New ebook offers a definitive checklist to help leaders act decisively when it counts the most
Available free for download from June 21-28, 2011
Philadelphia, PA— Today Wharton Digital Press announced its first ebook, The Leader’s Checklist, from world-renowned leadership expert Michael Useem. In this fast-reading and illuminating book, the author provides 15 guiding principles that form the core of the Leader’s Checklist.
Wharton Digital Press was launched in collaboration with Knowledge@Wharton, by the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, as an innovative all-digital publishing initiative that publishes relevant, accessible and empirically based business knowledge to readers wherever and whenever they need it. To celebrate its first publication, Wharton Digital Press is making The Leader’s Checklist available as a free download from June 21-28, 2011 at leading retailers, including Amazon, Barnes&Noble.com, and Sony. For a full list of retailers, visit wdp.wharton.upenn.edu.
The Leader’s Checklist helps leaders develop their ability to make good and timely decisions in unpredictable and stressful environments. To inform the checklist, the author, Wharton Professor Michael Useem, conducted extensive research and leveraged years of working on leadership development with a wide array of companies and organizations worldwide. Through those examples, he helps leaders personalize their checklist to the unique needs and demands of their organizations.
“Through my years of research I have found that the absence of a checklist—similar to those used by pilots or surgeons—is one of most correctable lapses in leadership,” said Michael Useem, Director of the Center for Leadership and Change Management and Professor of Management at the Wharton School. “In The Leader’s Checklist, I offer 15 vital principles that can help eliminate unforced leadership errors.”
Leadership examples from the book include:
• Laurence Golborne, the newly appointed mining minister for the Republic of Chile’s oversight of the dramatic 2010 rescue of 33 trapped Chilean miners
• Union officer Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain’s role in Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox
• Merck CEO Roy Vagelos’ decision to pursue a drug to assist Africans at risk of river blindness disease
Michael Useem, author of The Leader’s Checklist (Wharton Digital Press, ebook, ISBN: 978-1-61363-003-7, $6.99, June 2011) is an expert on leadership, decision making, governance, and change with companies and organizations in the private, public, and non-profit sectors. In The Leader’s Checklist, he brings together hands-on best practices and real-world case studies to provide leaders with a complete set of vital leadership principles that are tried, tested, and true.
“Wharton Digital Press is proud to introduce its first ebook, focused on leadership,” said Stephen J. Kobrin, Publisher and Executive Director of the new press and Wharton’s William H. Wurster Professor of Multinational Management. “The Leader’s Checklist dovetails with our goal, which is to provide leaders with insightful content through innovative digital technologies.”
For more about the book visit: http://wdp.wharton.upenn.edu/book/the-leaders-checklist/.
Please contact Pedro Rodriguez, 212-539-3232 or pedror@mbooth.com, to request an interview, copy of the book, or book excerpt.
About the Author
MICHAEL USEEM is Director of the Center for Leadership and Change Management and William and Jacalyn Egan Professor of Management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of The Leadership Moment, Investor Capitalism, and The Go Point, among other books. The Leadership Moment was included in The 100 Best Business Books of All Time, written by the publishers of 800 CEO Read, and listed as one of the 10 best leadership books on the Washington Post’s “Leadership Playlist.” Useem’s articles have appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Fast Company, Financial Times, Fortune, Harvard Business Review, McKinsey Quarterly, New York Times, U.S. News & World Report, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere.
Useem has presented programs and seminars on leadership development with American Express, China Minsheng Banking Corporation, Citigroup, Coca-Cola, Comcast, Eli Lilly, Estée Lauder, Fidelity Investments, GlaxoSmithKline, Goldman Sachs, Google, Grupo Santander , Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, Motorola, National Football League, New York Fire Department, The New York Times, Nokia, Pew Charitable Trusts, PriceWaterhouse Coopers, Samsung, U.N. Development Programme, U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs, U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Military Academy, World Economic Forum, and other organizations.
About the Wharton School and Wharton Digital Press
The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania— founded in 1881 as the first collegiate business school — is recognized globally for intellectual leadership and ongoing innovation across every major discipline of business education. The most comprehensive source of business knowledge in the world, Wharton bridges research and practice through its broad engagement with the global business community. The School has more than 4,800 undergraduate, MBA, executive MBA, and doctoral students; more than 9,000 annual participants in executive education programs; and an alumni network of 86,000 graduates.
Wharton Digital Press brings together communities of readers and authors committed to identifying and solving the critical problems business managers face today. Leveraging a wide range of cutting-edge digital technologies, Wharton Digital Press helps inspire authors to develop bold, insightful messages, and communicate in creative ways with their audiences. Managers and policy makers need new sources of innovative and practical knowledge that will enable them to deal with the problems of the present and the challenges of the future. Wharton Digital Press takes advantage of the Wharton School’s global presence to disseminate relevant business knowledge from the world’s leading experts to readers wherever and whenever they need it. Wharton Digital Press’s ebooks and print-on-demand books are distributed by Constellation, a service of The Perseus Books Group, which offers complete digital services for independent publishers, including ebook distribution and sales, digital print-on-demand, as well as a suite of digital marketing tools.