Leadership in the Imagination Age

This book reframes leadership for a world transformed by AI, accelerating technologies, and planetary fragility. It argues that leadership is no longer about control or optimisation but about orientation: knowing what matters, sensing direction, and acting with moral courage when certainty collapses. In this new era, inherited formulas fall short. What leaders need instead is disciplined imagination – curiosity expansive enough to explore new possibilities, yet grounded enough to stay accountable to human consequence.

The book invites readers to see leaders as stewards, not owners; organisations as living systems, not machines; and leadership as an act of storytelling. Every story a leader tells shapes the world – connecting or fragmenting, regenerating or extracting, widening horizons or narrowing them. Drawing on leadership theory, systems thinking, ethics, narrative art, futures studies, and spiritual wisdom, the book blends rigorous insight with poetic depth, urging leaders to listen more deeply, imagine more boldly, and act with integrity.

At its core are three navigational frameworks – the Leadership Compass, the Moral Gyroscope, and Cosmic Leadership – guiding leaders at all levels and across disciplines through purpose, people, performance, possibility, and ethics. Ultimately, the book poses a provocative question: when machines can optimise almost everything, what remains unmistakably human about leadership?

S M A Moin is a Reader (Associate Professor) in Storytelling and Brand Communications at Queen Mary University of London, UK, ranked ninth globally and in the top 0.5% in the areas of storytelling research in 2024 by ScholarGPS, California.