I selected one of Bruce Nussbaum's observations to serve as the title of this review because, in my opinion, it correctly suggests the collaborative nature of both creativity (make it new) and innovation (make it better). He insists that the subject (and title) of his book, Creative Intelligence, is best understood by studying and learning from - and [begin italics] with [end italics] -- the people and organizations who've cultivated it. That is what Nussbaum has done during the last several decades and, hopefully, what he will continue to do in years to come.

Here's the brief bio on his Amazon page: "Bruce Nussbaum is a Professor of Innovation and Design at Parsons The New School for Design in New York City, is a former Managing Editor at BusinessWeek and blogs for Fast Company and Harvard Business Review. He taught third grade science in the Peace Corps in the Philippines and studied anthropology, sociology, and political science in grad school at the University of Michigan. At Business Week, he wrote dozens of cover stories but his favorites are I'm Worried About My Job, I Can't Get the !X@#! Thing To Work, The World's Most Innovative Companies, The Power of Design, and Get Creative -- How to Build Innovative Companies."

According to Keith Sawyer, "What makes for a great creative team? Whether it's musicians, improv acts, or business teams, there are three elements to creative teams: trust, and familiarity of members with each other, and a shared commitment to the same goals. These can enhance the performance of any group." A student of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Sawyer is the author of Group Genius, Understanding Creativity, and, most recently, Zig Zag: The Surprising Path to Greater Creativity. Presumably he agrees with Nussbaum that, during an era of rapid and immense social change and the explosive growth of social media, it is imperative to ask "How does creativity emerge from collaboration, how does it thrive in a social context?" This book is Nussbaum's response.

The best works of non-fiction tend to be research-driven and that is certain true of this one, as its "Notes" section (Pages 267-335) suggests. Readers will also appreciate how skillfully Nussbaum organizes his material within Three Parts. For example, in Part II, he examines the five competencies of Creative Intelligence and devotes a separate chapter to each: Knowledge Mining ("what's truly meaningful"), Framing (understanding one's frame of reference by evaluating with a "focal lens"), Playing ("complex behavior that's driving the creation if life-altering technologies and companies"), Making (within the revival of a "maker culture"), and Pivoting (successful transition from generating to new ideas to achieving their benefits). "Together these competencies give us a new foundation to build a more vibrant kind of economic system."

These are among the subjects of greatest interest and value to me.

o Why "strokes of genius" are not what they seem
o "Secrets" that creativity will reveal
o What each of the aforementioned five competencies achieve
o The potentialities of "indie capitalism" and their significance
o How to determine one's CQ (Creativity Quotient)
o The defining characteristics of the "next frontier of innovation"
o Which new methodologies will be needed
o Why all of us must help "to create a better world than the one we inherited"

Before concluding his book with a thought-provoking challenge to re-think creativity, Bruce Nussbaum reaffirms his conviction that almost anyone can become more creative. "We just need to get back into practice." More specifically, we need to (a) engage in continuous improvement of the five competencies and (b) commit our Creative Intelligence to building better careers for ourselves, new kinds of businesses, and health and education systems that make sense in the twenty-first century. "We can reinvent and revitalize our capitalist economy and take it to the next level. It's a liberating and exciting prospect and maybe, at times, even risky." Obviously, he poses a great challenge but I also view it as a special privilege.

As Nancy Andreasen explains in the first chapter, "This book has been bubbling and churning in my brain for nearly thirty years, and I am grateful that I have finally found time to write it...[and now] I'll be at your side as we embark on a wonderful exploratory adventure: examining what the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen once called 'the spark of the divine fire.' Our mission is especially exciting and novel because we are not just exploring the nature of creativity, but also the [begin italics] neuroscience [end italics] of creativity, a difficult mission that few have as yet attempted...I wanted to write about how extremely gifted people have created things that have made our lives, our society, and our civilization richer and more beautiful." She succeeds admirably in this book, a brilliant achievement.

Heaven knows, there is no shortage of especially creative people to discuss and Andreasen selected several dozen. However different they may be in most respects, what do they share in common? "We have learned that highly creative people have particular personality and cognitive traits, such as openness to experience, curiosity, and a tolerance of ambiguity. We have learned that they often get their ideas as flashes of insight, through moments of inspiration, or by going into a state at the edge of chaos [a state of mind that Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi characterizes as "flow"], where ideas float, soar, collide, and connect."

These are among the dozens of passages that caught my eye, also listed to suggest the scope of Andreasen's coverage:

o Coleridge's Dream of Xanadu (19-28)
o The Creative Person (28-32)
o The Creative Process (Pages 32-45)
0 The Human Brain as a Self-organizing System (61-63)
o What Is Human Thought, and Unconscious Thought: The Edge of the Mind's Precipice (63-66)
o The Neural Basis of Extraordinary Creativity (74-75)
o The Role of Nurture: Cradles of Creativity (109-114)
o What Kind of an Environment Nurtures Creativity? (127-132))
o Nature versus Nurture: What Creates the Creative Brain? (142)
o What Is Brain Plasticity? and, Plasticity and the Creative Brain (146-158)
o Ordinary Creativity and Extraordinary Creativity (159-160)
o Mental Exercises for Adults (160-168)

o "Tips for Teaching Tots" (168-178)

Note: The material in this passage about how to stimulate and nourish children's brains will be of special interest and value to parents, grandparents, and their other family members as well as to school staff members, classroom teachers, coaches, and members of the clergy who have direct and frequent contact with children.

o Creating the Brain: Quo Vadimus? (178-181)

Before concluding her book, Andreasen identifies a number of imperatives, best viewed as challenges to which she has carefully prepared her reader to respond. For example, "We must learn more about critical periods in brain development and use this information in our educational programs, and in our family education if public education fails us...Over the coming years, we shall learn more and more about the creating brain...about how it thinks, learns, and spontaneously self-organizes. As this knowledge evolves, it is imperative that we use it to find more ways to nurture the creative nature that we all share."

That is our great challenge...and unique privilege.

According to David Wethey, "Decision science is a complex and rich academic area, quite apart from its importance in every aspect of human life." He continues to make substantial contributions to that science, with this book (obviously) but also with on-going research that he discusses while introducing himself in the "My Story" section that precedes the Introduction to the book. His mission in life is to help as many people as possible to develop the same skills that Noel Tichy and Warren Bennis examine while explaining, in their book Judgment, how winning leaders make great calls. In the first chapter, they assert that what really matters "is not how many calls a leader gets right, or even what percentage of calls a leader gets right. Rather it is important how many of the important ones he or she gets right." They go on to suggest that effective leaders "not only make better calls, but they are able to discern the really important ones and get a higher percentage of them right. They are better at a whole process that runs from seeing the need for a call, to framing issues, to figuring out what is critical, to mobilizing and energizing the troops."

Wethey believes (and I agree) that almost anyone can develop the same skills. Being able to decide which decisions to make is one of the most important. In fact, each of us makes several hundred decisions each day and most are "no brainers." But there are others that require sound judgment, indeed a process, and these decisions can determine what the consequences will be, for better or worse, for entire organizations as well as for individuals. Whatever their size and nature may be, all organizations need sound decision making at all levels and in all areas of operation.

I commend Wethey on his brilliant use of several reader-devices that include dozens of "blog extracts" inserted strategically throughout his narrative. They "mostly relate to a specific event or controversy, which hopefully will make them sharper and more relevant than mere theory; and secondly, they are easy to read at around 400-500 words!" They demonstrate all manner of decision dilemma situations, many with which readers can identify. He also shares the real-world experiences of others who are involved in a decision making process. There are many different paths to a decision, sound or otherwise. Wethey also draws upon an abundance of primary and secondary resources, including his own experiences in 38 different countries with several different companies such as the A.C. Nielsen Company, McCann-Erickson, other smaller advertising agencies, and most recently Agency Assessments International (AAI).

Since completing the book, he has decided not to "run any more pitches asking agencies for free goods -- and [aim] to convert the whole industry to a better way. Scary, but the right thing to do. An instinctive decision with rational back-up. And yes, I slept on it before pressing the button!"

These are among the passages that caught my eye, also listed to suggest the scope of Wethey's coverage:

o How do we explain seriously bad decisions?, and, Why do things that aren't a good idea? (Pages 41-44)
o Decision Traps (53-54)
o Was the financial crisis caused by Decision Traps?, and, What makes a decision bad? (62-65)
o Before embarking on a big decision you have to define the opportunity or solve the problem (69-71)
o Capitalizing on opportunities (71-77)
o Problem-solving techniques (89-91)
o The Holy Grail - better decisions, and, A smart way to masker decisions better (92-97)
o The emotional side of decision making (100-101)
o Difficult decisions (117-120)
o Highlights on decision making from the interviews (124-131)
o Why are meetings so frustrating?, and, What can go wrong with meetings (150-153)
o Blamers and Pacifiers (171-172)
o High confidence, low self-esteem (175-180)
o Steve Jobs - The most effectual thinker of our era (186-187)
o Three dimensions of choice (195-198)

In the final chapter, Wethey offers his 20 best decision tips. "My number 1 decision tip is that every decision - even one we have to take quickly - is a journey, not a single step. The journey looks like this" and Wethey provides a series of components followed by other 19 tips.

I finished reading this book on April 15th, the day two bombs were detonated near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Most of the first responders were not formally trained in medical care but did not hesitate to offer immediate assistance. The same was true of the teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT. As David Wethey explains so well, there are crisis situation when there is little (if any) time for situation analysis, evaluation of options, etc. There really are better ways to make better decisions and most of them are explained in this book.

According to Lewis Schiff, this book tells "the story of how wealth is created now. It showcases the greatest success stories of our time because that's the way good stories are told." The seven principles for wealth creation identified in this book "are not just about getting rich, although for some readers that's exactly what will happen. They are about realigning our career development practices with the world we live in today." He wrote this book for "the millions of educated and intellectually curious people who have made a good living playing by the rules that might not work for them anymore." This is what Marshall Goldsmith had in mind when suggesting that "what got you here won't get you there" to which I presume to add, "What got you here won't even let you remain here," wherever and whatever "here" may be.

Schiff introduces the Brilliant Business System, one that is characterized by a "synergy" of its various parts. As he explains, "In truth, synergy describes the way complex systems and processes - such as a football play or the way a poison gas combines with an explosive metal to produce extraordinary table salt - can produce outcomes that are unexpected and unrecognizable from their component parts. In a synergistic system, a set of simple and mundane individual factors can interact and affect each other in improbable ways, creating results that can seem breathtaking and - to the uninformed - mysterious in origin."

Rather than list the aforementioned seven principles in this brief commentary, I think they are best revealed within Schiff's lively and eloquent as well as informative narrative, in context. However, I do acknowledge that opinions are divided - sometimes sharply divided - as to whether or not persons of average intelligence and ability can understand those principles, much less apply them effectively. You can form your opinion about that after you read the book.

These are among the dozens of passages that caught my eye, also listed to suggest the scope of Schiff's coverage:

o The Billionaire Busker (Pages 23-26)
o The Peterman Principle (40-43)
o The Wonder Bread Way to Wealth (47-51)
o The Wages of Fear (59-62)
o The Man Who Could Have Been Bill Gates (65-73)
o The Blinding Flash of Genius (87-91)
o "The Ogre of Omaha"(95-100)
o The Least-Interest Principle (117-122)
o The Reciprocity Trap (129-137)
o The Disability Advantage (141-148)
o The Valentine's Day Massacre (165-168)
o The Truth About Failure (176-183)
o Chapter 9: Mastering the Mundane (191-218)

In the last chapter, the ninth, Schiff introduces and explains 17 "Essentials," providing with each "The Technique" to apply it effectively. This chapter - all by itself - is worth far more than the cost of the book. Better yet, the total value of the "Essentials" material is compounded within the context, the frame-of-reference of material in the eight chapters that precedes it. I strongly recommend that Chapter 9 be re-read at least once or twice every month or at least every quarter.

There is no Epilogue or "final thoughts" section to conclude this book. However, I have selected a key passage from the first chapter to conclude this review. Most important, Lewis Schiff affirms, "the seven Business Principles in the coming chapters will help you learn about yourself. You'll see why it's just as important to follow the money as it is to follow the passion" and, better yet, they are NOT mutually exclusive. Indeed, more often than not, as "the greatest success stories of our time" clearly indicate, they are interdependent. "In fact, the book you are holding is the product of all seven of the Business Brilliant principles it explores."

One of the most important human skills is the ability to establish and then sustain focus. There are several different types of focus because concentration can help to achieve so many different objectives. Heidi Grant Halvorson and E. Tory Higgins focus on four: Good and Bad Promotion Focus, and, Good and Prevention Focus. As they explain, promotion focus “is about maximizing gains and avoiding missed opportunities…at its core, satisfying our need for nurturance” whereas prevention focus “is about minimizing losses, to keep things going…is about satisfying our need for security.” Whether or not either focus is good or bad depends almost entirely on two factors: whether or not is effective, and, whether or not the result is desirable.

Halvorson and Higgins wrote this book to help those who read it to “use different ways of seeing the world for success and influence.” In other words, they want to prepare their reader to select the most appropriate focus to achieve the given objective, especially when someone else is involved. Nurturance and security are not mutually exclusive but each poses unique challenges to those who would obtain it. Halvorson and Higgins include a self-diagnostic on Page 6 that helps their reader to identify their "actuals," “ideals” and “oughts.” A person need not have one dominant motivation but most people do.

Some of the most interesting material is provided in Chapter 9 as they explain why “it’s the fit [of the person to the motivation] that matters.” In that event, “you feel right, you become strongly engaged, and information is easier to process and remember. Feedback feels fair, and performance is enhanced. And this is only the beginning. Now that you understand [begin italics] how [end italics] it works, you are ready to see what it can do for you.” Eventually in the book, the reader will also learn how to use this increased understanding of fit when supervising others. As I read Chapter 9, I was reminded of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s valuable insights concerning what he characterizes as “flow," the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity.

These are among the dozens of passages that caught my eye, also listed to suggest the scope of Halvorson and Higgins's coverage:

o Why a Dominant Focus (Pages 6-9)
0 But Aren't Optimists Happier? (29-32)
o Paying Attention to Details (38-40)
0 Who's the Boss? (44-47)
o The Three Self-Concepts: Actual, Ideal, and Ought; The Birth of the Ideal Self Guide; and The Birth of the Ought Guide (53-57)
0 When Things Go Wrong, and Should I Stay or Go? (82-85)
o Why We Buy (105-107)
0 The Right Way to Run Things (113-116)
o Clues from Behavior, Choices, and Feelings (134-137)
0 Two Paths to Persuasion (156-160)
o Inspirational Role Model or Cautionary Tale? (166-169)
0 Fit Helps You Get It Done (174-179)
o Cialdini's "Six weapons of influence in the battle to direct human behavior" (183-184)
0 Why We Need a Good Fit Now More Than Ever (197-198)
o Fit Loosens the Purse Strings (206-209)

Heidi Grant Halvorson and E. Tory Higgins provide "A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Motivational Fit" in Chapter 13 and then, before concluding their book with a strong reassurance to their reader: "Your life is more empowered once you have learned about promotion and prevention focus and what fits with them. This is true, in part, because you realize how you can be much more effective in just about everything you do -- by working with what fits your focus, capitalizing on your strengths, and compensating when you can for your weaknesses."

I read and reviewed Steven Fink's previous book, Crisis Management: Planning for the Inevitable, and recall two chapters (13 and 14) in which he explained "controlling the message" and "handling a hostile press." What we have in this brilliant volume is all that Fink knew then and has since learned about effectively responding to these two challenges. As he observes, the two chapters were written "before the Internet explosion and the advent of never-ending 24/7 news cycles, cell phone videos, the runaway profusion of still emerging social media, ever-lurking-in-the-bushes paparazzi, blogs and websites devoted to 'gotcha' journalism, and electronic mob-mentality consumerism/activism." So, Fink needed to update and expand the material in those chapters to accommodate the major developments to which he refers.

Here is a partial list of the key issues he addresses. Please imagine that each is preceded by "How to...."

o React immediately to a crisis
o Articulate an appropriate response that is (key word) truthful
o Manage both internal and external perceptions of the facts that are known
o Avoid the most common mistakes
o Defer assignment of blame to focus on resolving the given crisis
o Shape the communication updates to stakeholder segments as well as media
o Deploy spokesperson(s)
o Manage social media
o Cope with crisis-induced stress
o Prepare for and (when appropriate) conduct post-crisis evaluation

Years ago, when Ann Mulcahy was named president and CEO of Xerox, she asked several of her closest friends and mentors for suggestions. She said the best advice she received was that she had three tasks: "Get the ox out of the ditch, find how it got in the ditch, and then make certain that it never happens again."

Keep in mind, Fink's focus in this book is on the communications portion of a much more comprehensive process that also includes contingency planning, for example, and allocation of readily available resources. He cites dozens of corporate exempla (for better or worse) of real-world crisis communications that include (in alpha order), Audi, Avery Denison, Bank of America, BP, Firestone Tire & Rubber, Johnson & Johnson/Tylenol, Pennsylvania State University/Paterno & Sandusky, PepsiCo, Susan B. Komen for the Cure, Toyota, and U.C.L.A. School of Medicine's Neuropsychiatric Institute. Don't expect a provision of silver bullets, recipes, quick fixes, etc. Rather, Fink creates a mosaic of especially important do's and don'ts for those who need an expert (if not "the definitive") guide for "managing the message" during a crisis.

I wish to conclude this brief commentary with three observations of my own. First, I strongly recommend that both of Fink's books be read in tandem. Crisis Management creates a context, a frame-of-reference, for Crisis Communications and the latter should be viewed as an update and expanded coverage of the material in Chapters 13 and 14 in Crisis Management. Also, it is impossible to over-prepare for a crisis, whatever its nature and extent may prove to be. Meetings convened should identify the 3-5 worst possible crisis and then focus on what to [begin italics] do [end italics] if one occurs. Finally, in that event, speed is imperative and truth is the currency of the realm. I agree with Steven Fink: "Don't hesitate. Rise to the occasion and take charge of your crisis with confidence, conviction, and character."

As I began to read this book, I was reminded of the approach that Frank Moss takes in The Sorcerers and Their Apprentices: How the Digital Magicians of the MIT Media Lab Are Creating the Innovative Technologies That Will Transform Our Lives. Both he and Jon Gertner provide a wealth of historical information about the given enterprise while focusing on its leadership, its major contributions, and the significance of those contributions. A brief history of the MIT Media Lab and of Bell Laboratories can be obtained from Wikipedia. I suggest that the former be checked out before reading Moss's book and the latter before reading Gertner's.

The most productive years during the history of Bell Telephone Laboratories were between the lkate-1930s and the mid-70s, a period during which Bell Labs was the most innovative scientific organization in the world. According to Gertner, "It was arguably among the world's most important commercial organizations as well, with countless entrepreneurs building their businesses upon the Labs foundational inventions, which were often shared for a modest fee."

Its innovation breakthroughs include radio astronomy, the transistor, the laser, information theory, the UNIX operating system, the C programming language, and the C++ programming language. Seven Nobel Prizes have been awarded for work completed at Bell Laboratories prior to the year of the award: Clinton J. Davisson shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for demonstrating the wave nature of matter (1937); John Bardeen, Walter H. Brattain, and William Shockley received the Nobel Prize in Physics for inventing the first transistors (1956); Philip W. Anderson shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for developing an improved understanding of the electronic structure of glass and magnetic materials (1977); Arno A. Penzias and Robert W. Wilson shared the Nobel Prize in Physics. Penzias and Wilson were cited for their discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation, a nearly uniform glow that fills the Universe in the microwave band of the radio spectrum (1978); Steven Chu shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for developing methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light (1997); Horst Stormer, Robert Laughlin, and Daniel Tsui, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery and explanation of the fractional quantum Hall effect (1998); and Willard S. Boyle, George E. Smith shared the Nobel Prize in Physics together with Charles K. Kao. Boyle and Smith were cited for the invention of charge-coupled device (CCD) semiconductor imaging sensors (2009).

These are among the subjects of greatest to me:

o World War Two and Bells Labs (Pages 50-74)
o Patents for the transistor (97-100)
o Information Theory and Claude Shannon's contributions (128-130 and 185-186)
o Individual Genius versus Collaboration issues (133-135)
o Claude Shannon and computers (136-144)
o Military work of Mervin Kelly
o Transatlantic telephone cable project (175-180 and 183-184)
o The Traveling Wave Tube project (198-201 and 207-208)
o New York World's Fair and John Pierce's involvement (228-231)
o MCI and the Bell System (271-274)
o Cellular telephones (279-283 and 286-297)

The best business books are research-driven and that is certainly true of this one. Gertner provides an abundant "Endnotes and Amplifications" section (Pages 367-400) and five additional pages of "Sources." I am among those who are non-scientists and lacking any expertise in the field of electronics. Although discussing some of the most complicated creations and innovations in human history, Gertner never "dumbs down" the material while skillfully offering accurate and sufficient explanations of what does what as well as how and why.

Before concluding his brilliant book, he discusses a very different model for innovation that arose in the late-1970s as a new generation entrepreneurs demonstrated that new and better ideas need not have the resources of a large corporation to have a wide and deep, what Clay Christensen would characterize as a "disruptive" global impact. Bell Labs contributed to this transition from one model to another with its development of transistors, lasers, the Unix operating system, and the C and the C++ programming languages.

But the Silicon Valley process that Eugene Kleiner and others helped to establish "was a different innovation model from Bell Labs. It was not a factory of ideas; it was a geography of ideas. It was not one concentrated and powerful machine; it was the meshing of many interlocking small parts grouped physically near one another so as to make an equally powerful machine. The Valley model, in fact, was soon so productive that it became a topic of study for sociologists and business pr0ofessors. They soon bestowed upon the area the title of an "information hub."

Jon Gertner allows John Pierce the final word in the book and I now do so as this brief commentary concludes: "I am afraid that there will be little tangible left [of Bell Labs] in a later age to remind our heirs that we were man, rather than cogs in a machine." My hope is this book and others to follow will serve as reminders of what once was, as was King Arthur's realm:

"Don't let it be forgot
That once there was a spot
For one brief shining moment that was known
As Camelot."

In recent years, we have observed a tsunami of books, articles, and events that focus on employee engagement. Much of the content they provide and they discuss is based on research by highly reputable firms. In Flat Army: Creating a Connected and Engaged Community (Jossey-Bass/Wiley Imprint, April 2013), Dan Pontefract cites an article in the Gallup Business Journal that characterizes an engaged employee as someone who will "work with passion and feel a profound connection to their company. They drive innovation and move the organization forward."

In my review of The Enemy of Engagement, I suggest that what sets this book apart from other recently published books on the problems of employee engagement and how to solve them is Mark Royal and Tom Agnew's focus on employees who were once actively and productively engaged and have either become passively engaged ("mailing it in") or actively disengaged and, in some instances, perhaps even hostile and toxic. During exit interviews of highly-valued employees before they depart to work elsewhere, they express frustration with working conditions (especially those who supervise them) that prevent them from personal growth and/or professional development.

Dan Pontefract shares my high regard for The Enemy of Engagement, quoting this passage:

"Though frameworks for understanding engagement vary, the concept is commonly understood to capture levels of commitment and discretionary effort exhibited by employees. Engaged employees can be expected to display high levels of attachment to an organization and a strong desire to remain a part of it. Consequently, engaged employees are more likely to be willing to go above and beyond the formal requirements of the job, contribute organizational citizenship behaviors, pour extra effort into their work, and deliver superior performance." Well-said.

As explained in detail Chapter Three, the "flat army" to which the title of Pontefract's book refers to a shared philosophy. It is a combination of Connected Leader Attributes or CLA (e.g. 15 behaviors) plus the Participative Leader Framework or PLF (e.g. four characteristics and two key actions), and the Collaborative Leader Action Model or CLAM (e.g. 6-step process to connect, consider, communicate, create, confirm, and congratulate). If I understand Pontefract's nomenclature, the word "army" could also be "community" or "tribe" as in Seth Godin's concept. Those who comprise this "army" are "at war" with whatever and whomever threaten positive and productive engagement at all levels and in all areas of the given enterprise. Here's Pontefract's definition of engagement: The state in which there is reciprocal trust between the employee and leadership to do what's right however, whenever, wherever and with whomever."

These are among the dozens of passages that caught my eye, also listed to suggest the scope of Pontefract's coverage:

o The Organization vs. Life Itself (Pages 18-20)
o The Connected leader Chasm, and Falling into the Chasm (50-54)
o The Connected Leader Attributes (61-61)
o The Participative Leader Framework (63-69)
o The Collaborative Leader Action Model (69-70)
o Trusting (74-77) and Empathizing (79-82)
o Cooperating (101-105)
o Measuring (116-119)
o The Untutored Eye (132-134)
o Putting It All Together (145-152)
o Hierarchy Is Not Anarchy (158-160)
o When to CLAM and When Not to CLAM (178-181)
o Does Organizational Learning Matter? (190-192)
o Formal Learning, and, Informal Learning (196-303)
o Collaboration Technologies (215-221)

o Context (227-233)
Note: Pontefract draws a brilliant analogy between context and an MRI. He observes, "Context gives meaning; it shines on your leadership style and your leadership interactions."

o Flat Army Philosophy (263-266)
Note: In essence, "Flat Army in its simplest form refers to the point at which all employees act as a unified corporate organism through the use of clear and succinct goals...It is no longer a culture of 'command and control,' but rather one of 'engage and empower' combined with effective execution."

To repeat, it is imperative to have leadership at all levels in all areas of the given enterprise. More specifically, Dan Pontefract suggests leaders must be transformational and transactional, collaborative and considerate, daring and decisive, inclusive and insistent, playful and formal, harmonious, and humble, encouraging and results-driven. In a word, Flat.

I agree with Evgeny Morozov that a never-ending quest to ameliorate, what Tania Murray Li characterizes as "the will to improve," has created problems whose disruptive and (yes) destructive impact has been exacerbated by various technologies. Morozov calls this pathology "solutionism." In Chapter One, he observes, "It's not only that many problems are not suited to the quick-and-easy solutionist tool kit. It'd also that what many solutionists presume to be 'problems' in need of solving are not problems at all; a deeper investigation into the very nature of these 'problems' would reveal that the inefficiency, ambiguity, and opacity -- whether in politics or everyday life -- that the newly empowered geeks and solutionists are rallying against are not in any sense problematic. Quite the opposite: these vices are often virtues in disguise. That, thanks to innovative technologies, the modern-day solutionist has an easy way to eliminate them does not make them any less virtuous."

Morozov probably knew that this book would generate a great deal of controversy, and it has because he almost gleefully challenges the assumptions and conclusions of what James O'Toole (in Leading Change) characterizes as "the ideology of comfort and the tyranny if custom." "On the odd chance that this book succeeds, its great contribution to the public debate might lie in the redrawing the front lines of the intellectual battles about digital technologies."

Morozov seems to divide Internet thinkers (or at least those claim to have thought about it) into two groups. "Those front lines will separate a host of Internet thinkers who are convinced that `the Internet' is a useful analytical category that tells us something important about how the world really works from a group of post-Internet thinkers who see `the internet,' despite its undeniable physicality, as a socially constructed concept that could perhaps be studied by sociologists, historians, and anthropologists - much as they study the public life of ideas such as `science,' `class,' or `Darwinism' - but that tells us nothing about how the world works and even less about how it should."

These are among the dozens of passages that caught my eye, also listed to suggest the scope of Morozov's analysis of "the folly of technological solutionism":

o Against the Internet Grain (Pages 21-25)
o Recycle the Cycle (57-62)
o The Perils of Information Reductivism (85-89)
o Future Perfect -- Democracy Isn't (107-110)
o Drowning in the Algorithmic Sea (146-153)
o The Rise of Unethical Critics (173-180)
o The Perils of Preemption (202-208)
o The Great Unraveling (238-243)
o Hunches and Fractured Pelvises (264-267)
o Madeleine: There's an App for That! (276-281)
o Phantoms and Backpacks (286-290)
o Monkeys, Sex, and Predictable Duress (305-309)
o Mad Men, Faded Denims, and Real Phonies (313-317)
o Radios, Caterpillars, and Lamps (325-328)
o On Frictionless Traps (344-350)

Before concluding his book, Morozov affirms, "Technology is not the enemy; our enemy is the romantic and revolutionary problem solver who resides within. We can do nothing to tame that little creature, but we can do a lot to tame its favorite weapon: "`the Internet.' Let's do it while we can - it would be deeply ironic if humanity were to die in the crossfire as its problem solvers attempted to transport that very humanity to a trouble-free world." Who will prevail, the Problem Creators (i.e. Solutionists) or the Problem Solvers? Stay tuned.

In their Introduction, Amy Jen Su and Muriel Maignan Wilkins reject three common but remarkably durable myths about developing a leadership presence:

Myth #1: You Are Who You Are. "This is probably the most pernicious myth out there: presence is something you either have or don't." In fact, [begin italics] anyone [end italics] can develop leadership presence.

Myth#2: One Size Fits All. "This myth is the opposite of the first, but just as pernicious. Instead of resigning themselves to be who they are and giving up on the prospect of change, leaders try to alter their presence to emulate someone else." In fact, as Wilde suggests, each person should develop a leadership presence that is [begin italics] uniquely theirs [end italics].

Myth #3: "If It Ain't Broke, Don't Fix It" In fact, "an effective presence is dynamic...Being conscious of who you are and where you are in your career and in your organization's pipeline is paramount to ensuring you adapt your presence accordingly." This is how Marshall Goldsmith would explain it: "What got you here won't get you there." Continuous improvement and, especially nourishment of leadership presence, is imperative.

With regard to developing a Signature Voice, it is important to keep in mind that more than 80% of the impact of each "message" we send to others is non-verbal. That is, the power of a Signature Voice will be determined by tone and body language.

These are among the dozens of passages that caught my eye, also listed to indicate the scope of the material that Su and Wilkins examine:

o A New Way of Diagnosing Presence (Pages 20-24)
o How ACE [Assumptions, communication strategies, and energy] Works (44-48)
o Why Assumptions Matter, and, Confidence: Action Steps (57-70)
o Perspective: Action Steps (74-78)
o Clarity: What Your Values Are, and, Clarity Action Steps (78-84)
o Why Communication Matters (92-94)
o Framing: Action Steps (99-103)
o Advocacy: Action Steps (106-109)
o Listening and Engaging: Action Steps (113-117)
o Why Energy Matters (125-128)
o Body Language: Action Steps (130-133)
o Tone: Action Steps (138-143)
o Being Visible: Action Steps (145-146)
o Signature Voice Is a Journey (155-156)
o Lead with Purpose (165-169)
o The Role You Play: Manager as Coach (174-182)

It is noteworthy that several of the key passages focus on "action steps": initiatives to apply what is learned from the given material. Indeed, both Su and Wilkins seem to possess an insatiable curiosity to understand what works, what doesn't, and why so they can then share what they have learned with as many other people as they can. That is why they include several "Drills" (e.g. "Identify Key Influencers," Pages 148-149) throughout their narrative. These are self-diagnostic exercises that enable their reader to interact with the material, to become actively engaged in the aforementioned "journey" develop a signature voice. Su and Wilkins also include "What to Remember" sections and reviews of key points as well as dozens of "Figures" (e.g. 3-1, "Assumptions you are likely to make," Page 81) and "Tables" (e.g. 6-1, "Trigger Events and Backsliding," Page 159), and several especially interesting vignettes that feature real people, in real-world situations, who are coping with many of the same circumstances and issues that the reader will also encounter.

Before concluding this book, Su and Wilkins add to the narrative three remarkably valuable "toolkits" (in an Appendix) whose contents are based on three strategic objectives: building overall presence, preparing for an especially important meeting or event, and facing a significant leadership struggle or challenge. Just as "no one size fits all" (i.e. Myth #2), no action plan is appropriate for all leadership situations. My guess is that most readers will need at least two and perhaps all three within a year after absorbing and digesting the wealth of information, insights, and counsel that Sun and Wilkins provide.

No brief commentary such as mine possibly do full justice to the quality and value of that material. However, I hope that I have at least suggested why I think so highly of the book. Also, I hope that those who read my commentary will be better prepared to determine whether or not to obtain and read it. In that event, I hope what it offers will help them to locate their own Signature Voice and then nourish it as their leadership journey continues, one during which (I hope) they will help others entrusted to their care to find their own.