THE MAMMOTH IN THE ROOM

A new view of management and team leadership.

Pokorny, the founder and CEO of Mammoth Leadership Sciences, here propounds his belief that corporate culture is of paramount importance in business. The title of his book derives from his thought-experiment of picturing primitive humans planning to attack a mammoth; in these pages, he wryly imagines a modern business faced with the same challenge: “There would be time, budget, and ROI analyses across multiple departments,” he writes. “Let’s be honest, your team would likely starve before getting close to a single woolly mammoth!” This prompts him to reflect on corporate culture, noting that though this concept is often discussed, it’s seldom enacted: “We spend days, weeks, even months preparing next year’s strategic goals but devote hardly any time to building a strong culture to support our strategic goals.” He structures his suggested remedies under three general headings: people, strategy, and implementation. And he always has a clear eye for the fallibility of humans, imperfect creatures who “like shortcuts, can get greedy … try to dominate others,” and so on. To counteract these shortcomings, he proposes broad protocols under a “Dynamic Stability Framework,” frequently returning to the old idea of not making perfect the enemy of good. “100 percent quick, 70 percent right, and the rest can be fixed later!” he reminds his readers, noting that they’ll never have all of the information they need to make perfect decisions or put them into practice. Pokorny presents these maxims with force and a friendly clarity drawn from decades working in a variety of leadership roles; most of his points resound because they’re obviously distilled from personal experience. His repeated insistence on the importance of baking a unified corporate culture into the DNA of hiring, training, and mentoring might trouble readers who don’t want to live, eat, and breathe their jobs—but they’re clearly not the book’s target audience.

A powerful call for putting corporate culture first in every aspect of business.