This weekend I finished reading the short book titled The Secret: What Great Leaders Know and Do by Ken Blanchard (of The One Minute Manager fame) and Mark Miller (a VP at Chick-fil-A). Much like the Patrick Lencioni books, it’s told as a fable with the main character going through a leadership mentoring program with an executive at her company. The main takeaway from the book is that leadership is about serving others (servant leadership) combined with the following SERVE acronym:
- See the Future (vision)
- Engage and Develop Others (mentoring and training)
- Reinvent Continuously (try new ideas)
- Value Results and Relationships (metrics and people)
- Embody the Values (culture starts with you)
Forcing each of the items into the SERVE acronym was a bit of a stretch but the core concepts are sound. Leadership, just like any other skill, needs constant work, practice, and development.
What else? What did you think of the leadership book The Secret?
David Cummings on Startups 
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