Transforming Leaders into Progress Makers: Leadership for the 21st Century

Citation

Hughes, L.W. (2011), "Transforming Leaders into Progress Makers: Leadership for the 21st Century", Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Vol. 32 No. 4, pp. 417-418. https://doi.org/10.1108/01437731111134670

After a hard hitting “Foreword” by Dr George Reed in which the state of leadership scholarship and study is called to task, Transforming Leaders into Progress Makers: Leadership for the 21st Century provides a well considered treatment of leadership development in a dynamic world. As citizens witness nation‐changing events occurring across the globe, the nature of life and nature of work are on a collision course. Success is not measured during annual performance reviews, but by real‐time responses to events that, while important, become history after a short time. In this book, Phillip Clampitt and Robert DeKoch provide a framework for developing effective leaders whose performance is measured by their respective progress and not by traditional metrics.

The authors provide a unique approach to the discussion of leader development. Although the goal of developing leaders is that of progress they do not minimize this outcome by strictly operationalizing the term. In a no‐nonsense manner the authors explore the idea of progress, how to leverage leader skills to achieve progress, identifying and managing obstacles to progress, when to execute new organizational initiatives or simply repair what is broken, and describe how not all leaders are progress makers. This last point is reminiscent of the adage, “all managers are leaders, but not all leaders are managers.” Here, all progress makers are leaders, but the converse is not true.

The authors' collective style of writing allows them to pack a tremendous discussion in fewer than 250 pages. While pithy, this volume does not ignore substance. The book is comprised of two sections: “Elements of progress making” and “Strategies for progress makers.” Each section contains eight chapters. In the first section, the model is developed and explained. In the second, the authors elaborate on and describe how to enact the model. Overall, the authors' treatment of the model and related topics are balanced and well illustrated by a wide variety of examples. The scope of examples is useful to a variety of readers and not restricted to a single perspective (e.g. for‐profit, military). Any leader in any organization facing any macro‐environmental force can draw benefit from this book.

The first six chapters describe the authors' thinking behind the model and the story of its development. In Chapter 7 there is an explanation of how the two types of Progress Makers achieve progress. Chapter 8 describes a handful of leaders who fit the definition of Progress Maker. Although Clampitt and DeKoch provide a balanced selection of exemplary leaders throughout the book, this reviewer's primary criticism is that Chapter 8 was not more focused on comparing and contrasting the dozens of leaders outlined throughout the book. An appendix provides a list of the authors noted in the book, but the reader is not as well served by this as by a useful narrative.

Section two contains eight chapters that more thoroughly explore how progress makers lead. A wide variety of topics relevant to leadership is reasonably well covered considering the breadth and depth of topics. There is a theme of decisiveness in this section that is perceptible throughout the entire book. Although decisiveness is not overtly investigated in the model, this reviewer understood that progress makers possess clear vision, recognize opportunities, and execute decisions quickly.

Transforming Leaders provides complete references at the end of each chapter and a thorough table of contents and index. Locating topics in the book is very simple given the effort that went into these features. Two appendices contain, first, a listing of the leaders profiled in the book, and their organizational affiliations, and second, an outline of the history of the research behind the model.

As a treatise of leadership development, Transforming Leaders into Progress Makers is an interesting read as the early years of the millennium continue to surprise us daily and the context of influence welcomes a new breed of leader.