The Upside of Turbulence: Seizing Opportunity in an Uncertain World

by Donald Sull

Traditionally, leadership has been equated with vision. We look to leaders in business and government to have the genius to know the future and lead the rest of us to where that vision becomes a reality. We look for goals to beckon us and rely on strategic plans to guide us, all the while knowing how unreliable and unpredictable the future might be. Emerging realities (the financial crisis of 2008, the rise and fall of oil prices, the creative destruction of the Internet, for instance) often distort and destroy established maps. How do we plan when plans become irrelevant? Through his celebrated career as a professor of business and a medicine man to companies big and small, Donald Sull has studied how best to reconcile this paradox. The essence of leadership, in the deep logic that underpins this book, relies on a leader's flexible tenacity to plot a course that can withstand and even be propelled by the complexity and dynamism that the modern business terrain contains. Based on a decade of research, historical case studies, and intensive work with established enterprises and start-ups, this book lays out the fundamental logic of opportunity and provides a series of practical steps to translate insight into action.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction, Management

288 pages, Hardcover

First published October 6, 2009

About the author

Donald Sull is a Senior Lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is a global authority on managing in turbulent markets, and directs a week-long course on effectively executing strategy in volatile markets. He has been identified as a leading management thinker by The Economist, the Financial Times, and Fortune which named him among the ten new management gurus to know. The Economist listed his theory of active inertia among the ideas that shaped business management over the past century.Sull has published five books, including The Upside of Turbulence (2009). His book Made in China was namedone of the top eight business books of 2005 by the Financial Times and his book Why Good Companies Go Bad was a finalist for the Academy of Management’s Outstanding Management Book Award. Sull has also written more than 100 book chapters, case studies, and articles, including several best-selling Harvard Business Review articles.As a consultant and management educator, Sull has worked with companies including Mars, Oracle, PIMCO, Royal Bank of Canada, Standard Chartered Bank, Emirates Airline, Baker & McKenzie, Burberry, and Schneider Electric. He speaks regularly at leading management conferences, such as Microsoft’s CEO Summit and the McKinsey Strategy Summit.Prior to academia, he worked as a consultant with McKinsey & Company, and a management-investor with the leveraged buyout firm Clayton & Dubilier on the Uniroyal-Goodrich Tire Company deal. Sull received his AB, MBA, and doctorate from Harvard University, where he taught entrepreneurship at the Harvard Business School before rejoining the London Business School faculty as a professor of management practice in strategy and entrepreneurship. Sull has won teaching awards at both London Business School and Harvard University. He remains active in private equity as an investor and advisor to start-up companies.

Reviews

[Patrick Hoogendijk · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unfortunately, quite a waste of time. Bursts of compressed statements that sound factual, but are in fact purely an opinion. The "case studies" could have been interesting introductions to more generalized hypotheses, but don't really relate to the subject matter at hand and are superficial.

[Esther · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sull examines how leaders can turn turbulence to their advantage and how down-turns can offer more opportunities than rising markets.

He has some interesting case studies, for example, Arcelor Mittal and how the steel giant was created in a time when the steel industry was contracting in many parts of the world. His discussion of how Zara has grown its role in the fashion industry and the role of the open plan office is also interesting.

His argument is quite bland, arguing that companies need to find the right balance of flexibility and resilience. There is nothing particularly ground-breaking here.

What was more compelling was one of his sub-arguments on how different management styles are appropriate to different phases of the life cycle of products and the implications for companies to rotate their managers through the business to match management styles to life cycle stages.

[Rohan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Professor Sull talks about how to survive in constantly changing market conditions while maintaining an agile firm. Overall I liked the book, though I lost interest in few chapters occasionally. The Mittal steel example has been used several times, there are few tables and matrices which are handy and can be used in day-2-day practise. This book was recommend as a read before international assignment to Argentina when I was doing my exec MBA from London Business School in 2014.

[Marwa Abdallah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had the opportunity to attend one of Professor Don Sull's seminars in Abu Dhabi and I was very intrigued by it. I immediately bought the book after the lecture and the book was more than amazing. Strategy is a complicated topic, and this is one of the best books I've read about it.

[Jared · Rating 3 out of 5]

Improvization is the key. A nice book to read during these stressful times.