Higher Ambition: How Great Leaders Create Economic and Social Value

Meeting the new standard for leadership.

Higher Ambition is required reading for every leader who refuses to compromise between people and performance. Choosing one or the other may have worked in the past, but it won’t work now. As global competition stiffens and businesses face increased public scrutiny and renewed government regulation, leaders must win on all fronts—with their people, their customers, their communities, and their shareholders. In short, they must deliver superior economic and social value. Brimming with powerful stories and thoughtful advice from CEOs themselves, Higher Ambition equips leaders with the practical insights they need to meet this new and higher standard. The authors, an international team of experts from leading business schools and consultancies, offer a unique view into the minds of some of the most successful and insightful leaders of our time: CEOs from vanguard companies around the world that have demonstrated the distinctive ability to do good while also doing well. These organizations are as diverse as Standard Chartered Bank, Infosys, Volvo, Cummins, IKEA, the Tata Group, and Campbell’s Soup. Readers will learn the principles and practices these pioneering leaders are using to:

• Build enduring enterprises that simultaneously solve for people and profits

• Forge winning strategies that leverage their companies’ unique cultural and human capabilities

• Dramatically raise the aspirations and ambitions of their people

• Energize and align their diverse global firms

• Relentlessly upgrade leadership capabilities throughout their organizations

Drawing on the author team’s extensive research and in-depth interviews with successful leaders from around the globe, this provocative new book is poised to become a management classic in the tradition of In Search of Excellence and Built to Last.