What Happens Now?: Reinvent Yourself as a Leader Before Your Business Outruns You

by John Hillen, Mark D. Nevins

Overview

Few leaders will admit it, but again and again the growth of their organizations outruns their skills. If you're one of those leaders, you know the result: as the job grows bigger than you are, you get disoriented by a world of unfamiliar challenges. You then hit a wall of ineffectiveness, a stall point. Why won't doubling down on the managerial and technical building blocks that have worked before help you out of a stall? Because you invariably neglect the new political, personal, strategic, and interpersonal skills needed to manage yourself and others. Predictable and inevitable, your stall then escalates into a crisis. And the crisis escalates faster the higher you go, since challenges of sophistication dwarf those of complexity at higher organizational levels. What Happens Now?: Reinvent Yourself as a Leader Before Your Business Outruns You, helps you to embrace this reality. It shows how sophistication requires you do things you've never done before –inspire people, nurture relationships, energize teams, groom successors, influence stakeholders. What Happens Now? doesn't dwell on leadership theory and philosophy. As troubleshooters for leaders of all kinds, authors John Hillen and Mark Nevins focus on the most menacing issue they see in organizations every day: leaders who try to solve challenges solely by engineering solutions to more complexity—process mapping, data analytics, information systems, instant reports. The result? Organizational wreckage. Will this be your fate? Can you instead turn game-stopping stalls into personal growth and organization success? Can you struggle through the realization that you're the cause and launch the next phase of your lifelong leadership journey? Can you reinvent yourself? Hillen and Nevins show you how. If the dozens of leaders they profile can overcome these stalls, so can you.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781590794531
Publisher:	SelectBooks
Publication date:	05/15/2018
Pages:	1
Sales rank:	398,721
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.20(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

John Hillen, D.Phil. is a leadership and strategy professor in the School of Business at George Mason University, a consultant, and a director for many companies. His views on leadership draw from his experiences as a public and private company CEO of several companies, a board chair and director, a U.S. Assistant Secretary of State under President George W. Bush, and a former U.S. Army officer and decorated combat leader. He holds degrees from Duke, King’s College London, received his MBA at Cornell and his doctorate from Oxford. A Washington Technology columnist, he writes regularly on leadership and strategy, both of which he teaches in George Mason’s MBA program. Recently recognized as one of the 100 most influential business leaders in the Washington D.C. area, he is a winner of a number of prestigious leadership awards in the military and business and the author or editor of several books on international security.Mark D. Nevins, Ph.D. is a leadership consultant to top executives and organizations large and small across a range of industries. Earlier in his career he was responsible globally for learning and development for Booz Allen Hamilton, and for organization development and human resources for Korn/Ferry. He has coached a range of executives from the C-suite to high-potential vice presidents at large companies such as American Express, Citibank, NBCUniversal, and TimeWarner, as well as smaller companies and high-growth startups. A Harvard Ph.D. and former literature professor, his views on leadership and business are informed by universal themes of the human condition. He has traveled, worked, and taught in more than 50 countries. An author and blogger, his previous work includes The Advice Business, a book on management consulting.

Table of Contents

Foreword Norman Augustine ix

Preface xiii

Acknowledgments xvii

Introduction The Day Everything Changes

Chapter 1 Why Leaders Stall 13

Confusing Challenges of Complexity with Those of Sophistication

Chapter 2 Leader Without a Story 43

Stalling When You've Failed to Provide Purpose

Chapter 3 Leader of Team Zero 75

Stalling When You Let Your Team Splinter

Chapter 4 Asleep at the Stakeholder Wheel 109

Stalling When You Neglect Your Stakeholders

Chapter 5 "Nobody Gets It!" 143

Stalling When You're Failing to Lead Change

Chapter 6 Master of the Old Universe 175

Stalling When you Lose Your Authority

Chapter 7 Hamster on a Wheel 207

Stalling When You Focus Your Time and Energy in the Wrong Places

Chapter 8 Coach of the B Team 239

Stalling When You Can't Keep Your Leaders From Failing

Chapter 9 From Stall to Success 273

Some Final Thoughts

Notes 287

Index 295

About the Authors 309

What People are Saying About This

former President and CEO of The Aspen Institute Best-selling author of Steve Jobs, Leonardo DaVinci, Einstein, and Benja - Walter Isaacson

In today's egalitarian and pluralistic management environment, business leaders cannot only be good at their business. They need a broader view of the human enterprise and the skills to lead extremely complex and sophisticated organizations. John Hillen and Mark Nevins, experienced and thoughtful leadership scholars I came to know at the Aspen Institute, have written a practical and enriching guide for leaders seeking to be effective at the highest levels of performance.

CNBC's Senior Contributor - Larry Kudlow

Over the many years I have watched and commented on the best performing companies, I’ve observed the best leaders reinvent themselves and their role as fast as they’ve grown their firm. This book helps leaders see challenges in advance and charts a way for them to stay out in front of their enterprise as they take it to new heights. A practical and insightful guide to executive development in growing companies.

From the Publisher

Over the course of my career leading companies, government agencies, and NGOs, I have seen leaders struggle with having the strategic and interpersonal skills they need to go to the next level. It is not always obvious about the new mindsets and behaviors leaders need to adopt to be effective as their organization changes and grows. It is hard to find a fresh way to think through this age-old problem, but What Happens Now? is one of the most effective books I've seen to show leaders how to stay ahead of their enterprises. --Henrietta Holsman Fore, former Director of the US Mint and Administrator of the US Agency for International Development

Success can breed bad habits in executives. John Hillen and Mark Nevins add to that research by showing the changing circumstances that accompany growth and change can exacerbate these habits and cause leadership stalls. Their framework for seeing and working through them will help leaders at all levels grow and develop as fast as their businesses in order to stay ahead of these challenges. --Marshall Goldsmith, author of one of Amazon.com’s top 100 leadership books of all time, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, voted by Thinkers50 as one of The World’s 50 Most Influential Leadership Thinkers

Over the many years I have watched and commented on the best performing companies, I’ve observed the best leaders reinvent themselves and their role as fast as they’ve grown their firm. This book helps leaders see challenges in advance and charts a way for them to stay out in front of their enterprise as they take it to new heights. A practical and insightful guide to executive development in growing companies. --Larry Kudlow, CNBC’s Senior Contributor

In today's egalitarian and pluralistic management environment, business leaders cannot only be good at their business. They need a broader view of the human enterprise and the skills to lead extremely complex and sophisticated organizations. John Hillen and Mark Nevins, experienced and thoughtful leadership scholars I came to know at the Aspen Institute, have written a practical and enriching guide for leaders seeking to be effective at the highest levels of performance. --Walter Isaacson, former President and CEO of The Aspen Institute, best-selling author of Steve Jobs, Leonardo DaVinci, Einstein, and Benjamin Franklin and Time Magazine honoree of their annual list

John Hillen and Mark Nevins have written a must-read primer for any leader seeking to successfully navigate in today’s dynamic social, financial, and technical environments. In my time running several companies and in leading at all levels during 30 years in the Navy, I’ve seen leaders confront these issues time and again. Read this book; its solution orientation is both timely and refreshing. --Admiral William “Bud” Flanagan, former Commander in Chief of The US Atlantic Fleet

former Director of the US Mint and Administrator of the US Agency for International Development - Henrietta Holsman Fore

Over the course of my career leading companies, government agencies, and NGOs, I have seen leaders struggle with having the strategic and interpersonal skills they need to go to the next level. It is not always obvious about the new mindsets and behaviors leaders need to adopt to be effective as their organization changes and grows. It is hard to find a fresh way to think through this age-old problem, but What Happens Now? is one of the most effective books I've seen to show leaders how to stay ahead of their enterprises.