On Purpose: Why great leaders start with the PLOT

PART IThe Fable (Back to School)

We've all been eight years old, innocent and wide-eyed. We've all been students willing and wanting to learn. And we've all had a teacher we loved.

This modern-day fable seeks to help us find — and stay true to — our purpose when we're charting off course.

Our fable is set in Glen Fark County, post GFC, in a world where reality TV takes precedence and the size of celebrities' derrières is at the front of too many people's minds.

Our all-seeing narrator takes us into Ms Molloy's classroom, where a class of students will soon begin work on one of their most challenging assignments yet: learning leadership lessons of a complex business world and staying true to these, no matter the circumstance.

It's an adult world — you'd think, at least — so the children seek a little help from one of the parents, Bob. Bob is a hard-working banker (and, as you will soon see, many of us have worked for, or with, a ‘Bob').

I hope you enjoy the fable in all its irony, which may weave some morals and lessons through a little piece of your world. Some are stated, some are subtle and some are specific only for a few of us — unique for ‘our' stories. A free-form Smartboard has been created in the back of the book for the note-takers like me (give me digital, but please let me keep my Moleskine notebook). With or without notes, it, as we say in New Jersey, may help you to get shit done.

Oh, just one more thing: every good fable features an animal and this one is no different. ...