Managing at the Leading Edge: Navigating and Piloting Business Strategy at Critical Moments

Chapter 1

Navigating

We cannot discover new oceans unless we havethe courage to lose sight of the shore.

—ANDRE GIDE

Leaders inspire, focus, and enable people and teams to perform in ways that produce results that matter. Today’s leaders must do so in a dynamic even turbulent context. Leaders who achieve meaningful outcomes in this environment constantly sense changes in their context and take action that successfully negotiates the challenges they encounter. This agile detect-and-act capability is performed through functions of organizational navigation and piloting.

In this chapter we turn to navigating, one of the two critical direction and decision-making functions leaders play. We will look at high-performance piloting, the other key leadership ...