Page 23 - The extraordinary leader

xviii • Introduction

Monday morning?” Books on leadership should meet the same test. Most
recommendations are ones that mere mortals can use comfortably—on
Monday morning.
Our third objective was that the book be empirical. We insisted that it be
based on hard data, facts, and statistical analyses. Huge sets of data were the
touchstone to which we constantly returned.
Frankly, we tire of books by executives and business writers that primarily
express personal philosophies and beliefs, especially when they are so incon-
sistent. The discipline of leadership and those committed to developing lead-
ers inside organizations surely deserve better. Our standard was to have every
conclusion grounded in objective data. The combination of hard data and
statistical analyses were to be the point of the spear. It then became our task
to make sense of the data and to put logical explanations around our findings.
We welcome feedback from readers. The topic deserves a great deal of dia-
logue from all of us who are concerned with the future of our great institu-
tions—universities, schools, hospitals, government agencies, and businesses.
These all need leaders to flourish. Our hope is that the information that fol-
lows will in some small way aid in the development of those much-needed
leaders.