HOW LEADERS CAN INSPIRE ACCOUNTABILITY

A well-organized business book designed to help managers become leaders.

In his latest book, Timms draws on his own long experience of counseling businesses to distill the fundamentals of good leadership and differentiate them from various types of poor management. At the heart of his treatment is what he calls a “superpower”: systems thinking, which management theorist Peter Senge defined in the 1990s as “seeing patterns where others see only events and forces to react to,” and which the author describes as “simply a more enlightened way of looking at problems to discover insights that would otherwise remain undetected.” Developing the superpower of systems thinking will, he contends, allows one to take a wider view, and step back and see unhelpful processes; taking ownership of such behaviors and working to improve them increases personal accountability, he asserts. Timms returns often to this latter concept, discussing how to hold others accountable in an organization, and how to create organizations that are accountable to the wider community. It’s clear from his fast-paced chapters that he views this idea as the crucial difference between being simply a manager and being a leader. Managers might be problem-solvers, but, as Timms puts it, “you are only a leader when others willingly follow you because they trust and respect you, not because they fear the consequences of not doing so.” The author also distills three main habits that readers can develop in order to build this trust and respect: First, don’t rely on blaming others; second, acknowledge one’s own part in any problem; and third, fix processes to get the desired result. In clear, confident prose, Timms outlines a leadership blueprint that has many basic elements in common with other books in the genre, but he presents them energetically, along with useful charts and illustrations. Overall, the author asks readers to ask themselves a daunting but simple question: “Would anybody willingly follow me if they weren’t being paid to do so?” His strategies will help readers find answers.

A lean, sharp, and readable leadership enhancement program.