This is my personal book review on Visionary Leadership Book by Burt Nanus. Comments and recommendations are welcomed. Thank you

1. Review on Visionary Leadership Book by Burt Nanus
Visionary Leadership
Author of this book is Burt Nanus and forward by Warren G. Bennis. He presents a
step-by-step approach to the development of vision. To do this, he divides his book into
three parts and explains what vision is, how to develop it, and how to implement it. Well
written, practical in approach, and laced with numerous examples.
This book content consists of three parts; Part One: What Vision Is and Why It Matters
(1. Vision: The Key to Leadership and 2. Where Tomorrow Begins: Finding the Right Vision),
Part Two: Developing the Vision (3. Taking Stock: The Vision Audit, 4. Testing Reality:
The Vision Scope, 5. Considering the Possibilities: The Vision Context and 6. Finding Your
Way: The Vision Choice) and Part Three: Implementing the Vision (7. Making It Happen:
Translating Vision into Reality, 8. Running a Race with No End: The Re-Visioning Process
and 9. Developing Visionary Leadership: Securing the Future).
(a) Critique the book using the five elements of the Relational Leadership Model. In
addition, analyze the book for its contribution to your understanding of leadership.
i. Purposeful
When Burt Nanus told a story in this book about Wayne Huizenga; who is a visionary
leader, the element that I can relate to Relational Leadership Model is ‘Purposeful’. In 1962,
at the age of twenty-four, he bought a garbage route in Florida. Six years later, he joined
with Dean Buntrock (who had married one of his cousins) to form Waste Management,
Inc.he had a vision of a nationwide sanitation company created from many small firms, able
to pool resources, share knowledge and take advantage of the many new environmental
opportunities being created in Washington. Waste Management undertook blitzkrieg spurt of
acquisition in the early 1970s and is now a $6 billion company, by far the leader in its
industry.
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2. Review on Visionary Leadership Book by Burt Nanus
He built substantial businesses many areas and in 1987, sensing a new opportunity
in the proliferating ownership of home VCRs, he invested in a small local video rental
company called Blockbuster Entertainment and built it into a nationwide chain over 1,900
stores, approaching a billion dollars in sales in an unbelievable four years.
Wayne Huizenga is an exceptionally successful leader with an extraordinary sense of
vision, but his is a vision always fully grounded in reality. He didn‘t start Waste Management
until he had personally hauled trash from construction site, run bulldozer for two years, and
managed small garbage collection firm. He quickly learned a lot about the other businesses
too, so that his vision of what was possible for them was always based on a fundamental
understanding of what business scholars call their ―core competence‖. He chose simple
businesses, but after all, such firms are a lot easier to understand and Huizenga would be
the first to admit that he wouldn‘t touch a business that he doesn‘t understand. And I agree
because we must be clear about the purpose and the fundamentals of the business that we
are in.
ii. Inclusive
Nanus stated that the best way to ensure that the vision-forming process is alive and
well – and continuously practiced – in our organization is to multiply the number of visionary
leaders at all levels. We must include them in decision making and encourage them all to
articulate visions worthy of their commitment and the organization‘s confidence. Applaud
their initiative and tolerate their mistakes. The continuous visioning this stimulates will keep
the process of organizational evolution alive and vital and will make it far less likely those
important threats or opportunities will be overlooked. Moreover, the experience gained
through continuous visioning will prove invaluable as these leaders are promoted into more
responsible, higher –level leadership positions.
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3. Review on Visionary Leadership Book by Burt Nanus
iii. Empowering
I got a better understanding about ‗Empowering’ through paragraph stating that we
can put thrust in the hands of younger people with less commitment to the status quo and
extend it later to other parts of the organization. Or we can assign responsibilities to opinion
leaders and champions in the organization who know how to take advantage of informal
networks to establish a sense of renewal and progress with the new vision.
iv. Ethical
Burt Nanus stated that values are abstract ideas that influence thinking and action in
the organizational and, ultimately, the choice of vision. Values affect vision in several ways.
First, values provide the context within which issues are identified and alternative goals
evaluated. Second, values also shape assumptions about the future and limit the range of
choices considered for a new vision. Organizational culture includes values but goes further
encompass other dimension that determine how people act in the organization, for example,
beliefs, expectations, norms, rituals, communication patterns, symbols, heroes, and reward
structures. These values are influential in shaping the organizational culture at our working
place.
Leaders must always understand their own values, as well as the values and culture
prevailing in their organizations, because these values determine whether a new sense of
direction will be enthusiastically embraced, reluctantly accepted or rejected as inappropriate.
v. Process oriented
Statement from Burt Nanus that opened my eyes about the ‗Process Oriented‘ is
when he wrote that educational institutions at every level, from kindergartens to universities,
also need to play a responsible role in the creation of future visionary leaders. If we have
some influence at our school or college, help us rethink our academic agendas.
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4. Review on Visionary Leadership Book by Burt Nanus
Every school should encourage students to have leadership experience while still
school. Schools should include leadership itself as an important subject for study. And of
course, schools should teach how organizations work. Since most of modern work – and all
of leadership – takes place in organizations, it is important for future leaders to understand
organizational cultures, structures, and processes. Students also need to acquire
organizational skills such as teamwork, negotiation, entrepreneurship, and networking and to
learn how to cooperate in multicultural settings.
In connection with that, we can apply this method to the organization. We need to
involve all departments in determining the direction of the company and also in making any
decision. In addition we are also able to recognize potential leaders who will be the
successors to existing leaders.
(b) How has the book contributed to your understanding of leadership?
This book designed for individual leaders to develop their own vision statement, this
book guides readers through the mechanics of forming a vision, guidelines for developing
the scope of the vision, and processes for implementing that vision.
Successful leaders know that nothing drives an organization like an attractive,
worthwhile, achievable vision for the future. Nanus shows why vision is the key to
leadership, and demonstrates how any leader can use a logical, step-by-step process to
create and implement a powerful new sense of direction in his or her organization.
What is Nanus has done here was if you are in a leadership position, the diagram of the
essential components of leadership in the first chapter is alone worth the price of admission.
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5. Review on Visionary Leadership Book by Burt Nanus
These are insights by someone who has studied and analyzed what it takes to be a
"facilitative" leader--not a boss leader, not a manager, but a true "inspirer" of others who can
harness the energies and maximize the focus of an organization--a "leader of leaders"--this
book essentially lays out how to maximize BOTH alignment and empowerment.
(c) What did you agree and disagree with? Why?
Visionary Leadership is an indispensable guide for leaders at all levels. What I like most
about this book is it will always help to retrace our steps. He also gave examples of joint
recommendations related to the explanation.
Nothing drives an organization like an attractive, worthwhile, achievable vision for the
future. Leadership expert and best-selling author Burt Nanus finally shows why vision is the
key to leadership—and presents a logical, step-by-step process to create and implement a
powerful new sense of direction in any organization. Visionary Leadership is an
indispensable guide for leaders at all levels, from top executives to heads of divisions and
departments, from large corporations to small businesses, from manufacturing and service
organizations to government and non-profit institutions.
Furthermore, he wrote that the vision needs to be audited. By giving example of Prime
Pet Food, first examining the nature of the business and its mode of operations and ending
with a vision audit that identifies where the organization appears to be headed. Leaders
need to ask themselves and answer several questions given as guidelines.
There is one thing that I think that I‘m not agreeing with. In Part Three: Implementing the
Vision; Chapter 9 – Developing Visionary Leadership: Securing the Future. Nanus
mentioned about Bill Gates, Chairman of Microsoft as an example. Even though he holds no
college degree at all he did become a remarkable leader by patiently working his way up a
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6. Review on Visionary Leadership Book by Burt Nanus
chain of management promotions. The New York Times captured his secret quite
perceptively:‖as a youth, Bill Gates envisioned the future the future and became a billionaire.
Now, as Chairman of Microsoft, he still claims to see what his competitors don‘t‖.
But in my opinion, we cannot secure the future. What we can do is we can make a
prediction and forecast what possibilities that will happen in future are. By chance, luckily
there are few successful leaders that have capabilities to predict future; Bill Gate, Steve Jobs
and Mark Zuckerberg. However, Nanus list down some of their characteristics of the new-
first-century organizations which is I think it‘s a good for readers to apply it as guidelines.
(d) Would you recommend this book to another student of leadership? Why or why
not?
I would recommend this book to another student of leadership because it can be the
definitive resource for leading personal life and an organization to a new future. It clearly
delineates the steps the leader should follow to bring the organization to a shared vision of
its future which is inspirational yet achievable. The supporting rationale for the advantages of
Visioning over conventional Strategic Planning is explained by the author. The progression
from Vision to implementation of strategies is also treated in depth.
Furthermore, this book is geared toward business leaders in helping them discover a
vision; I found the book very helpful and insightful in the process that it develops that
enables a group to discover their vision. The book focuses less on WHY vision is important
and more on HOW to discover and articulate an organizations vision. If the student
interested the topic of vision, this is a must read.
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7. Review on Visionary Leadership Book by Burt Nanus
(e) If you had to write a book on the same title as the one you reviewed, what would
you write about that is different from the author’s presentation?
There is not much I can do because the content of the book is good. But, if I get the
opportunity to write this kind of book I will try to compress the contents so much simpler and
easier to understand. This book contains 224 pages (not including references and index). I
will try to write in the estimated 100 to 150 more pages. Based on my experience reading
this book, I had to repeat to read each paragraph to understand the content they want
delivered by the author. Other than that, I will put in diagram, chart, pictures or other suitable
substances that can help the reader to understand the writing of the book more easily.
Conclusion
This book is designed for individual leaders to develop their own vision statement; this
book guides readers through the mechanics of forming a vision, guidelines for developing
the scope of the vision, and processes for implementing that vision.
Job as a visionary leader is to set the direction and personally commit to it, to spread
visionary leadership throughout organization, to empower employees to act, to listen and
watch for feedback, and to always focus attention on helping the organization achieve its
greatest potential.
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