Transfluence: How to Lead with Transformative Influence in Today’s Climates of Change
Walt Rakowich
Post Hill Press (September 2020)

“People won’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”  Theodore Roosevelt

I was again reminded of Roosevelt’s assertion as I began to read this book in which Walt Rakowich shares what he has learned from his efforts to “influence others to great things.” Leaders must earn the trust and respect of those entrusted to their care. Those who fail to do that cannot attract, much less retain followers. Rakowich  correctly stresses the importance of what he characterizes as the “3-H Core” of humility, honesty, and heart. All organizations need leadership at all levels and in all areas of the given enterprise. Without developing this core, it is almost impossible to earn the trust and respect of others.

I was interested in learning about Rakowich’s career at Prologis, especially about the years when he eventually served as its CEO. (More about that in a moment.) It is a multinational commercial real estate enterprise, “the largest owner of industrial facilities in the world. It owns and manages more than 4,000 facilities in nineteen countries across North America, South America, Asia, and Europe, serves more than 5,500 customers, employs 1,700 people, and has more than $118 billion in total assets under management.”

Both Rakowich and Prologis shared a tipping point in November of 2008 when he was asked to return as its CEO after having resigned as president and COO. Its stock had plunged from $72 per share to nearly $2 per share, ravaged as were so many companies during a recession. He credits transfluent leadership throughout the company with saving it. My own view is that it is a leadership “for all seasons” because it is “positively influential in a transformative way.” Organizations that are flying high need it almost as much as organizations that are crawling along toward almost certain elimination by natural selection.

Keep in mind that Rakowich is a staunch and eloquent advocate of transfluent leadership at ALL levels and in ALL areas of almost any organization, whatever its size and nature may be. That said, C-level executives with the full support of their governing board must establish and then nourish — as well as protect, if  necessary — a workplace culture within which transfluent leadership is most likely to thrive.

In this context, I now invoke some horticultural nomenclature. The greatest leaders are best viewed as gardeners who seem to have a green thumb for growing people. That requires expert supervision, fertile soil, sufficient nutrition, and effective protection against pests. Pruning is also important. Transfluent leaders are effective in all four seasons. They welcome fair weather, of course, but are well-prepared — and ensure their organizations are well-prepared — to respond effectively when challenged by disruptive forces such as the Recession in 2008 and COVID-19.

Presumably Walt Rakowich agrees with Jack Dempsey that champions “get up when they can’t” and with Theodore Roosevelt that “people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” He wrote this book to help as many aspiring leaders as possible to develop their own “3-H Core” of humility, honesty, and heart.  It remains for those who read Transfluence to embrace that challenge. Be courageous when others retain their neutrality in a moral crisis.

Also, care about those entrusted to your care, indeed care about [begin italics] everyone [end italics] who is determined to have transformative influence in a world today that is more volatile, more uncertain, more complex, and more ambiguous than at any prior tine I can recall.

Transfluence is a brilliant achievement. Bravo!