Author Description

Prescriptions for leading organizational success are plentiful, often provided by well-known senior executives, political candidates, and consultants. The objective of this book is different. It aims to explain strategies that can help leaders reach beyond ordinary success to achieve extraordinary effectiveness, spectacular results, and positively deviant performance. It does so by relying on validated findings from empirical research. The book is based on analyses of organizations that have achieved exceptional levels of success. One such study, for example, chronicles the cleanup and closure of a nuclear weapons production facility (Cameron & Lavine, 2006). The company receiving the contract to dismantle and clean up the Rocky Flats Nuclear Arsenal completed the assignment 60 years ahead of schedule, $30 billion under budget, and 13 times cleaner than required by federal standards. This company's achievement far exceeded every knowledgeable expert's predictions of performance, and it represents what I refer to as positive deviance. Carefully examining organizations such as this one has helped uncover some atypical leadership strategies that enable levels of performance that dramatically exceed expectations and reach extraordinary levels of excellence. ----Preface