Introduction WE NEED (BETTER) LEADERSHIP MORE THAN EVER Why culture-driven leadership? Simple: it works. And it works much better over time than the alternative, which I am defining as context-driven leadership. Context-driven leadership is defensive in nature and directed at mostly short-term outcomes. Why is time important? A recent study reported in Barron''s annual Top CEOs issue concluded that "the median tenure among the S&P 500 companies" was less than five years. Ten years ago the average was more than seven years. And unfortunately, tenures continue to shrink. A CEO with ambition and big plans likely won''t have a lot of time to lead a company to greater success. It would seem to make sense, therefore, for a CEO to focus on short-term goals and achieve success in the limited timeframe allotted them.

It turns out that''s not a good route to take. The argument in this book is that culture-driven leadership is the only viable option that will deal effectively with those shorter and shorter timeframes. In other words, culture-driven leadership can address complexity better. How do I know this? Personal experience. This book isn''t about me, however. It''s about leaders of the future. Who will they be? What will they need to know? Most important: Are you one of them? * * * Whenever I think about culture -- what it means -- I recall a meeting back in the early 2000s, when I was in the process of securing a location for the new ING Direct USA corporate offices in Wilmington, Delaware. My Dutch investors expected me to select a more conventional location, like New York or Boston.

Not only was Wilmington not a traditional banking centre, it was home to the biggest credit card companies. What in the world was an upstart internet savings bank doing there? "That''s just the point," I said. "What better place to be the David to the industry Goliath?" They came out for a visit. I was worried, of course, they''d decide I was in over my head, but by the end of the visit, they had bought into my strategy, which boiled down to this: Why take a conventional approach to building a business that is all about breaking the rules? When I explained my thinking, the chairman pulled me aside. He wanted me to know that he liked my plan and added that I was the only American he could trust. I thanked him but didn''t have the heart to tell him the truth. "I''m Canadian." It was for me a classic and incredibly illuminating leadership moment that I have never forgotten.

Know who you are; even better, know who others assume you are. * * * I am a passionate advocate of culture-driven leadership. I think that leadership is more important than ever -- but not just any kind of leadership. Over the course of the book, I hope it will become clear why culture-driven leadership is the most effective kind of leadership, the kind most likely to ensure the sustained success of a company or organization. Our need for talented leadership is one of the biggest challenges we face in the decade ahead. Not long ago, I received a call from a friend and colleague. A respected and extremely talented administrator and academic at a prestigious business school, he wanted me to know he was turning down an opportunity to extend his contract. Naturally, I was stunned.

I asked him why. He told me that he felt that he was increasingly having to fight what was a "no win" battle. Every day he was faced with a new test he had to pass; the energy that he would have preferred to spend on the exciting and important leadership challenges of planning for the future was being sucked up by having to mediate the endless squabbling of rival factions. Frankly, it wasn''t the first time I had heard a leadership colleague expressing serious doubts -- not about leadership but the possibility of leadership. I''ve spent the largest part of my career as a passionate advocate on behalf of culture-driven leadership. It''s a position that was unusual early on in my career, but not anymore. Today, you can stumble across a reference to it on almost an hourly basis. An online search I made recently for "business culture articles" turned up about 835 million results; there were about the same number on "corporate culture.

" Unfortunately for me, I also found 3.7 million references to books about business culture. Why another? I wrote this book for two reasons: first, to discuss the unprecedented challenges businesses face today; and second, to review again why culture-driven leadership will be such a valuable tool in meeting those challenges. WHAT''S IN A NAME? When you hear the name Elon Musk, what immediately comes to mind? How about Richard Branson? Both are incredibly successful and well-known entrepreneurs and CEOs. But that''s about all they have in common. It isn''t just that they have different styles. It''s more than that. They each, through what they say and do, generate a different kind of culture; they live differently.

And that difference is reflected in the very different cultures that they have created in the companies that they run. These two very different men drive very different corporate cultures. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines culture as "the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group; also: the characteristic features of everyday existence (such as diversions or a way of life) shared by people in a place or time." "Some workers," a business journal suggested, think "[culture] is a sense of organizational belonging and a strong connection to colleagues. Others say it is a set of shared values and beliefs that guide decisions. Some define it as an intangible asset described as the soul of the company." However it is defined, workers have made it clear that they believe culture plays a major role in a company''s success. The problem business leaders face today is that culture means different things to different people.

Creating a consensus or finding common ground is harder and harder. It is up to leaders to define that culture. I believe that the success of a business depends to a huge degree on harnessing the power of culture-driven leadership. To that end, it will be helpful to think of culture as "how" we get things done as a priority, not just what we get done. OUR BRAVE NEW WORLD We hear a lot about inclusion . Welcoming and valuing everyone is important; we all benefit. Practising inclusion is the right thing to do. The paradox of modern life, however, is that as society recognizes diversity and becomes more inclusive, we are also becoming more divided.

It is getting harder to figure out what we have in common. Culture-driven leadership is focused on finding commonalities, shared interests, and aspirations. It''s not where we''re from that matters, right? It''s where we want to go. That''s the heart and soul of culture-driven leadership. Trust in traditional institutions -- government, courts, the media, universities, law enforcement, religion, and so on -- has dropped to the lowest levels ever. In a U.S. study, people described their society as "struggling," "negative," "lost," and "bad," and described their country as "[going] downhill, divided.

" They found themselves "doubting democracy, falling behind, and tuning out." Experts tell us that, overall, we have never been better off, but privately, we feel that the opposite is true. Familiar traditions and forms of authority are being attacked. Polls tell us that young people have little faith in the ability of capitalism to improve their lives, don''t feel that optimistic about the future, and have no belief that anything of value can be learned from the past. We live in a world that many see as meaningless, where there is what one historian described as an "erosion of inherited beliefs and customs." We can''t express an opinion, idea, preference, or observation, or register a disagreement, without the worry that having done so we will be branded, shamed, humiliated, harassed, ostracized, or "cancelled." Years ago, it was generally accepted that conflicts could be resolved through dialogue, that if we could only get to the root of our disagreements, we would realize we have more in common than what separates us. That idea seems naive today.

According to a recent Pew Research study, only 55 percent of Americans have "a great deal or even a fair amount of confidence in their fellow Americans when it comes to making judgments . about issues facing the country." In other words, we don''t trust our leaders, and don''t trust one another, either. Who''s left? And what does that mean for society? Interestingly, those polled identified business as "the most trusted institution in the country at present." In fact, business ranked higher than government when people were asked to state which institutions had the competencies required to effect meaningful social change, and higher when it comes to ethics overall. That''s the good news. The not-so-good news is that most also believe that business is not doing enough at present "to address the larger issues that are facing the world." Those polled stated that business needs to be even "more engaged.

" A huge majority of consumers (87 percent) said they''d "purchase a product because a company advocated for an issue they cared about," and "more than 75 percent would refuse to purchase a product if they found out a company supported an issue contrary to their beliefs." According to a report by the World Economic Forum, "business leaders are facing new and difficult challenges, and . an ecology that is evolving rapidly . in ways that are hard to predict and even harder to manage." And there are other new problems facing leaders. The Covid-19 pandemic, for instance, virtually overnight.