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Revision as of 11:38, 19 January 2012
, 11:38, 19 January 2012no edit summary
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|ebook=B006FLW150
|pages=251
|publisher=Capstone
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Owen's latest addition to the management self-help canon is subtitled ""''50 Timeless Lessons for Leaders""''. Fifty lessons in under 250 pages? You have to know that the genuine newness of the insights might be on the disappointing side of fabulous.
That's not to completely write off ''Leadership Rules''. I enjoyed reading it. Given its structure of short sharp snipes which might be aimed at the dip-in-&-out brigade, I can also say that it reads well as a sit-down-&-consider book.
I particularly liked the starting point, which was: what has the recent ''leadership literature'' taught us. Perhaps I particularly liked the semi-condemnation of ''Good to Great'' which we're only just picking up on. A tad late, perhaps? In fairness, although Owen points out how many of the so-called ''great'' organisations haven't stayed the distance, he has nothing to say about those that have – so let's be fair, not all of Jim Collins' assessments can be just slung aside.
Owen's own personal viewpoint is that Collins and his ilk are very much North American focussed. Not just Anglo-Saxon (he intimates that it doesn't even translate particularly well to northern Europe) but specifically north American. He goes further and says that the research in most of the literature of recent years (and let's not castigate Collins for a whole genre!) is that it is very much of its time. This could be seen as a strength and also as a weakness. Owen chooses to treat it as a weakness and looks for traits in leaders that transcend time and context. To do so, he heads off into the wilds of the modern planet and, by analogy, into the ""''past"" '' of civilisation.
He looks at the leadership skills of Mongolian tribesmen, elders in the African bush, and so on. It's a reasonable thing to do. These are people who genuinely do need to lead; and they need to do so without the benefit of blinding-with-science spreadsheets and powerpoints and delegating the dirt by subcommittee. There are lessons to be learned. But it is also a naïve approach. Context (as he says himself) is everything. A tribal leader will usually get his way, always, by virtue of being the tribal leader. Irrespective. A modern CEO can only try that for so long. Those of us trying to lead from below just don't have that option.
