Leadership Failures Precautionary Tales and Prevention Strategies

Preface

• Three Envelopes: An Important Opening Parable
• Is This Book for You? Essential Elements
• Prevention and Damage Control

• Why Us? .
• Book Organization & How to Use .

Vignette 1: Well-prepared for the Wrong Role

Vignette 2: Counter-cultural Leadership

Vignette 3: Well Qualified, But Lazy

Vignette 4: Sick Organization Syndrome (SOS)

Vignette 5: Large and In Charge

Vignette 6: Weak Moral Compass

Vignette 7: You Can Stay Too Long

Vignette 8: Symbols & Behaviors Communicate More than Words

Vignette 9: A Single Source of Truth Needs to be Verified

Vignette 10: Temper Tantrums Are for Two-year-olds

Vignette 11: Rip off the Bandage

Vignette 12: Keep the Personal Away from the Professional

Vignette 13: Leader’s Mind, But Not Brain, Is Lost

Vignette 14: Family Business or Business of the Family?

Vignette 15: Bureaucratic Success, Mission Leadership Failure

Vignette 16: Leadership Failure Cascade

Vignette 17: Boards Bruise the Business

Vignette 18: Don’t Confuse Activity With Productivity

Vignette 19: Small Intervention But Huge Impact

Vignette 20: The No-bell Prize

Attribute 1: Honesty/Integrity

Attribute 2: Self-Awareness

Attribute 3: Emotional Maturity

Attribute 4: Communicator

Attribute 5: Decisiveness

Attribute 6: Intelligence

Attribute 7: Resilience

Chapter 3: Planning for Orderly Organizational Succession

Chapter 4: Modeling Career Growth as a Part of Succession

Chapter 5: Reframing for the Future

Chapter 6: The Final Admonition

APPENDICES: Tracking Matrix

Biography

Kate Fenner, Mark Reifsteck, Peter Fenner

"It is highly refreshing to read a book on leadership about cautionary tales. The twenty vignettes gathered over many years of the authors’ management and consulting experience, combined with the seven leadership attributes to avoid such failures, have important lessons for anyone who wants to shine as a leader."

Shantha Mohan, Mentor, Carnegie Mellon Integrated Innovation Institute; Author of the Leadership Lessons with the Beatles: Tips and Tools for Becoming Better at Leading

"Far too often, we share stories around the proverbial fire of what worked in our leadership journeys. But what lessons are missed when we can’t linger with the times where our grand ambitions failed to come to fruition? In this book, the authors do a masterful job walking through their own leadership journeys at the point of failure, using those moments to cast a light for all of us in our own work."

Peter Boumgarden
Koch Professor of Practice for Family Enterprise
Washington University in St. Louis

　
"Having spent 30+ years in the government in senior level positions retiring as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense and 12+ years in the private sector, this book on Leadership Failures is a must read to avoid the frequent mistakes all of us have made or witnessed in our careers. The book format creates an easy to visualize roadmap to facilitate self-reflection. I was most impressed with the inspiring quotes, vignettes about failures and attributes for success to help you move forward."

Robert F. Lentz
Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense and CEO Cyber Security Strategies

"Brilliant. Simply brilliant. If you are tired of sports coaches touting leadership principles of generals, generals touting leadership principles of corporate CEOs and corporate CEOs using sports metaphors and touting the great leadership of coaches, you need to read a book that is truly helpful, not hackneyed. Leadership Failures is that book. Failure is a far better teacher than fortuitous success -- the lessons learned from failure are seared into our minds. Told with humor, pathos, and rock-solid analysis, Leadership Failures is the best guide I know of to lead you to leadership success."

Joseph L. Shaefer. Brigadier General, USAF, Retired

"While we learn much from our successes, it tends to be our failures that create the strongest motivators to change. This is an exceptional collection of life lessons written by a group of true professionals. The lessons that the authors have drawn from their work and shared in such an insightful manner are invaluable!"

Doug Lawson, Ph.D. Chief Executive Officer of St. Luke's Health and Senior Vice President of Operations, Texas Division, CommonSpirit Health

"The book arrived yesterday. I spent much of the evening browsing and diving in it. Oh how I wish I had had the book when I was President of the University of Toledo - I made so many mistakes that could have been avoided!!"

Lloyd A. Jacobs, MD
President Emeritus, The University of Toledo; Professor Emeritus, The University of Michigan; Senior Fellow, American College of Surgeons; Distinguished Fellow, The U.S. Council of Competitiveness