Leading at a Higher Level: Blanchard on Leadership and Creating High Performing Organizations

by Kenneth H. Blanchard, Marjorie Blanchard, Scott Blanchard

Book Overview

40 Years of Breakthrough Leadership Insights in One Extraordinary Book From The One Minute Manager(R) to Raving Fans, Ken Blanchard's books have helped millions of people unleash their power and the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0132347725
• ISBN13: 9780132347723
• Release Date: January 2007
• Publisher: Pearson Prentice Hall
• Length: 355 Pages
• Weight: 1.26 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.5" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Required reading for everyone who wants to become a better leader

Ken Blanchard, co-author of The One Minute Manager, and his colleagues at The Ken Blanchard Companies have spent more than 25 years helping good leaders and organizations become great and stay great. In this book, they describe how leaders can empower people and unleash their incredible potential. This book must be required reading for everyone who wants to become a better leader. A better definition of leadership, according to the author, is the capacity to influence others by unleashing the power and potential of people and organizations for the greater good. Leadership should not be done purely for personal gain or goal accomplishment: It should have a much higher purpose than that. Leadership can be defined as the process of achieving worthwhile results while acting with respect, care and fairness for the well-being of all involved. When that occurs, self-serving leadership is not possible. It's only when you realize that it's not about you that you begin to lead at a higher level. Being a successful leader is not only about leading your organization, but your customers as well. According to the author, to keep your customers, you can't be content just to satisfy them; you have to create raving fans. Raving fans are customers who are so excited about the way you treat them that they want to tell everyone about you. A good example of how this works is Domo Gas, a full-service gasoline chain in Western Canada, cofounded by Sheldon Bowles. Back in the 1970s, when everybody was going to self-service gasoline stations, Bowles knew that if people had a choice, they would never go to a gas station. But people have to get gas, and they want to get in and out as quickly as possible. The customer service vision that Bowles and his co-founders imagined was an Indianapolis 500 pit stop. They dressed all their attendants in red jumpsuits. When a customer drove into one of Bowles' stations, two or three people ran out of the hut and raced toward the car. As quickly as possible, they looked under the hood, cleaned the windshield and pumped the gas (p. 42). A successful leader must also have a workable vision, and be able to clearly communicate and share this vision with his organization. When Louis Gerstner Jr. took the helm of IBM in 1993-- amid turmoil and instability as the company's annual net losses reached a record $8 billion -- he was quoted as saying, "The last thing IBM needs is a vision." In an article in The New York Times two years later, Gerstner conceded that IBM had lost the war for the desktop operating system, acknowledging that the acquisition of Lotus signified that the company had failed to plan properly for its future. He admitted that he and his management team now "spent a lot of time thinking ahead." Once Gerstner understood the importance of vision, an incredible turnaround occurred. In 1995, delivering the keynote address at the computer industry trade show, Gerstner articulated IBM's new vision -- that network computing would

Integrated View of Leadership

Management expert Ken Blanchard has spent more than 25 years helping individuals and organizations become and stay great. Known for his co-authorship of The One Minute Manager, for the first time Blanchard combines his collective wisdom to show managers and leaders zero in on the right target and vision. Blanchard argues that in high performing organizations everyone's energy is focused on three issues: 1. Being the provider of choice. To keep your customers, you must go beyond satisfying them, you have to turn them into raving fans. 2. Being the employer of choice. Workers seek opportunities where they feel their contributions are valued and rewarded. 3. Being the investment of choice. Money flows to organizations that provide viability, visibility and performance over time. To achieve these goals, Blanchard argues, your organization must become a HPO - a high performing organization. The author employs the acronym SCORES to illustrate the six elements found in every HPO: 1. Shared Information and Communication. 2. Compelling Vision. 3. Ongoing Learning. 4. Relentless Focus on Customer Results. 5. Energizing Systems and Structures. 6. Shared Power and High Involvement. In an HPO, Blanchard writes, every thing starts and ends with the customer. Each organization member is passionate about developing sophisticated knowledge of customers and sharing the information throughout the organization. This is accomplished three ways: 1. Decide. If you want raving fans, you do not announce it. You plan for it. 2. Discover. After you decide, it's critical to ask your customers' for suggestions to improve their experience with your organization. 3. Deliver + 1 per cent. Excite your people to deliver this experience, plus. Enablement is the key to beating your competition day-after day. Allowing your people to pit their brains and allowing them to use their knowledge, experience and motivation is critical. To guide this transition to an enablement culture, leaders must use three keys: 1. Share Information. 2. Declare the Boundaries 3. Replace old Hierarchies with Self-Directed Individuals and Teams. This requires a special leader: the servant leader. Leadership has two parts: vision and implementation. They need to find out what their people need to be successful and they make a difference in the lives of their people and in the process, their organization.

An Integrated One-Volume View of Ken Blanchard's Work on Leadership

I've been reading Dr. Ken Blanchard since The One Minute Manager came out. Perhaps you have been, too. While I haven't read all of his collaborations, I've usually read the books where the title seemed relevant to my interests. More than once, I've wondered how I should fit all the pieces of his views on leadership into one finished jigsaw puzzle. Clearly, the views are humanistic, idealistic and inspiring. But how do we combine them all? My confusion was eliminated by reading Leading at a Higher Level which does an excellent job of integrating three decades worth of writing into one coherent set of ideas and directions for implementation. If you tried to boil down this book into one idea, it's that of having the right target . . . what Dr. Blanchard and his partners and associates call the triple bottom line -- being the provider of choice for customers, the employer of choice for employees, and the investment of choice for investors. I'm not inclined to quibble, but in the rest of the book it's clear that other stakeholders are supposed to be considered (people who use the offerings, partners, the community, suppliers, and those affected by the company). I wonder if the triple bottom line doesn't need to be expanded to have more bottom lines. Here's how the book is organized: I. Set Your Sights on the Right Target and Vision 1. Measuring leadership performance -- the HPO SCORES model which is: a. Shared information and open communications b. Compelling vision c. Ongoing learning d. Relentless focus on customer results e. Energizing systems and structures (ways of getting things done that fit with the vision) f. Shared power and high involvement As you can see, this is a highly participative concept of leadership where everyone has a role. 2. The Power of Vision II. Treat Your Customers Right (Raving Fans created by Gung Ho people) III. Treat Your People Right (Direct, Coach, Support, or Delegate depending on how prepared your people are for the task, and use one minute praisings and redirections and apologies) IV. Have the Right Kind of Leadership (Servant leadership and diagnosing your own leadership perspective and style) The bulk of the book is focused on the third topic, treat your people right, which is Dr. Blanchard's key operating philosophy. The most interesting aspect of the book for me, however, was Dr. Blanchard's occasional revision of his philosophy. For instance, I could never understand why Dr. Johnson and he emphasized one-minute reprimands as much as one-minute praisings in The One Minute Manager. Dr. Blanchard makes a long-needed shift in that view to point out that one-minute redirections and one-minute apologies are needed much more often than one-minute reprimands. Who will gain the most from this book? Someone who wants to see a process spelled out that can be used for being a humanistic leader and who hasn't read many books on the subject. If you've already read everything that's

True to Title

Leading at a Higher Level provides practical advice for leaders seeking to fulfill a higher purpose. The book is full of key learning's, sound business practices, as well as years of research which substantiate findings. Well worth the read not to mention the modest investment.

Excellent compilation...

Not only does this book bring together years of research, but it also aggregates the minds of multiple leaders in the Blanchard organization. If you haven't read the other books coming out of the Ken Blanchard Companies, you'll definitely want to read this book. If you have read the others, this will be a great refresher and it provides a different format. As you know, many of the Blanchard books are in story format (aka parables) and now those story-based lessons are gathered into a more standard non-fiction book. The book is broken into three sections: set your sights on the right target and vision, treat your customers right, and treat your people right. The greatest focus is on the latter: treat your people right. The argument is that if you treat your people right, they'll treat your customers right and work toward your target and vision. Makes sense for really large and even smaller organizations. I'm still looking for that right book for the 1-5 person company. This is definitely a great book, but you have to transate and apply it to your scenario if there is noone between you and the customers. Enjoy your reading time. Tom Carpneter - Senior Constultant - SYSEDCO Helping IT Professionals Succeed