Rating: 
(Oakland, California: Koehler Publishers, Inc., 2015)
131 pgs
Mark Miller is the Vice President for Leadership Development at Chick-fil-A. He’s written several other books including: The Secret: What Great Leaders Know and Do, The Heart of Leadership, and The Secret of Teams. His writing style is the leadership fable approach similar to that of Patrick Lencioni.
This volume is a sequel to his earlier book, The Heart of Leadership where he traces the leadership journey of Blake. Blake is a well-meaning executive who constantly underperforms. After seeking help from a leadership coach, he learns valuable lessons in leadership that transforms his career. In this new volume, Blake has the opportunity to become the CEO of an underperforming company. He seeks the help of a new mentor, Jack, who is a retired, very successful CEO who also happens to be a Grandmaster in Chess.
This is a short book with four basic points. The key focus is that low levels of leadership are like the game of checkers. All of the pieces have the same value and capacity and most of the game is simply reacting to what your opponent does. It does not take great thought or forward thinking to play the game. For start up companies this level of leadership can be fine. However, as organizations become more complex, the checkers approach to leadership is no longer sufficient. That’s when you need chess.
Throughout the book, Jack teaches Blake how to use chess principles to turn around his company. He realizes that various pieces in chess have different values and functions. The key is maximizing each piece and getting as many pieces as possible into the game and focusing on the same goal. It also requires forethought as you think ahead to where you are going.
The four principles brought out in the book are:
- Bet on Leadership: Growing leaders grow organizations.
- Act as one: Alignment multiplies impact.
- Win the heart: Engagement energizes effort.
- Excel at execution: Greatness hinges on execution
There are not necessarily a lot of groundbreaking ideas in this book. Due to its brevity, the story is somewhat simplistic. However, using the storytelling approach, Miller demonstrates how these principles can be applied in practical ways. This book contains leadership wisdom that is easily ingested. You can read this on a short flight. While you don’t necessarily want to limit yourself to this genre of leadership materials, they can be helpful and practical to read occasionally when you want to have a benchmark to measure how your organization is currently performing.
This is a good, short, read. Worth taking with you on a trip some time when you need a quick refresher on solid leadership principles.
by Richard Blackaby