machine learning and AI) have disrupted careers as well as organizations and even entire industries. New realities have created an ever-widening transformation gap. In Leaders Leap, Dennis explains how to close it.
As indicated, he focuses on seven of what he characterizes as “leadership mind leaps” and devotes a separate chapter to each:
1. Get humble. Embrace vulnerability. Be willing to ask for help.
2. Open the aperture. Do the work. Accept the rules.
3. Improve your aim. Discover your passionate core. Edit to amplify.
4. Aim higher. Connect emotionally. Create memorable stories that spread.
5. Chase unreasonable. Reimagine the future. Reconfigure your business.
6. Fight “resistance.” Embrace imperfection. Act boldly.
7. Fail fast. Be agile. Innovate at the speed of disruption.
As I worked my way through this book, I was again reminded that the greatest leaders throughout history — without exception — summoned sufficient courage to face all manner of serious dangers. For them, values worth living for must also be worth dying for…and many did. Nailed to a cross, burned at the stake, drawn and quartered, poisoned, blown to bits, shot or stabbed. Of course they feared death. The key lesson for the rest of us is that it take courage, sometimes great courage, to embrace and then live by the same values that guide and inform great leaders…and do so despite the possible consequences.
These are among the passages that caught my eye, also listed to suggest the scope of Dennis’s coverage.
o Introduction: Mind the Gap (Pages 1-19)
o The Canary in the Coal Mine (26-29)
o Weapons of Mass Distraction (32-34)
o Power Flips (39-40)
o Prepare for Liftoff (55-56)
o The Wisdom of Uncertainty (67-70)
o Sleepwalking Through the Redvolution (79-82)
o Seek Insight Everywhere (86-87)
o Edit to Amplify (98-99)
o Let’s Give ‘Em Something to Talk About (102-103)
o Aim Higher (116-118)
o People Buy the Story Before They Buy the Product (120-122)
o Will Reruns Be Our History? (132-133)
o The Future Is Bigger Than You Think (138-140)
o Blow It Up (141-142)
o Capital R — Resistance (148-149)
o Everything You Want Is On the Other Side of Fear (152-153)
o Shrink the Change (170-171)
o Everything, Everywhere, All at Once (182-184)
o What Better Time Than Now? (186-188)
In this book, Steve Dennis provides an abundance of invaluable information, insights, and counsel with regard to HOW leaders in almost any organization — whatever its size and nature may be — can transform their company “at the speed of disruption.” As indicated earlier, I cannot recall a prior time when the business world was more volatile, more uncertain, more complex, and more ambiguous than it is today. It is imperative, therefore, that these leaders respond effectively to unprecedented disruptions in months and years to come.
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Here are other suggestions to keep in mind while reading Leaders Leap: Highlight key passages, and, perhaps in a lined notebook kept near-at-hand, record your comments, questions, action steps (preferably with deadlines), page references, and lessons you have learned as well as your responses to key points posed within the narrative. Pay special attention to insights that catch your eye as well the thought-provoking Qs posed on Pages 75, 91, 111, 126, 143, 159, and 175.
These two simple tactics — highlighting and documenting — will facilitate, indeed expedite frequent reviews of key material later.