Spiral Up: ... and Other Management Secrets Behind Wildly Successful Initiatives

Chapter 1. Concrete Slippers or Helium Hightops: The Management Secrets Behind Wildly Successful Initiatives

You won’t be reading about Jack Welch in this book. Or about any other rock star CEOs, no matter how stunning their insights or accomplishments might be. This book is about everyday heroes who have stepped outside the practice of conventional management to produce initiatives that are wildly successful. In a phrase, they have worked wonders. We’re going to be looking closely at their stories to understand what makes these initiatives so different from so-called best management practice and what it takes to pull them off.

We’ll start with the assumption that most managers are neither inept nor venal. The vast majority are well-trained, well-intentioned, ...