The Wise Leader- "Back to the Future"

“In an era when discontinuity is the only constant, the ability to lead wisely has nearly vanished. All the knowledge in the world did not prevent the collapse of the global financial system three years ago or stop institutions like Lehman Brothers and Washington Mutual from failing.” say Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi in this
HBR article. http://hbr.org/2011/05/the-big-idea-the-wise-leader/ar/1 

Here is a nice video of the author:

Key take aways:

The need for leaders to have a Moral Purpose, profit as a result and not the goal. The Wise leader has the Goal of providing common good, profit the result. This insight is far from the typical management goal of delivering returns to shareholders.

Recommend Leaders to be idealistic pragmatist. With out profits you cannot exist, but need to stretch your moral purpose.

“Phronesis” a word coined by Aristotle, it is the habit of making the right decisions and taking the right actions in context and relentless pursuit of excellence for the common good.

Advocating emergent leadership, “Leading from the Middle” rather than top down. This possibly is the biggest change large companies need to make.

Pursuit of Ideal is universal, Decision Vs. Judgement, where Decision is information processing, Judgement is really based on the context.

Emphasis on Liberal Arts, to get a better perspective on context, share your experiences and articulate the context.

More in this article http://hbr.org/2011/05/the-big-idea-the-wise-leader/ar/1