Optimal Leadership: Reflections of a Serial CEO

"After reading this book you will be armed with the tools and questions to succeed but above all with
the confidence and clear-mindedness to tackle the task." Professor Andrew Scott, London Business
School

The high profile of a Chief Executive Officer, and the strong results of the best-performing
businesses, give an impression that business leadership constitutes the art of maximising: of short-
term revenues, of pace of change, of employee engagement. Serial CEO Wilf Blackburn explains how
effective organisational leadership involves an optimal blend of apparent opposites: humility and
confidence, delegation and decisiveness, reliability and innovative capability. This builds a culture
that combines high performance and psychological safety.

Such findings are not new – yet they are not universally applied. Optimal Leadership includes a
discussion on why progress on implementing the evidence base for the high-performing workplace
has been patchy. He addresses the real difficulties a CEO faces, and offers practical advice on how to
implement the principles. In an age in which we have learned that resilience is as important as
innovation, Optimal Leadership is an essential guide.

"Reading Optimal Leadership is like sitting down and having a conversation on how to become a
great CEO …. You get decades of experience in a single read." Dean M Schroeder PhD, best-selling
author of Ideas are Free

Wilf Blackburn is a 'serial' business leader, having held seven diverse Regional and Country CEO roles in the life and health insurance sector throughout Asia and Africa during the first quarter of the 21st Century. During this time, Wilf lived and worked in Hong Kong, Malaysia, the Philippines, PR China, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, while also serving on company Boards in Cambodia, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Nigeria and Taiwan.Wilf's work has primarily involved delivering large-scale and high-impact organisation-wide transformations alongside significant and sustained business growth.A mathematician by training, Wilf began his professional career in the mid-1980s in London, initially as an actuary, prior to working in several other functions, including Finance, M&A, Strategy, Marketing, Distribution and Programme Management before becoming a generalist.Wilf has been a perennial business school student, having been awarded post-graduate qualifications from INSEAD, Bath University, Oxford University and City University, London.