PART 1: UNIVERSAL PATTERNS OF LEADING IN UNCERTAIN TIMES 1

How do some people, organizations, and coalitions thrive in uncertain times? What enables them to appear so certain and take decisive action amid ambiguity about the future?

CHAPTER 1 – BEING CLEAR ON WHAT’S REALLY IMPORTANT 3

How did you decide how you spent your time yesterday? What criteria are you using to allocate your time tomorrow?

LEADING 5

Does being called a ‘‘leader’’ mean you are ‘‘leading’’? What does ‘‘leading’’ mean?

IN–ON 9

Are you seduced by working ‘‘in’’ the business at the expense of ‘‘on’’ it?

CHANGE VERSUS TRANSFORMATION   13

Are you fixing or creating?

CHAPTER 2 – BEING INTENTIONAL AND GOING FIRST  18

What are you committed to making happen and by when? What does ‘‘committed’’ mean? What does your commitment mean to others?

INTEGRITY 21

Does your ‘‘yes’’ really mean ‘‘yes’’?

TRUST THE UNIVERSE   25

Is your vision limited to what you’ve already seen?

DECLARATION 29

Are you willing to live unreasonably?

CHAPTER 3 – ENROLLING OTHERS 32

Can you call people, from disenfranchisement and mere compliance, to their highest level of commitment?

DYNAMIC INCOMPLETENESS   35

Can you create a vision that is compelling because of what it says and at the same time inviting—for what it leaves yet to be said?

ENNOBLEMENT   39

Does your vision elevate people in degree and excellence and respect and inspire them to act boldly?

POWER 45

Do you know how to turn strangers, competitors, cautious allies, and suspicious stakeholders into powerful, outcome-driven coalitions?

PART 2: UNIVERSAL PATTERNS OF POWERFUL ALLIANCES  47

How do you generate unprecedented power within the group? Is this question all that important to you?

CHAPTER 4 – GAINING SHARED PERSPECTIVE 49

Everyone claims to value diversity. Can maintaining diverse perspectives ever be a bad thing?

BLIND MEN AND THE ELEPHANT   51

How do you help people to see the ‘‘whole thing’’?

LEVELS OF PERSPECTIVE   55

How do you help people to see the same ‘‘whole thing’’?

S-CURVES   59

How do you lead people to a shared sense of now?

CHAPTER 5 – ESTABLISHING SHARED INTENT  62

How do you lead the group to be intentional?

CORE PRIME 65

How do you help the group to focus on the right things and feel urgent about acting?

PARITY   73

What is the right ratio of analyzing versus imagining?

STAKE   77

How do you get the group ‘‘all in’’?

CHAPTER 6 – TAKING COORDINATED ACTION 80

How do you get the group to do everything persistently about a few critical things versus doing a few things about everything?

COHESION   83

Cohesion is an unnatural state for a group. How good are you at establishing and sustaining it?

REDPOINT   85

A good question to ask is, ‘‘What is important to do?’’ A better question is, ‘‘Of all the important things we could do, what are the fewest, most important?’’

MUDA   93

Can you distinguish ‘‘non-value-added activity’’? How much of your group’s resources is it consuming?

PART 3: UNIVERSAL PATTERNS OF OUTSTANDING GROUP PERFORMANCE 96

What do high-performance groups know and do that low-performance groups do not?

CHAPTER 7 – MAKING DECISIONS   98

What does the word ‘‘decision’’ actually mean? How are decisions made?

LEADERSHIP SPECTRUM   101

Are you the kind of leader who likes to facilitate consensus? The right answer is, ‘‘That depends.’’

CONSENSUS   105

Are you still using the traditional definition of consensus? Are you aware of how destructive the traditional definition is?

OPEN–CLOSE–DECIDE   109

How do groups actually make decisions?

CHAPTER 8 – BUILDING AN INTENTIONAL CULTURE  113

Quick—what does ‘‘culture’’ mean? There are consequences to using more than seven words to define culture.

CULTURE 115

Culture happens. You shape it or it shapes you. How good are you at shaping a culture?

CONGRUENCE   119

What is the dark side of a stated culture?

FEEDBACK AS CARING   123

How good are you at giving it? How good are you at getting it? Why does it matter?

CHAPTER 9 – SOCIAL CONTRACTING AND ACCOUNTABILITY WITHIN THE GROUP   126

How do peers give each other commands?

REQUEST   129

Why saying ‘‘no’’ protects your saying ‘‘yes.’’

TRUST   133

We all say how important trust is. What is trust? How do you generate it and how do you destroy it?

BREACH   137

What do you do when your ‘‘yes’’ turns out to be a ‘‘no’’?

CHAPTER 10 – SAYING AND NOT SAYING; LISTENING AND NOT LISTENING   140

How do high-performance groups sound?

PERIMETER 143

How small a fence have you built around what can and cannot be said?

FACTS, STORIES, AND BELIEFS   147

Can you distinguish facts from stories from beliefs? Do you use facts the way a drunk uses a lamp post—for support versus illumination?

GOSSIP 151

What is it? What makes it so destructive? How do you stop it?

PART 4: UNIVERSAL PATTERNS OF GROUP FAILURE 153

How good are you at anticipating, avoiding, and slaying the dragons that inevitably show up and threaten your group and the outcomes your group is standing for?

CHAPTER 11 – OVERCOMING RESISTANCE   155

Are you okay with favoring some people and ignoring others?

LAGGARDS 157

Do you know how to starve ‘‘possibility killers’’?

FRAGMENTATION   161

How skilled are you at overcoming resistance from the powerful middle?

SAME–DIFFERENT   165

Everybody’s special. Really?

CHAPTER 12 – MANAGING INTRACTABLE DILEMMAS   168

How do you end a never-ending argument?

BIG HAT–LITTLE HAT 171

What do you do when the needs of the many conflict with the needs of the few?

RIGHT VERSUS RIGHT   175

Resolving conflicts about right and wrong is child’s play. How skilled are you at resolving matters of right versus right?

RESOLUTION PRINCIPLES   179

Right versus right arguments have been going on forever. What can we  learn from our ancestors?

CHAPTER 13 – AVOIDING TRIPPING HAZARDS 181

Tripping hazards are easier to avoid when you know where they are. When it comes to working in groups, can you see them coming?

CHASE–LOSE   183

Chase teamwork, leadership, morale, and culture and you will surely lose them all.

PROCESS–CONTENT   189

You can run the process. You can contribute to content. Pick one.

SHAPE SHIFTING 191

How to destroy your power in groups.

CHAPTER 14 – REFUSING TO HIDE OUT 194

We all live our lives trying to avoid embarrassment. Can you recognize when you and your group are hiding out and playing safe?

VICTIM–LEADER   197

What does ‘‘going victim’’ sound like?

COURT–LOCKER ROOM   199

Do you find planning to be a near-death experience?

CONFUSION   203

Why is confusion such a wonderful way of being?

PART 5: UNIVERSAL PATTERNS OF THRIVING IN AMBIGUITY  205

How do you stay healthy when the world is sick?

CHAPTER 15 – AVOIDING BRIGHT AND SHINY OBJECTS AND SQUIRRELS 206

How do you manage distractions?

A CLEARING 209

How skilled are you at creating nothing?

ISSUES FORWARD   213

Looking behind and looking ahead are both important. What is the right ratio?

CHAPTER 16 – TAKING GREAT CARE OF YOURSELF   216

Can you give up coming from ‘‘something is wrong’’?

COMMITMENT VERSUS ATTACHMENT   219

Why saying ‘‘This project makes me so frustrated’’ is irrational.

BE   223

How good are you at cutting grass when you are cutting grass?

CONCLUSION: NOWWHAT? 226

NOTES  228

INDEX OF THE PRIMES  237

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 239