Michael Useem
Michael Useem is a world-renowned leadership expert who helps leaders develop the skills required for making good and timely decisions in unpredictable and stressful environments—the moments when leadership really matters. He is the William and Jacalyn Egan Professor of Management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and the Director of Wharton’s Center for Leadership and Change Management.
For his Wharton students, Professor Useem has led annual treks up Mount Everest to put their leadership and teamwork skills to the ultimate test. In his interactive engagements, he brings a similar immersive experience by inviting audiences into the crucial moments of real major crisis events, from the White House to the boardroom, and the trading room floor to the lifesaving missions of firefighters. By working to develop their own solutions to these problems and comparing their proposed ideas to the actual outcome, audiences enhancing their problem-solving abilities and walk away with actionable insights that can be put into practice the very same day.
Useem has authored over a dozen books on leadership and management. His bestselling and most well-known book, The Leader’s Checklist, recently received a 10th anniversary update with new case studies illustrating where leaders went wonderfully right and terribly wrong. His latest book, The Edge: How Ten CEOs Learned to Lead — And the Lessons for Us All, is a guide for adapting to and thriving in an era of massive disruption and continuous transformation, featuring 10 inspiring profiles of leaders who navigated difficult situations and came out on top.
His earlier books include Mastering Catastrophic Risk: How Companies Are Coping with Disruption, Go Long: Why Long-Term Thinking IsYour Best Short-Term Strategy, Fortune Makers, The Strategic Leader’s Roadmap, Boards That Lead, Leadership Dispatches, The India Way, Learning from Catastrophes, and The Go Point. His first book, The Leadership Moment, has been named one of The 100 Best Business Books of All Time by Porchlight.
Michael Useem co-hosts Leadership in Action, a weekly broadcast on SiriusXM Channel 132 that presents enlightening conversations with leaders from a wide array of organizations about how they’ve led, what they’ve learned, and what has made the greatest difference.
Topics
The Go Point: When It’s Time to Decide
Moments of decision are those times when an individual, team, or organization faces a tangible opportunity to go one way or another. And ultimately, every decision comes down to a go point — that moment when the essential information has been gathered, the pros and cons are weighed, and the time has come to get off the fence. Decisions at such points are at the heart of leadership and a driver of organizational performance. Drawing on the decision moments of a range of company leaders, corporate directors — and even mountaineers on Mt. Everest, firefighters in the wilderness, and generals at Gettysburg — Michael Useem identifies what it takes for making timely calls when leadership really matters.
Leading Through Challenging Times
The Chilean mining minister watched as the cave-in victims emerged unscathed, along with an estimated billion television viewers. A rescue crew had toiled around the clock for more than two months to retrieve the 33 below, but direct responsibility for their recovery ultimately resided in just one person, Chile’s minister of mines. In his decisions that guided the rescue are instructive implications for all who face exceptionally challenging leadership moments. Focusing on difficult decisions in uncertain times, Michael Useem identifies what it takes for making timely calls when leadership matters most. He draws upon a range of instructive events — ranging from fateful management decisions in Chinese and Indian companies to the miner- rescue decisions in Chile to the front-line decisions of firefighters and mountain climbers — to construct a template for leading through stressful times.
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