This slideshow is derived from the Book Rapper version of James Kouzes and Barry Posner’s best selling book: The Leadership Challenge.
This is the 5th Edition and 25th Anniversary edition of this super successful leadership book. It’s been translated into 20 languages and sold more than two million copies.
The leadership challenge is to make extraordinary things happen in organisations. Are you up for it?
[easyazon-link asin=”0470651725″ locale=”us”]Buy The Leadership Challenge on Amazon (affiliate)[/easyazon-link]
Can a book be too successful?
I read this book and completed a book summary of it due to a commission from a client. They loved the book. I didn’t.
My concern with this book was that it felt like reading a book of cliches – everything was familiar and consistent with what so many people talked about in the leadership space.
There are two ways of looking at my response.
One, perhaps the books exposes a series of common-sense ideas that occur as so logical and obvious once they have been defined and shared. This is the power and weakness of a great idea. Without it we are blind, and when it is exposed, it’s a case of it being obvious.
Two, and perhaps more likely, is the amazing success of this book has become a norm, a standard, a usual way of operating. After 25 years and over two million copies sold, it is likely that so many people have encountered this book that has become the usual story of leadership. Perhaps if I was reading the first edition twenty-five years ago, I would have been astounded and amazing at the insights it offers. But, right now, I’m a little underwhelmed by what I’ve read.
What do you think? Is this book a marvel or a cliche? Is it a case of being so successful and so widespread in its adoption that it is no longer significant? Or is it simply an essential foundation for all good leaders?
