Where is leadership when we need it—and what can today’s corporate, non-profit, military, and public-service leaders learn from bold decisions that changed the course of history?
By Jan-Benedict Steenkamp
“This book will give you the tools to deepen your wisdom, clarify your thinking, and improve your outcomes as your own story of leadership unfolds.”
– Major General Cameron G. Holt, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force
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About the Book
In Time to Lead, Jan-Benedict Steenkamp (Distinguished Professor and former Chairman of Marketing at the University of North Carolina) presents a fresh examination of history-making leaders by holding a magnifying glass up to a life-changing dilemma each figure faced. In the process, he reveals just how strongly a leader’s personality and decision-making process can determine a history-changing outcome with wide-ranging implications for millions of people. The ways that great men and women found solutions to the problems they confronted has a lot to do with their character traits—whether they were foxes or hedgehogs, as in the ancient parable, or, as Steenkamp further categorizes, eagles or ostriches.
Steenkamp is passionate about leadership, a dedicated student of history, and one of the world’s leading thinkers on strategy. His sixteen well-researched and carefully curated case studies of world leaders reveal powerful lessons that today’s leaders can apply in their own professional lives.
Readers will recognize Roosevelt, Washington, Mandela, Thatcher, Alexander the Great, and MLK, but other leaders who may be less known, such as Themistocles, Clovis, Peter, Fisher, Nightingale, and de Gaulle provide equally valuable insights into how individuals make decisions based upon one of seven leadership styles (adaptive, persuasive, directive, disruptive, authentic, servant, and charismatic) and four personality classifications (hedgehog, fox, eagle, or ostrich).
For seasoned and aspiring leaders in companies, non-profits, public institutions, military, and charitable organizations, Steenkamp includes assessment tools to help determine their unique leadership style, along with guidance on how to make a particular style work when they inevitably come face-to-face with their own dilemmas. Takeaways, leadership principles, and open-ended, reflective questions will confer encouragement, enrichment, and empowerment on readers when they realize they can utilize the same tactics as these leaders did in their own lives.
Steenkamp seamlessly connects the historical leaders with present-day leadership dilemmas and practical situations derived from his extensive experience and network. Time to Lead is a book is about great men and women, their actions in leadership that have withstood the test of time, what we can learn from them—and the lessons that are relevant for us here and now.
About the Author
Jan-Benedict Steenkamp (doctor honoris causa; PhD, MSc, BSc [all summa cum laude]) is the C. Knox Massey Distinguished Professor of Marketing at the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School. He is an honorary professor at the European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management, fellow of the European Marketing Academy, chairman of the International Board of Experts at the Institute for Nation(al) Branding, and fellow at the Institute for Sustainable Growth at Fudan University (Shanghai). He is a member of the selection committee of the Spinoza Prize, nicknamed the Dutch Nobel Prize. He is co-founder and executive director of the Institute AiMark.
Since his days as an undergraduate student at Wageningen University, the Netherlands (1977–1981), he has held a variety of leadership positions at four universities in three countries, at professional organizations, non-profits, research councils, and a political party. Most recently, he was chairman of the Marketing Area at the Kenan-Flagler Business School from 2006 to 2018, during which time the department’s global ranking improved from #24 to #7.
A prolific writer, he is the author of four previous business books. Translations of his books have appeared in Chinese, Dutch, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Turkish. Brand Breakout was selected as “Best Business Book 2013: Globalization” by Strategy+Business, the magazine of global consultancy Strategy& (formerly Booz & Company). Global Brand Strategy was runner-up for the Len Berry Award recognizing books that have had a significant impact in marketing. Retail Disruptors was selected as one of the “Best Business Books for 2019” by Yahoo! Finance.
He has also written over one hundred articles for leading marketing and management journals as well as leading practitioner outlets such as Harvard Business Review, Management and Business Review, Business Strategy Review, Long Range Planning, and Financial Times. He has published a dozen business case studies, including multiple cases on the role of inspired leadership in company success, all of which are available through the Case Center. His work has received more than 50,000 citations and he has a Hirsch index of 80.
He has taught, consulted, and given executive seminars on all continents and to a multitude of organizations including the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. His work has been featured in Bloomberg Businessweek, The Economist, Financial Times, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, newspapers in China, Europe, India, and South Korea, and he has been interviewed on television in the United States, Europe, China, South Africa, and India.
A naturalized Dutch-American, he has taught at universities in Austria, Belgium, China, India, the Netherlands, South Africa, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. He has been recognized as a “Teaching All-Star” by UNC’s MBA program. In 2005, the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences awarded him the Muller lifetime prize for “exceptional achievements in the area of the behavioral and social sciences.” His award was the first time the prize had been granted to an academic in any area of business administration. He also has received an honorary doctorate from Aarhus University (Denmark) and lifetime achievement honors from the American Marketing Association (twice) and the European Marketing Academy.
Jan-Benedict is a thought leader in leadership, strategy, global issues, branding, and market & organizational disruption. If you’re interested in bringing him in to speak with your group, please reach out through the form below.
