Soundview's Executive Book Alert: A Modest Memoir from a Leadership Legend

Memoirs are a tricky subject for Soundview Executive Book Alert. While plenty of business luminaries stock the physical and virtual bookshelves with their respective life stories, one can never tell if the tale will bear any intellectual fruit. The reader hopes for more than an unabridged CEO bio yet often finds only a handful of new ideas amid self-praising tales of academic achievement and boardroom heroics. Yet memoirs continue to reign in popularity, so it would be a disservice to ignore one from which readers are guaranteed to learn. Warren Bennis achieves the rare combination of insightfulness and humility in his memoir Still Surprised: A Memoir of a Life in Leadership.

Bennis is renowned by many as one of the great gurus of leadership studies. He serves as both distinguished professor of business administration at the University of Southern California and chairman of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard University's Kennedy School. This pair of accomplishments is the latest in a long career that stretches back through academia and military service. More than any single job description, Bennis may best be characterized as a keen observer who stands in the doorway of the present. With each recollection of his past, he provides readers with the knowledge he gained from the experience and how he applies it today.

One of the most important aspects of Still Surprised that separates it from other business memoirs is Bennis' disdain for lionization, be it of himself or others. He spends the early part of his book describing how easy it is to bore readers with tales of childhood and personal ancestry. This reveals an important point about Bennis' leadership philosophy: get to the point. The fact that he dismisses his childhood as mundane and leaps into his service in World War II indicates the point in his life when Bennis feels his life truly began. Despite his battlefield actions having occurred six decades ago, the horrors of war still occupy a generous portion of shelf-space in Bennis' mental archives. Executives with a military background will no doubt share a sense of camaraderie with Bennis while reading these sections of the book.

The narrative that winds through Still Surprised is as much a history of 20^th century American society as it is one man's journey through leadership. At one point in the prologue, Bennis mentions that he spent time revisiting the contemporary music of the period about which he was writing. It's difficult not to hear brass of big bands as Bennis leads his men across war-torn Europe or the psychedelic shimmer of guitars while students storm Bennis' office during protests on the campus of SUNY Buffalo. While readers will enjoy Bennis' colorful, candid recollections of the highs and lows of the past several decades, the unifying thread that runs throughout the book is Bennis' evolving leadership philosophy. One aspect to which he remains devoted is the notion that leading by example is the only way to secure loyalty.

It was a notion that first occurred to Bennis during his Army days and continued as his life and career progressed. Executives will be surprised to learn that Bennis left a post as a tenured professor at MIT in favor of a chance to run the social sciences department at SUNY Buffalo. As Bennis writes, "It seemed arrogant to make judgments about leaders without knowing firsthand what problems and pressures they faced." This is the type of statement that occurs throughout Still Surprised that should cause readers to go to a notepad, keyboard or phone and relay Bennis' message to a peer.

Still Surprised is packed with observations about leadership, politics, philosophy and life. Bennis weaves a mesmerizing tale that neither preaches nor chastises. It's difficult to believe that the book checks in at a little more than 200 pages. Bennis takes his readers on a global journey. Along the way, he interacts with presidents, royalty and some of the key academics and business leaders of the 20th century. Through these adventures, Bennis remains modest about his success. His easy-going voice guides readers through an amazing career, one in which he exudes the sentiment that lends the book its title. Bennis is Still Surprised and readers are likely to share the feeling when they reach the book's conclusion.

Still Surprised: A Memoir of a Life in Leadership is published by Jossey-Bass. It is under consideration by Soundview Executive Book Summaries.