On Purpose: Why great leaders start with the PLOT

FOREWORD

I loved this book and read it in one sitting, give or take a few tea and coffee breaks. Karen James has written about business in a fresh and beguiling way and it is understood from the beginning that she loves both business and education as I do. She just wants them to be better and her manifesto offers advice about how we might change.

These are not changes that require regulation by government but changes in how we play the game and take personal responsibility for change. She reminds us that values statements hanging on the company walls or coming up on the screen matter not a toss if people do not live them.

On Purpose is a cleverly constructed book, as we might expect from its engineer author. Each section can stand alone or be connected — a sublime literary and engineering feat.

The Fable evoked powerful memories for me as I reflected on my first classroom experience. Planning a career as a secondary school teacher I was surprised to be assigned to a primary school for my first practice teaching my postgraduate year. My supervisor considered that exposure and early practice with 8–12 year olds offered the best experience for a teaching career. He was right.

More than five decades later I work in different classrooms and boardrooms but how I loved being thrown back into Ms Molloy's classroom in Glen Fark County with a group of 8-year-olds whose first project of the year is to build a bank.

They go back to basics as they ask: What does a bank do? What is its purpose? ...