All Hands On Deck: Navigating Your Team Through Crises, Getting Your Organization Unstuck, and Emerging Victorious

In ALL HANDS ON DECK: Navigating Your Team Through Crisis, Getting Your Organization Unstuck and Emerging Victorious (Career Press, June 2015), Boni shows any leader or aspiring leader exactly what to do. Following his advice, recognition and rewards come quickly. It even allows leaders without an MBA or Ivy League education to leapfrog over those who have superior credentials or stronger ties to an old boys' network. Beginning with the riveting, true story of Massachusetts clipper ship Captain Josiah Nickerson Knowles who saved his crew and all but one passenger during not one but two shipwrecks in the Pacific, author Peter J. Boni demonstrates how adversity should be embraced, rather than avoided.

Boni presents a proven process to overcome chaos and disorder. By interviewing himself as the CEO of embattled Safeguard Scientifics as well as five prominent C-suite executives who triumphed over difficulties in the fields of consumer products, healthcare, biotech, non-profit and academia, we understand the thinking and actions necessary to get and keep organizations out of trouble and onto solid ground.

The 12-Step Kedge-Off Process that Boni created is a blueprint for repositioning organizations and a model for any executive facing business dysfunctions and setbacks. The Process is divided into three phases, each anchored with the easy to remember moniker the "ABCs to Advance:"

• Phase 1: Hatch the Plan - Ask questions and listen; then ask for help. Base your plan on what you hear and see, or on what you don't hear and see. Challenge the sacred cows and the status quo. Share the vision to create a collective energy.
• Phase 2: Kick off the Plan - Act boldly to kick off the game plan. Build on strengths. Control through visible measurement. Streamline the activity schedule.
• Phase 3: Execute the Plan - Assert yourself at the focal point. Borrow from alliances and partnerships. Communicate progress and results to keep/get on track. Spread the rewards of wealth and recognition when things go your way.

Boni would agree that you cannot prevent the storms that are inevitable in real life situations. But with his ABCs to Advance as well as the instructive real life stories of ALL HANDS ON DECK, we have a valuable guide for how to think in a crisis and how to cultivate the character traits to become an effective leader. While the techniques will get you out of a jam, use them early enough and they may very well KEEP you out of a jam.

About the Author

Peter J. Boni has advanced by tackling tough assignments to reposition organizations that have run aground. During his career, he added $5 billion of value as a CEO, Fortune 500 executive, consultant, director, and venture capital investor. Twice cited in Ernst & Young's Entrepreneur of the Year competition, he has been featured in the Wall Street Journal and Investor's Business Daily and commented for CNBC, TheStreet.com, and Fox Business. Drawing from real-world business and military experience, he has refined a three-phase leadership process to advance careers and guide organizational teams through troubled waters. Boni resides in the Philadelphia area and sails in his native Cape Cod, Massachusetts.