Above the Clouds: Rediscovering the Power of Culture-Driven Leadership

The entrepreneur Time magazine called "the Bad Boy of banking" is back with crucial insights about the importance of business culture in a dizzyingly complex global marketplace. In business, breaking rules is easy. What's really hard is what comes next: building the right company culture - the lifeblood of effective leadership. In a complex, 24-7 globalized marketplace, how do you answer the question "Who are we?" Culture-driven leadership is as much about the why as the how. Long-term and short-term. Reacting and reflecting. It means identifying, creating, and sustaining a company culture. For a culture-driven leader, spending time "above the clouds," or finding the sweet spot of perspective, can make all the difference. Entrepreneur and pioneering financial services CEO Arkadi Kuhlmann offers a seasoned antidote to navigating blind through our increasingly competitive landscape. Drawing on ten key principles from his time at ING Direct and his many years' experience on the front lines of innovative customer-focused leadership, Kuhlmann explores real-world leadership challenges and both the bullseyes and missteps of Disney's Robert Iger and Starbucks's Howard Schultz, as well as Elon Musk, Richard Branson, and others. Kuhlmann makes a compelling case for how leaders can use the right culture to meet the formidable challenges that lie ahead. In the end, it's about making leadership count. And making a difference.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: We Need (Better) Leadership More than Ever The Principles Opening Thought: Culture Versus Context 1 We Are New Here 2 We Are Here to Create, Not Destroy 3 We Will Constantly Learn 4 We Will Listen: We Will Simplify 5 We Will Be Fair 6 We Will Tell the Truth 7 We Will Be for Everyone 8 Our Mission Is to Help Improve Lives 9 We Will Never Stop Asking Why 10 We Will Never be Finished Closing Thought: Above the Clouds — Leadership Driven by Culture Acknowledgements Appendix: Culture-Driven Leadership: A Brief Primer Notes About the Author

About the Author :
Arkadi Kuhlmann is the founder and current CEO of Zenbanx, the revolutionary global banking platform. He has been involved with seven successful startups and was the founder and CEO of ING Direct. Kuhlmann is the author of several books, including The Orange Code and Rock Then Roll. He divides his time between Toronto, Canada; Menlo Park, California; and Wilmington, Delaware.

Review :
Many people talk about culture and leadership — Arkadi lives it, understands it, and can teach it. If you’re searching for insights into how to lead with your values in a way that makes a lasting difference, Arkadi Kuhlmann’s Above the Clouds is an informative, engaging and easy to apply toolkit for leadership in a digital era. Arkadi Kuhlmann’s investigation of culture and leadership is at once practical, accessible, and coherent. Never preachy, Kuhlmann allows would-be leaders to discover their own callings and provides a helpful road map on how to build a durable culture that reflects their own reality. In this compelling read, Arkadi Kuhlmann shares his leadership lessons focused on culture-driven leadership and why it is vital to success. As they say, ‘Culture eats strategy for breakfast’, and great leaders do get culture right. Arkadi hits the mark again with his latest book on culture. An authentic organizational purpose is critical to attracting talent and in aligning what a firm does to what it wants to achieve. In this book, Arkadi challenges the reader to define the kind of leader they will be (or are) and to question if culture-driven leadership is the better avenue for them to embrace. Focusing on the customer, valuing employees, and taking time to reflect, instead of reacting, are just a few of the many nuggets of wisdom found in Above the Clouds, which will help you take a different leadership perspective. Arkadi Kuhlmann takes his readers through the essence of culture-driven leadership by citing many examples from his own entrepreneurial and innovative career as well as relying on many of the roads travelled by other well-known CEOs. He tells it the way it really is — he has been there. A thoughtful book for any aspiring leader. Getting “above the clouds” to see the landscape in a holistic way has never been more challenging for business leaders, given the fast pace of change and challenges in our global society. Drawing on his own journey, Arkadi Kuhlmann shows how culture-driven leadership can create and maintain a consistent narrative that keeps organizations on the right path, leads people to achieve excellence, and enables that broader vision to stay in focus.