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The Blueprint: 6 Practical Steps to Lift Your Leadership to New Heights
A Wall Street Journal and Publishers Weekly Bestseller Lift your leadership to new heights
Doug Conant, Founder of ConantLeadership, former CEO of Campbell Soup Company, and former President of Nabisco Foods, shares transformational insights in his new book, The Blueprint. Conant is the only former Fortune 500 CEO who is a New York Times bestselling author, a top 50 Leadership Innovator, a Top 100 Leadership Speaker, and a Top 100 Most Influential Author in the World. Get Unstuck In 1984, Doug Conant was fired without warning and with barely an explanation. He felt hopeless and stuck but, surprisingly, this defeating turn of events turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to him. Doug began to consider what might be holding him back from realizing his potential, fulfilling his dreams, and making a bigger impact on the world around him. Embarking on a journey of self-reflection and discovery, he forged a path to revolutionize his leadership and transform his career trajectory. Ultimately, Doug was able to condense his remarkable leadership story into six practical steps. It wasn't until Doug worked through these six steps that he was able to lift his leadership to heights that ultimately brought him career success, joy, and fulfillment. In The Blueprint, part leadership manifesto, part practical manual, Doug teaches leaders how to work through the same six steps that he used to transform his journey. The six steps are manageable and incremental, designed to fit practically within the pace of busy modern life. Knowing how daunting the prospect of change can be, Doug arms readers with exercises and practices to realistically bring their foundation to life in every situation. Now, today’s leaders who feel stuck and overwhelmed finally have a blueprint for lifting their leadership to make meaningful change in their organizations and in the world.
Doug Conant, Founder of ConantLeadership, former CEO of Campbell Soup Company, and former President of Nabisco Foods, shares transformational insights in his new book, The Blueprint. Conant is the only former Fortune 500 CEO who is a New York Times bestselling author, a top 50 Leadership Innovator, a Top 100 Leadership Speaker, and a Top 100 Most Influential Author in the World. Get Unstuck In 1984, Doug Conant was fired without warning and with barely an explanation. He felt hopeless and stuck but, surprisingly, this defeating turn of events turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to him. Doug began to consider what might be holding him back from realizing his potential, fulfilling his dreams, and making a bigger impact on the world around him. Embarking on a journey of self-reflection and discovery, he forged a path to revolutionize his leadership and transform his career trajectory. Ultimately, Doug was able to condense his remarkable leadership story into six practical steps. It wasn't until Doug worked through these six steps that he was able to lift his leadership to heights that ultimately brought him career success, joy, and fulfillment. In The Blueprint, part leadership manifesto, part practical manual, Doug teaches leaders how to work through the same six steps that he used to transform his journey. The six steps are manageable and incremental, designed to fit practically within the pace of busy modern life. Knowing how daunting the prospect of change can be, Doug arms readers with exercises and practices to realistically bring their foundation to life in every situation. Now, today’s leaders who feel stuck and overwhelmed finally have a blueprint for lifting their leadership to make meaningful change in their organizations and in the world.
368 pages, Hardcover
Published March 4, 2020
80 people are currently reading
517 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
November 28, 2020
I enjoyed this book and have always admired Doug Conant as a leader. What he did while at Campbell Soup was remarkable. As I have begun my journey of writing a book in 2020, much of what I am advocating is also reinforced in this book. Here is my summary of this book:
Part I guides you through the practical six-step process of self-reflection and study, to build the foundation for your leadership success. You’ll learn how to use small steps to meet big goals.
In Part II: Manifesto, you’ll get anchored in foundational leadership lessons. Your greatest support in the realization of your special leadership dreams will be a deep understanding of what leadership is and the timeless principles that make leadership work.
Step 1 Envision: The power of intention and purpose. To begin to arrive at your crisp statement of purpose, you will answer three questions—the first and most important questions of leadership. This is your opportunity to envision what your boldest dreams of success and fulfillment might look like.
Question 1: Why do I choose leadership? How do you want to spend your leadership life? What is the work you feel called to do? What is your dream? How do you want to leverage your special gifts and interests to make the world a better place? What does “improving the world” look like to you?
Question 2: What is my promise? What makes you different? How do you stand apart from your contemporaries and colleagues? What qualities are you not willing to compromise on? What parts of your personality do you leverage most in your leadership?
Question 3: What are my values? To gain a better understanding of your purpose—and to begin to work toward fulfilling that purpose with integrity, you’ll need to identify a set of values. Your values are related to the principles you hold most dear; they are the qualities, ideals, or precepts you expect from others and strive to embody with your own behavior. They are your standards. It is important to get rooted in your values early in the Blueprint process because they will be reflected throughout every other component of your entire Foundation. To diagnose your values, you must think back on your life and career thus far. Can you think of times where you took a principled stance even though it might have been risky, inconvenient, or even damaging to your career? Can you think of times you feel certain you behaved with integrity even when it was very challenging to do so: examples in which you went against the grain, had an uncomfortably candid conversation, or defended an unpopular decision?
Step 2 Reflect: What motivates people to give their best? How do you influence people to deliver consistently high performance in an inconsistent world? What have you learned from big wins or successes in your career? Compile your leadership vocabulary. Building on the work you did in Step 1 to think about your values, beliefs, and leadership purpose, here you will add shape and structure to the words that are meaningful to you. What are the words you will use to find strength and to describe what is most important to you? What words hold the key to the person and leader you would like to become?
Step 3 Study: Lay the groundwork - In this step, you will be challenged to look beyond your own lived experience to gain deeper insights from the world around you through reading, observing, practicing, and studying. The first concept in the Study step is the idea of building a network. The other concept in the Study step is more in keeping with a traditional definition of studying: the idea of doing your homework. This requires reading about leadership, studying leaders past and present whom you admire, consulting with executive coaches, and seeking out mentors.
The Entourage of Excellence™ gives you a framework for evaluating what you admire in other leaders. And it equips you with an on-demand advisory board that can assist you in your thorniest moments.
Step 4 Plan: Design your leadership model - To get things done, you need a path to follow. This step is about equipping you with a plan for bringing your leadership to life in the real world. First, you’ll create a prototype, and then you’ll refine your work in the next step. Two basic things you should strive to capture in your model are performance and people. You must both perform and take care of people!
Step 5 Practice: Build your leadership profile - To excel at leading, just like any art form, you must treat it as a craft: honed with intention, practiced mindfully, and improved constantly. Deliberate practice requires dedication and smart application. To do it, you must consistently adapt your approach; it requires calculation and careful thought but can also be broken down into small manageable steps. It means working through occasional discomfort and persevering when you’re tempted to quit.
Step 6 Improve: Reinforce your foundation - The rapidly changing business environment is competitive and unforgiving. What is tried and true today may be obsolete tomorrow. What is innovative this week may be passé the next. That’s why the best leaders, and organizations, understand that they must either grow or die. It’s a Darwinian world. The competition is fierce and unrelenting. The pressures are unceasing. How can you keep up? If you are not constantly evolving, you are withering toward obsolescence. Since the demands of the marketplace require agility, we must engineer ongoing growth into our leadership DNA. You must internalize the growth mindset - a phrase coined by researcher and psychologist Carol Dweck. Ask – What inspires you? How can I do better? What is your North Star? What do you have to do to get there? Identify specific areas for growth and make a plan for improving in those areas. Pick three areas that play to your strengths, that you will be able to pursue with the joy that comes from doing the things you are good at, rather than the things that leave you feeling frustrated or depleted.
What Is Leadership? Leadership is the art and science of influencing others in a specific direction. To influence people effectively and create an evolved leadership approach, you must first learn how to leverage enduring leadership principles: the basic building blocks. Once you’re better steeped in the fundamentals, you can more ably deploy innovative, high-impact leadership practices that capture the spirit of your Foundation. The more you ground yourself in these principles now, the more enduring your leadership legacy will be tomorrow. There are 10 key building blocks to “leadership that works”: high performance, abundance, inspire trust, purpose, courage, integrity, growth or die mindset, humility, how can I help, and have fun. Leadership is about the people and honoring them.
You must inspire trust at every step along the way. You really have no choice. Your entire suite of leadership behaviors depends on it. Luckily, trust, like most leadership behaviors, is a skill that can be learned and built. To inspire trust, you must
• Honor all stakeholders.
• Declare yourself and do what you say you are going to do.
• Develop and display character and competence— consistently.
• Uphold high ethical standards.
• Model the behavior you expect from others.
• Acknowledge mistakes.
• Consistently meet performance expectations.
Both what you say and what you do matter; they matter a great deal and in equal measure. To demonstrate integrity, you have to say how you will act, then do what you say. You have to say what matters and then do what matters. You must tell people where you’re going to take the organization, then actually lead them there.
You increase humility by mastering the art of listening, reading more, becoming more open-minded, and learning to give credit to others more generously. It boils down to two essential elements: connecting and listening.
Part I guides you through the practical six-step process of self-reflection and study, to build the foundation for your leadership success. You’ll learn how to use small steps to meet big goals.
In Part II: Manifesto, you’ll get anchored in foundational leadership lessons. Your greatest support in the realization of your special leadership dreams will be a deep understanding of what leadership is and the timeless principles that make leadership work.
Step 1 Envision: The power of intention and purpose. To begin to arrive at your crisp statement of purpose, you will answer three questions—the first and most important questions of leadership. This is your opportunity to envision what your boldest dreams of success and fulfillment might look like.
Question 1: Why do I choose leadership? How do you want to spend your leadership life? What is the work you feel called to do? What is your dream? How do you want to leverage your special gifts and interests to make the world a better place? What does “improving the world” look like to you?
Question 2: What is my promise? What makes you different? How do you stand apart from your contemporaries and colleagues? What qualities are you not willing to compromise on? What parts of your personality do you leverage most in your leadership?
Question 3: What are my values? To gain a better understanding of your purpose—and to begin to work toward fulfilling that purpose with integrity, you’ll need to identify a set of values. Your values are related to the principles you hold most dear; they are the qualities, ideals, or precepts you expect from others and strive to embody with your own behavior. They are your standards. It is important to get rooted in your values early in the Blueprint process because they will be reflected throughout every other component of your entire Foundation. To diagnose your values, you must think back on your life and career thus far. Can you think of times where you took a principled stance even though it might have been risky, inconvenient, or even damaging to your career? Can you think of times you feel certain you behaved with integrity even when it was very challenging to do so: examples in which you went against the grain, had an uncomfortably candid conversation, or defended an unpopular decision?
Step 2 Reflect: What motivates people to give their best? How do you influence people to deliver consistently high performance in an inconsistent world? What have you learned from big wins or successes in your career? Compile your leadership vocabulary. Building on the work you did in Step 1 to think about your values, beliefs, and leadership purpose, here you will add shape and structure to the words that are meaningful to you. What are the words you will use to find strength and to describe what is most important to you? What words hold the key to the person and leader you would like to become?
Step 3 Study: Lay the groundwork - In this step, you will be challenged to look beyond your own lived experience to gain deeper insights from the world around you through reading, observing, practicing, and studying. The first concept in the Study step is the idea of building a network. The other concept in the Study step is more in keeping with a traditional definition of studying: the idea of doing your homework. This requires reading about leadership, studying leaders past and present whom you admire, consulting with executive coaches, and seeking out mentors.
The Entourage of Excellence™ gives you a framework for evaluating what you admire in other leaders. And it equips you with an on-demand advisory board that can assist you in your thorniest moments.
Step 4 Plan: Design your leadership model - To get things done, you need a path to follow. This step is about equipping you with a plan for bringing your leadership to life in the real world. First, you’ll create a prototype, and then you’ll refine your work in the next step. Two basic things you should strive to capture in your model are performance and people. You must both perform and take care of people!
Step 5 Practice: Build your leadership profile - To excel at leading, just like any art form, you must treat it as a craft: honed with intention, practiced mindfully, and improved constantly. Deliberate practice requires dedication and smart application. To do it, you must consistently adapt your approach; it requires calculation and careful thought but can also be broken down into small manageable steps. It means working through occasional discomfort and persevering when you’re tempted to quit.
Step 6 Improve: Reinforce your foundation - The rapidly changing business environment is competitive and unforgiving. What is tried and true today may be obsolete tomorrow. What is innovative this week may be passé the next. That’s why the best leaders, and organizations, understand that they must either grow or die. It’s a Darwinian world. The competition is fierce and unrelenting. The pressures are unceasing. How can you keep up? If you are not constantly evolving, you are withering toward obsolescence. Since the demands of the marketplace require agility, we must engineer ongoing growth into our leadership DNA. You must internalize the growth mindset - a phrase coined by researcher and psychologist Carol Dweck. Ask – What inspires you? How can I do better? What is your North Star? What do you have to do to get there? Identify specific areas for growth and make a plan for improving in those areas. Pick three areas that play to your strengths, that you will be able to pursue with the joy that comes from doing the things you are good at, rather than the things that leave you feeling frustrated or depleted.
What Is Leadership? Leadership is the art and science of influencing others in a specific direction. To influence people effectively and create an evolved leadership approach, you must first learn how to leverage enduring leadership principles: the basic building blocks. Once you’re better steeped in the fundamentals, you can more ably deploy innovative, high-impact leadership practices that capture the spirit of your Foundation. The more you ground yourself in these principles now, the more enduring your leadership legacy will be tomorrow. There are 10 key building blocks to “leadership that works”: high performance, abundance, inspire trust, purpose, courage, integrity, growth or die mindset, humility, how can I help, and have fun. Leadership is about the people and honoring them.
You must inspire trust at every step along the way. You really have no choice. Your entire suite of leadership behaviors depends on it. Luckily, trust, like most leadership behaviors, is a skill that can be learned and built. To inspire trust, you must
• Honor all stakeholders.
• Declare yourself and do what you say you are going to do.
• Develop and display character and competence— consistently.
• Uphold high ethical standards.
• Model the behavior you expect from others.
• Acknowledge mistakes.
• Consistently meet performance expectations.
Both what you say and what you do matter; they matter a great deal and in equal measure. To demonstrate integrity, you have to say how you will act, then do what you say. You have to say what matters and then do what matters. You must tell people where you’re going to take the organization, then actually lead them there.
You increase humility by mastering the art of listening, reading more, becoming more open-minded, and learning to give credit to others more generously. It boils down to two essential elements: connecting and listening.
November 29, 2023
"The Blueprint: 6 Practical Steps to Lift Your Leadership to New Heights" by Douglas R. Conant provides a systematic strategy to fortify leadership resilience and authenticity amidst contemporary challenges. This book introduces a structured blueprint comprising six practical steps, guiding leaders on their transformative journey.
Step 1: Envision - Setting a Clear Purpose
Embarking on their leadership journey, individuals first envision a clear purpose. This involves reflective exploration of motivations, strengths, and values, resulting in an evolving purpose statement and the creation of a personalized leadership model.
Step 2: Reflect - Crafting a Personalized Leadership Model
In the Reflect step, leaders delve into past experiences to uncover motivations and ambitions, constructing a personalized leadership model. This model serves as a combination of personal beliefs, goals, and skills related to leadership, evolving as the leadership journey progresses.
Step 3: Study - Learning from Admired Leaders
Progressing from internal reflection to external study, leaders learn from admired leaders to form an "Entourage of Excellence." This deliberate shift provides diverse perspectives, reinforces self-discovery with outside insights, and helps create a refined list of leadership Dos and Don'ts.
Step 4: Plan - Organizing Reflections into a Comprehensive Framework
The Plan step involves organizing reflections into a comprehensive leadership framework. Thematic clusters, addressing both performance and people, are created. This step ensures that the leadership model is structured, actionable, and resonates with the leader's style and beliefs.
Step 5: Practice - Translating Visions into Tangible Actions
Moving from envisioning to tangible actions, leaders identify specific behaviors aligned with the leadership model in the Practice step. This involves creating a "Practice Treasury" — a reservoir of actionable routines — ensuring that every aspect of leadership beliefs is not just theoretical but actionable.
Step 6: Improve - Fostering Continuous Learning and Evolution
The Improve step encourages continuous learning and evolution. It begins with introspection, revisiting prior steps, and understanding areas that call for improvement. Leaders set improvement goals, fostering a mindset of continuous enhancement and creating a cyclical loop of perpetual development.
Five-Day Action Plan: A Plan for Progressive Growth
Concluding with a strategic Five-Day Action Plan, the book ensures the integration of leadership principles into daily activities. This plan includes a Leadership Expectations Audit, sharing models, applying practices, writing progress reports, and starting a reflective journal.
Conant's approach underscores aligning internal beliefs with external leadership expressions. Through the six-step blueprint and the Five-Day Action Plan, leaders can foster lasting, positive impacts, emphasizing continuous improvement, resilience, and authenticity in the dynamic landscape of leadership.
Step 1: Envision - Setting a Clear Purpose
Embarking on their leadership journey, individuals first envision a clear purpose. This involves reflective exploration of motivations, strengths, and values, resulting in an evolving purpose statement and the creation of a personalized leadership model.
Step 2: Reflect - Crafting a Personalized Leadership Model
In the Reflect step, leaders delve into past experiences to uncover motivations and ambitions, constructing a personalized leadership model. This model serves as a combination of personal beliefs, goals, and skills related to leadership, evolving as the leadership journey progresses.
Step 3: Study - Learning from Admired Leaders
Progressing from internal reflection to external study, leaders learn from admired leaders to form an "Entourage of Excellence." This deliberate shift provides diverse perspectives, reinforces self-discovery with outside insights, and helps create a refined list of leadership Dos and Don'ts.
Step 4: Plan - Organizing Reflections into a Comprehensive Framework
The Plan step involves organizing reflections into a comprehensive leadership framework. Thematic clusters, addressing both performance and people, are created. This step ensures that the leadership model is structured, actionable, and resonates with the leader's style and beliefs.
Step 5: Practice - Translating Visions into Tangible Actions
Moving from envisioning to tangible actions, leaders identify specific behaviors aligned with the leadership model in the Practice step. This involves creating a "Practice Treasury" — a reservoir of actionable routines — ensuring that every aspect of leadership beliefs is not just theoretical but actionable.
Step 6: Improve - Fostering Continuous Learning and Evolution
The Improve step encourages continuous learning and evolution. It begins with introspection, revisiting prior steps, and understanding areas that call for improvement. Leaders set improvement goals, fostering a mindset of continuous enhancement and creating a cyclical loop of perpetual development.
Five-Day Action Plan: A Plan for Progressive Growth
Concluding with a strategic Five-Day Action Plan, the book ensures the integration of leadership principles into daily activities. This plan includes a Leadership Expectations Audit, sharing models, applying practices, writing progress reports, and starting a reflective journal.
Conant's approach underscores aligning internal beliefs with external leadership expressions. Through the six-step blueprint and the Five-Day Action Plan, leaders can foster lasting, positive impacts, emphasizing continuous improvement, resilience, and authenticity in the dynamic landscape of leadership.
December 20, 2022
Doug Conant's 40-year career in leading in business provides an excellent canvas for him to write on the matter of leadership. The six steps of his approach to developing an individual leadership story provide a very practical roadmap as he makes clear: "Your leadership story is your life story." The book contains useful prompts and spaces to write in your own inputs as you develop your leadership story. 1. ENVISION: Reach High 2. REFLECT: Dig Deep 3. STUDY: Lay the Groundwork 4. PLAN: Design 5. PRACTICE: Build 6. IMPROVE: Reinforce. What he calls "The Blueprint" brings these six steps together into a foundation for how someone writes their leadership study. Going through "The Blueprint" is the first part of the book with the second part of the book where he brings in practical wisdom from his leadership experience, including where he defines leadership as "the art and science of influencing others in a specific direction." His discussion of doing well as the Director of Strategy at Kraft Foods in the 1990s where he began to examine how he could contribute in a more substantial way was fascinating which ultimately led him to be become the CEO of Campbell Soup Company in 2001, serving for a decade where he is credited with the remarkable turnaround in employee engagement at Campbell during his tenure.
September 24, 2023
Read this book as part of our women’s employee business group at work. I think I was predisposed to dislike it bc - why is our women’s group reading another book by a dude telling us how we should lead? But I shouldn’t hold it against this book.
But - that aside, I thought it was okay. I did like how it walked you through exercises and I think you get what you put into it. I did every single exercise and it took a long time to read and get through. But in the end I do t think it was different than other books or, even workshops, I’ve attended. And I guess my take away - and this is an important take away - I just don’t want to be a high powered leader ever.
But - that aside, I thought it was okay. I did like how it walked you through exercises and I think you get what you put into it. I did every single exercise and it took a long time to read and get through. But in the end I do t think it was different than other books or, even workshops, I’ve attended. And I guess my take away - and this is an important take away - I just don’t want to be a high powered leader ever.
May 29, 2021
Doug Conant, longtime president/CEO of Campbell's offers a 6-step self-reflection to create or recreate a personal leadership model. I don't usually fall for books like this, but I was intrigued by the line "your life story is your leadership story." A couple helpful exercises, but ultimately it sort of settled where all the other leaderships book I've come across have.
September 26, 2024
3.75 overall rating. We need to think more with abundance mentality (when practical) and have courage.
January 29, 2022
I have been an admirer of Doug Conant and his leadership skills since his early days at Campbell Soup. That said, I was disappointed in the first part of the book, which asks readers to complete a series of exercises aimed at assessing their beliefs, strengths, weaknesses, leadership objectives, styles, etc. I'm sure that such a review can yield insights, and many readers may indeed find it useful, but it also seems to me that by the time someone becomes a leader, they should have a pretty good idea of who they are, their strengths and weaknesses, what is required of them and what they hope to accomplish. They presumably have also developed the (inter)personal skills necessary to reach their goals. Beyond this leadership inventory, though, I thought the rest of the book was very good, as it provided specific examples and stories of leadership in action, including Doug's personal experiences. The book also avoids what I imagine to be the dark side of leadership, which admittedly would be very difficult if not impossible to cover adequately in print, but is a critical aspect of being a leader.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews