The Future of Leadership: Riding the Corporate Rapids into the 21st Century

Change and uncertainty are the new touchstones of leadership excellence. The old management competencies of planning, organizing and controlling are no longer enough. The business world of today and tomorrow can be seen as a series of fast flowing rapids full of excitement, challenge, adventure and uncertainty; where the risks will be higher and the rewards greater.
To become a successful leader of the future you must actively pursue these uncertainties - if you do, the possibilities are immense. You need to learn how to constantly encompass and exploit change.
The Future of Leadership offers you new organizational perspectives and skills which will guide you through the turbulence of today's corporate environment. The good white water leader views each rapid as a place to enhance the use of their paddle.

Addressing business managers facing a kaleidoscopic future, the authors advocate embracing a condition of permanent uncertainty and urge managers to make up strategy as they go along, winging it a day at a time. It's a brave but not new concept. This is, however, an exceptionally thorough treatment of it and could serve as the text for a college course or a business workshop. Choice, the authors warn, has increased at every stage of the decision-making process, rendering decisions more perilous. Today's rules will not apply tomorrow, so what's to be done? White (coauthor, Breaking the Glass Ceiling), consultant Hodgson and freelance writer Crainer recommend developing abilities for taking on what they call "difficult learning"?"deliberately seeking out areas of maximum business benefit and developing the capabilities... to meet the challenge." These capabilities are applied through two channels: resonant simplicity and multiple (as opposed to linear) focus, an idea that goes back to Marshall McLuhan. The authors attempt to nail down their approach with graphs, guidelines and examples, trying, it would seem, to bring exactitude to their nebulous subject. 50,000 first printing; $75,000 ad/promo; Newbridge Executive Book Club main selection.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In this book about managing uncertainty, the idea of hurtling rapids, unknown obstacles, and "change . . . coming in all directions" is central to the authors' model, and therefore "white water" is a necessary image. (The authors' introductory section, however, is inconsistent. Perhaps anticipating a change, they also use the phrase "wildwater leadership." ) White is a coauthor of Breaking the Glass Ceiling (1992), and his coauthors here are a British consultant and a management writer. They incorporate current concepts like "the learning organization" into their system, but they focus on the five skills essential for "white water leadership." These are "difficult learning, maximizing energy, resonant simplicity, multiple focus, and mastering inner sense." David Rouse