Best Practices in Planning and Performance Management: Radically Rethinking Management for a Volatile World, Third Edition

Chapter 13. Managing in an Uncertain World

	The only safe ship in a storm is leadership.
	--Faye Wattleton

Great leaders are rarely revealed in good times; after all, a rising tide lifts all ships, even those with mediocre captains. It takes adversity to uncover greatness (and also reveal incompetence), from Winston Churchill's inspirational leadership of Britain through the dark days of 1940 to Lou Gerstner's revival of IBM after the company was bordering on irrelevance.

The ability to mobilize and motivate people and then lead them to effect substantial change is an essential part of management. Leadership is a complex subject, and a full discussion is beyond the scope of this book; however, a discussion of best practices would be incomplete if it did not recognize the key elements of effective leadership that create the environment essential for successful implementation.

Before the nineteenth century, the predominant business models were that of the farm and the family. Business leaders usually were synonymous with business owners, and most enterprises were family-run. The practice of professional leadership was mostly restricted to the military. It was in the military that the first real separation between ownership and governance or leadership was established. The emergence of professional soldiers—exemplified by famous military heroes such as Marlborough, Wellington, and Nelson—foreshadowed the appearance of the professional manager as leader. During the nineteenth century, ...