Power Up: Transforming Organizations Through Shared Leadership

I am biased in my report in that I know the book intimately. I can only say that I am aware of no other leadership book that has captured the correct essence of where human leadership is and where it could go. Yes, read the stories, and the author's words, but I challenge you to look beyond all that they have thankfully given us as simple stories and realize the potential of the type of leadership that they call post-heroic leadership. Forget the label of this leadership they communicate and instead listen to underlying message of Power Up. John P. Kotter once wrote a poem that goes something like this..."beyond the yellow brick road of naiveté, past the muggers land of cynicism, there lies a narrow path whose entrance is hard to find and poorly lit. Once found staying on such a path is even harder. Undertaking such a path is a moral undertaking. We need many more to take such a path...many, many more." Power Up describes a way that might help you see your way down your own path better and a way that is good for all mankind. I have always said that this book will never be a best seller, because that just means that a lot of people read it, but I believe that hundreds of thousands of years from now it will still be revered as a great work in promoting the understanding of improving human leadership. It will get there I think, because of those few souls who read it and understand. I will fight by your side if your purpose is good, and I follow you if your path is pure. Focus, Thundering Eagle

The authors make the impossible seem very possible in this excellent book. The differences between heroic and post-heroic leadership is well defined through stories involving real people. Can an organization switch from heroic to post-heroic leadership, sure, but it is not easy. Somehow this book and its ideas make that ideal a bit more reasonable. Only for managers and leaders who are ready to go out on a limb and turn everything they thought they knew upside down. Good luck.