1% Leadership: Master the Small, Daily Improvements that Set Great Leaders Apart

One of the most well-known and experienced cybersecurity leaders shares dozens of lessons and observations that anyone, at any stage of their career, can use to create a work culture of continuous improvement and strong leadership.

Leadership development speaker & consultant Andy Ellis is the former CSO of Akamai, where he contributed to the creation of Akamai's billion‑dollar cybersecurity business. He now brings his speaking, consulting, and business knowledge to readers with 1% Leadership—based on the reality that real-world leadership is messy and complicated; it rarely fits into an acronym or a dogmatic overarching philosophy. Ellis says that there are no “irrefutable laws” of leadership or power; there is no secret. As a result, 1% Leadership does not provide one path to leadership—it provides dozens of practical lessons that anyone, at any stage of their career, can use continuously make tiny “1% at a time” improvements. 1% Leadership is a handy guidebook that business readers can regularly apply to identify blind spots, boost morale (both personal and among teams and organizations), and solve problems at work.

Readers can spend a few minutes each Monday morning to focus on one lesson for their leadership development—perhaps that lesson only improves their performance by 1%; but it’s those accumulated 1% improvements that separate the best leaders from everyone else.  Lessons include:

• To engage in the present, be of two minds about the future.  Worrying about failure will make success even more unlikely. Only by engaging in the present with that worry set aside can we find the path to success.
• Four days of great work now are rarely more important than four months of good work down the road.  Show that long-term wellness matters.
• Performance development should be applied to every person on your team. Rather than treating the performance process as a way to identify and document poor performers, create a process that aims to improve and develop every person on your team.

Andy Ellis is a graduate of MIT and former US Air Force officer. In his 20-year tenure, he designed, built, and brought to market many of Akamai’s security products, leading the Fortune 1,000 company from its start as a content delivery network into an industry powerhouse with a billion-dollar dedicated cybersecurity business.  Andy is now the founder of leadership development firm Duha, where he teaches his leadership philosophy not only to other executives, but strives to make leadership training more accessible to people at all career levels. He lives in Boston, MA.