Followship - How followers are creating change and changing leaders, Barbara Kellerman

Fill in the blank- for every 100 books on leadership there are ____ books on followers. (Correct answer is zero) You could be led to believe that businesses are run by leaders all by themselves!! Barbara Kellerman, lecturer at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard, has done a remarkable analysis of the role of followers and their impact on leaders.

Big Ideas - The essential guide to the latest thinking, James Harkin

It seems as if we are assaulted by a battery of new ideas, buzzwords and neologisms tossed about by the urbane, as if everyone understands them! It is easy to feel left out... Once there were ideas as labels to help us describe and understand our world, change it, make money in it, but now they seem as if they are only intended to make the speaker more intriguing.

PLEASE NOTE: THIS BBB DISCUSSION WILL ALSO TAKE PLACE IN CAPE TOWN - Radisson Hotel, Beach Road, Granger Bay, Cape Town THURSDAY 8th MAY 7:45 a.m. to 8:45 a.m.

Followship - How followers are creating change and changing leaders, Barbara Kellerman

Fill in the blank- for every 100 books on leadership there are ____ books on followers. (Correct answer is zero) You could be led to believe that businesses are run by leaders all by themselves!! Barbara Kellerman, lecturer at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard, has done a remarkable analysis of the role of followers and their impact on leaders.

Through gripping stories about a range of people and places - from multinational corporations such as Merck, to Nazi Germany, and the American military after 9/11 - Kellerman identifies five different types of followers by their level of engagement. She shows how people with no apparent power, authority or influence, have an impact on those far better positioned than they are. The challenge is that followers matter, have a profound impact, not only when they do something, but even when they do nothing.

She draws on fields as diverse as psychology, sociology and history, to demonstrate that followers have always been important in making the right (or wrong) things happen. She shows that the followers impact is now greater than you probably thought possible.

You probably know a great deal about the 3% of the organization (leaders), now it’s time to deeply understand the 97%?  See you at the breakfast...

Big Ideas - The essential guide to the latest thinking, James Harkin

It seems as if we are assaulted by a battery of new ideas, buzzwords and neologisms tossed about by the urbane, as if everyone understands them! It is easy to feel left out... Once there were ideas as labels to help us describe and understand our world, change it, make money in it, but now they seem as if they are only intended to make the speaker more intriguing.

'Big Ideas' isn’t a dictionary of terms, rather it is a selection of the most common and interesting ideas explained and criticised. After all, simply knowing what the 'wisdom of crowds' means, is hugely different from knowing that it is nonsense unless qualified by a long set of 'but only if...'    

The book not only fills you in on what the current popular ideas are all about, (making you a great raconteur at a cocktail party),  but you will probably be the only one there who really knows what the ideas mean and don’t mean!

But there is a more serious side to the book which is why I think it is so valuable. Ideas are important - after all they shape our mental landscape, expand our thinking and influence our decisions. It will broaden your horizons and enrich you. Good stuff, don’t miss it.