Optimal Leadership: Reflections of a Serial CEO

"After reading this book you will be armed with the tools and questions to succeed but above all with

the confidence and clear-mindedness to tackle the task." Professor Andrew Scott, London Business

School

The high profile of a Chief Executive Officer, and the strong results of the best-performing

businesses, give an impression that business leadership constitutes the art of maximising: of short-

term revenues, of pace of change, of employee engagement. Serial CEO Wilf Blackburn explains how

effective organisational leadership involves an optimal blend of apparent opposites: humility and

confidence, delegation and decisiveness, reliability and innovative capability. This builds a culture

that combines high performance and psychological safety.

Such findings are not new - yet they are not universally applied. Optimal Leadership includes a

discussion on why progress on implementing the evidence base for the high-performing workplace

has been patchy. He addresses the real difficulties a CEO faces, and offers practical advice on how to

implement the principles. In an age in which we have learned that resilience is as important as

innovation, Optimal Leadership is an essential guide.

"Reading Optimal Leadership is like sitting down and having a conversation on how to become a

great CEO .... You get decades of experience in a single read." Dean M Schroeder PhD, best-selling

author of Ideas are Free