Another 21st Century Leadership Skill

Every so often, one encounters a book filled with what are seemingly obvious points neatly tied together into a stunning analysis.  Joshua Cooper Ramo’s The Age of the Unthinkable: Why the New World Disorder Constantly Surprises Us and What to Do About It, is just such a book.  It occupied several hours of my London-to-Chicago flight this morning, not the least because of Ramo’s incredible range of scholarship.

Central to his thesis (you’ll have to read the book to see the larger point) is that we falsely assume today’s crisis can be managed; and, if managed well, will cease to be a problem.  Rather, Ramo contends, today’s crisis, even if managed extremely well, will set the stage for the one tomorrow, and so on.  In short, the prima leadership skill of the 21st Century is likely to be the capacity to repeatedly engage new crises.

Not the stuff most of us learned in school or what animates our now-passe models of prediction and control.  What Ramo provides is more evidence that strategic planning is less important and strategizing is everything.