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Strategic Intelligence: Conceptual Tools for Leading Change
Changes in technology, customer demands, competition, and the social character challenge organizations to innovate and change. How they change depends on their leaders, and their knowledge, and philosophy. To create a better future for organizations and to improve the wellbeing of customers, collaborators and communities, leaders need to be strategic thinkers.This book describes the qualities of strategic intelligence and provides the conceptual tools that equip leaders to improve and transform organizations in the age of knowledge work. These qualities include foresight, visioning, partnering both within and outside the organization, and engaging and motivating collaborators. To develop these qualities, it is necessary to articulate a leadership philosophy and to gain knowledge of systems, variation, personality psychology, and the theory ofknowledge. This book uniquely integrates leadership, personality and organization.Michael Maccoby has almost unparalleled experience of working with organizations in a wide variety of contexts. He draws his insights from several disciplines - organization theory, psychoanalysis, anthropology; and from working with distinguished and pioneer thinkers. These include the psychoanalyst Erich Fromm; the systems theorist Russell Ackoff; and management pioneer W. Edwards Deming.A major challenge for leadership today is the transformation of traditional bureaucracies into learning organizations. It can't be done by following formulas or roadmaps. Leaders need the qualities and conceptual tools of strategic intelligence and this book shows them what they must do and provides exercises to develop them.
208 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 25, 2015
2 people are currently reading
65 people want to read
About the author
Michael Maccoby
49 books19 followersMichael Maccoby is globally recognized as an expert on leadership. He is president of The Maccoby Group in Washington, DC and is an Associate Fellow of the Säid Business School, Oxford University.
For over 35 years, Dr. Maccoby has been consultant and coach to leaders in corporations, unions, universities, the World Bank, and the State and Commerce Departments of the U.S. Government and the U.S. Army. He has worked in 36 countries in the Americas, Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa.
Dr. Maccoby became known internationally both for his books on leadership and his pioneering projects to improve the workplace. His book The Gamesman (1977), was the first bestseller to describe the new entrepreneurs and managers in high-tech industry. The Leader (1981) followed, presenting as an ideal, managers who developed both their organizations and people for a changing world. Why Work? Motivating the New Work Force (second edition, 1995), presents a new theory of motivation to fit the changing values of knowledge workers. It has been translated into 10 languages. Maccoby is co-author of Agents of Change: Crossing the Post Industrial Divide (2003), which describes his leadership of AT&T’s Workplace of the Future in the 1990s. His 2007 book, The Leaders We Need, And What Makes Us Follow, examines leadership from the point of followers as well as leaders.
His article “Narcissistic Leaders: the Incredible Pros, the Inevitable Cons”, January, 2000 won a McKinsey Award, which recognizes the two best Harvard Business Review articles published each year. It was the basis for the book, The Productive Narcissist: The Promise and Peril of Visionary Leadership, published in 2003. In 2007, Harvard Business School Press published the paperback with a new introduction, re-titled Narcissistic Leaders: Who Succeeds and Who Fails.
Dr. Maccoby was facilitator of the National Coalition on Health Care in developing specifications for a comprehensive U.S. health care policy and is on the board of the NCHC. He has been a consultant on the management of change at health care centers, and received grants from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for the study “Leadership for Health Care in the Age of Learning”, which was published by the Association of Academic Health Centers in 2001. He is the senior author of Transforming Health Care Leadership, A Systems Guide to Improve Patient Health, Decrease Costs, and Improve Population Health (2013).
Dr. Maccoby worked as a consultant, researcher and lecturer in Sweden from 1973-2005. His book Sweden At the Edge, Lessons for American and Swedish Managers (1991) described some of his work. In 2007, King Carl XVI Gustaf named him a Commander of the Royal Order of the Polar Star.
From 1978-90, Dr. Maccoby was director of the Program on Technology, Public Policy and Human Development at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. He has taught at Harvard, University of Chicago, Cornell University, University of California, l'Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris, Oxford, the Brookings Institution and the Washington School of Psychiatry. He received a B.A. in Social Psychology, and a Ph.D. in Social Relations from Harvard. He also studied philosophy at New College, Oxford, as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow and psychoanalysis with Erich Fromm and graduated from the Mexican Institute where was a training analyst. With Fromm he wrote Social Character in a Mexican Village (1970, reissued in 1996). He has been a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, American Anthropological Association, Society for Applied Anthropology and the National Academy of Public Administration. He is a member of the board of The Albert Shanker Institute and he coaches leaders at Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos, homes for orphaned and abandoned children, an orphanage in Mexico, Honduras, Haiti, Nicaragua, Guatemala, ElSalvador, the Dominican Republ
For over 35 years, Dr. Maccoby has been consultant and coach to leaders in corporations, unions, universities, the World Bank, and the State and Commerce Departments of the U.S. Government and the U.S. Army. He has worked in 36 countries in the Americas, Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa.
Dr. Maccoby became known internationally both for his books on leadership and his pioneering projects to improve the workplace. His book The Gamesman (1977), was the first bestseller to describe the new entrepreneurs and managers in high-tech industry. The Leader (1981) followed, presenting as an ideal, managers who developed both their organizations and people for a changing world. Why Work? Motivating the New Work Force (second edition, 1995), presents a new theory of motivation to fit the changing values of knowledge workers. It has been translated into 10 languages. Maccoby is co-author of Agents of Change: Crossing the Post Industrial Divide (2003), which describes his leadership of AT&T’s Workplace of the Future in the 1990s. His 2007 book, The Leaders We Need, And What Makes Us Follow, examines leadership from the point of followers as well as leaders.
His article “Narcissistic Leaders: the Incredible Pros, the Inevitable Cons”, January, 2000 won a McKinsey Award, which recognizes the two best Harvard Business Review articles published each year. It was the basis for the book, The Productive Narcissist: The Promise and Peril of Visionary Leadership, published in 2003. In 2007, Harvard Business School Press published the paperback with a new introduction, re-titled Narcissistic Leaders: Who Succeeds and Who Fails.
Dr. Maccoby was facilitator of the National Coalition on Health Care in developing specifications for a comprehensive U.S. health care policy and is on the board of the NCHC. He has been a consultant on the management of change at health care centers, and received grants from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for the study “Leadership for Health Care in the Age of Learning”, which was published by the Association of Academic Health Centers in 2001. He is the senior author of Transforming Health Care Leadership, A Systems Guide to Improve Patient Health, Decrease Costs, and Improve Population Health (2013).
Dr. Maccoby worked as a consultant, researcher and lecturer in Sweden from 1973-2005. His book Sweden At the Edge, Lessons for American and Swedish Managers (1991) described some of his work. In 2007, King Carl XVI Gustaf named him a Commander of the Royal Order of the Polar Star.
From 1978-90, Dr. Maccoby was director of the Program on Technology, Public Policy and Human Development at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. He has taught at Harvard, University of Chicago, Cornell University, University of California, l'Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris, Oxford, the Brookings Institution and the Washington School of Psychiatry. He received a B.A. in Social Psychology, and a Ph.D. in Social Relations from Harvard. He also studied philosophy at New College, Oxford, as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow and psychoanalysis with Erich Fromm and graduated from the Mexican Institute where was a training analyst. With Fromm he wrote Social Character in a Mexican Village (1970, reissued in 1996). He has been a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, American Anthropological Association, Society for Applied Anthropology and the National Academy of Public Administration. He is a member of the board of The Albert Shanker Institute and he coaches leaders at Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos, homes for orphaned and abandoned children, an orphanage in Mexico, Honduras, Haiti, Nicaragua, Guatemala, ElSalvador, the Dominican Republ
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March 19, 2019
I picked up this book because one thing in life is certain and that is change will happen. The main difference in business I have found is that people who are flexible and able to adapt to change have a bigger probability to be successful than the ones who don’t. Then there is the “question” how capable are you as a leader at implementing change and preparing your team to have a positive mindset about change and looking for opportunities and not thinking that change is bad. Maccoby argues that a successful leader must understand change, use a systems approach to identify areas of change, and finally, create an organizational climate conducive to the change they wish to see.
When picking up this book keep in mind that Maccoby is a psychoanalyst and his writing style is influenced by his academic nature. By this, I mean that at certain points the book becomes very dull (if you are not an academic like him) because of all the in-depth references from the world of psychology. The author and the theory in the book confirmes what I believe about leadership, so from this point of view, I found the book very interesting. As you will see later in my notes from the book, for a business to be successful you need people with the right mindset (looking for opportunities, developing strategy which is focused on your users/consumers), and by creating an environment in which these people feel safe and motivated to give the best they can. It’s not always about the “bottom line”, the money, or the biggest office. Business is about people, people are emotional, so for a business to be successful and lead people not manage them it needs to understand emotions. For me, this was one of the main messages from the book.
After reading this book I wasn’t sure how to actually do a book review about it. Since the message of the book for me was something I agree with fully but at the same time the way the book was written I found myself struggling at moments if I should continue reading it or not. Maccoby has his academic writing style that either you like or don’t. I believe some things could have been written plainer.
You can find my complete review with notes from the book at: https://purposefocuscommitment.com/bo...
I hope you have found this information useful.
When picking up this book keep in mind that Maccoby is a psychoanalyst and his writing style is influenced by his academic nature. By this, I mean that at certain points the book becomes very dull (if you are not an academic like him) because of all the in-depth references from the world of psychology. The author and the theory in the book confirmes what I believe about leadership, so from this point of view, I found the book very interesting. As you will see later in my notes from the book, for a business to be successful you need people with the right mindset (looking for opportunities, developing strategy which is focused on your users/consumers), and by creating an environment in which these people feel safe and motivated to give the best they can. It’s not always about the “bottom line”, the money, or the biggest office. Business is about people, people are emotional, so for a business to be successful and lead people not manage them it needs to understand emotions. For me, this was one of the main messages from the book.
After reading this book I wasn’t sure how to actually do a book review about it. Since the message of the book for me was something I agree with fully but at the same time the way the book was written I found myself struggling at moments if I should continue reading it or not. Maccoby has his academic writing style that either you like or don’t. I believe some things could have been written plainer.
You can find my complete review with notes from the book at: https://purposefocuscommitment.com/bo...
I hope you have found this information useful.
Displaying 1 of 1 review