Leadership guru Graham Alexander has come up with a winning formula to present old ideas in an innovative and captivating way. There are hundreds of leadership books on the market, many of which are based on interviews and surveys with “top leaders” in the hope of passing on their genius to the rest of leadership's mere mortals. Tales from the Top differs in its approach and as such comes across as an eminently readable and interesting book that would usefully occupy a dull train journey.
Alexander starts with the premise that there are ten key questions that every leader must answer in order to stay at the top. These include:
What's life all about for you?
What would happen if you did less?
What can only you do?
Would you do anything differently if you only had a year to live?
Each chapter is devoted to each of the ten questions and the “answers” are punctuated with case studies, anecdotes, “stop and reflect” boxes (which are slightly pithy philosophical sayings such as “make the most of living life instead of mostly living with regrets”), “Wake‐up Calls” (similar to the “stop and reflect” boxes, such as “be bold and take a risk”), Leadership Notes (as before but with more of a leadership bent such as “problem solving is a collaborate exercise”) and, my favourite, “Million‐dollar Question” boxes (with such puzzles as “is the ladder you're climbing up leaning against the wall?” and “are your customers thrilled”?). Each chapter ends with a rather grandly titled “Executive Summary”, which is really a list of all the million dollar questions, stop and reflects, wake‐up calls and leadership notes contained within that chapter.
My main complaint with this book is that the case studies and real‐life anecdotes are generally anonymous. They are still valuable and interesting, but being told that the CEO of a “large retail outlet” provided a comment or story is not quite as “real‐life” as having a named source. Of course, Alexander points out that he has to shield the true identities of his contacts for the sake of trust; his stories have been amassed over years of experience rather than provided solely for this book. I do accept this, but a few sourced anecdotes would have been a welcome addition.
It would be a shame to let that put anyone off this book. I found it intriguing and novel in its approach; it certainly made me start questioning myself a little more which is surely a better learning experience than simply being told what to do. Will it make the reader a better leader? Yes, I do think it might!
