Managing at the Leading Edge: Navigating and Piloting Business Strategy at Critical Moments

We live in an exciting time. Technology, globalization and demographic shifts provide new potential for personal and business success. Yet, research tells that only 30% of our attempts to implement change succeed amid the turbulence we encounter both within and outside today’s organizations. We need new ways of thinking and doing if we are to turn potential into performance. Managing at the Leading Edge provides a new evidence-based roadmap for leadership success in a dynamic context.

Managing at the Leading Edge highlights lessons from the navigation and piloting practices used in high performing sailing. In the contemporary “white water” business environment, as at sea, achieving goals requires choosing a destination amidst uncertainty, adjusting to continually shifting conditions, converting the push and pull of environmental forces into momentum and using different skills at different times to negotiate hazards and achieve success.

Easy-to-grasp and recall, this book proposes a framework of leadership with a dual focus on navigating and piloting. This framework is supported by new evidence-based insights about personal and organizational high performance. Systematic comparisons of high performing leaders and organizations with leaders and organizations that have not yet achieved this distinction illustrate how the principles of navigation and piloting apply. This research featured surveys of over 1,000 senior and mid-level leaders, the results of over a 100 interviews and the author’s extensive consultation experience with a host of leaders and organizations.

Through case studies, discussion of relevant research, practical tools and templates, Managing at the Leading Edge will help you learn:

• The critical tasks of leader navigating and piloting that lead to successful business change
• Leadership skills through which the critical tasks of navigating and piloting are successfully executed including accountability, influence, problem solving agility and engagement
• Strategies and tactics for managing points along a strategic initiative’s leading edge through with resistance to change is converted into momentum and progress
• The critical hand-offs between the navigating and piloting functions and these functions drive change at the leading edge as synchronized system of high performance leadership
• Leadership practices that create organizational high performance

Armed with leadership capabilities of high performance navigating and piloting you will be able to recognize and act on opportunities for enhanced leadership impact and achieve results that matter for you, your peers and your organization.

About the Author

Tom Rose, Ph.D., is Head of Innovation and Customer Solutions and member of the senior leadership team at AchieveForum. Rose combines an inside-outside view of what it takes to drive successful strategic initiatives. A veteran psychologist, he has over 25 years of experience playing external consultant roles in the consumer products, financial services, and pharmaceuticals industries. Complementing this outside consultant’s view Rose has had several HR leadership roles including CHRO, head of talent management, talent planning, compensation, and metrics functions. Dr. Rose has worked in a diverse range of organizations like Sun Life Financial, Syracuse University and Reebok.