Driving Leaders: Lessons in high-performance leadership drawn from endurance racing

The world of business makes generous use of metaphors drawn from the auto industry--as in driving for results, leading in the fast lane, looking under the organization’s hood, and leaving the competition in the dust. But this timely, highly readable handbook goes a big step further. Author Chris Cappy, a veteran management consultant and self-professed “car guy,” along with Scott Good, a serial entrepreneur and national championship-winning racing driver, contend that driving is much more than just a metaphor. Together, they demonstrate that the principles of top-level automobile racing can teach us a great deal not only about leadership, but also about life. In this book, they literally put us in the driver’s seat and show us how it’s done.

Endurance racing at the highest levels is a sophisticated team sport, not just an isolated act of derring-do. It takes vision, planning, training, and exquisite execution by many people over a long period of time. Sound familiar? If you’re a business executive, it should. High-performance leading, like racing, is emphatically a team endeavor.

The authors’ passion for their subject leaps out from every page, and it’s catching. So are the keen insights derived from the racetrack--insights used to demonstrate how to leverage and apply important skills and principles in our professional and personal lives. After all, today’s business environment is nothing if not fast and furious. There’s danger around every curve; if we can’t learn how to see around that curve before we get there, to anticipate quickly how to respond, and then to guide ourselves and our organizations around them safely, we’ll spin out of control. Isn’t that what today’s leadership is all about--recognizing with a clear eye the uncertainty and volatility all around us, and then coaching teams of highly-trained people to navigate through successfully? Yes, but how--how do leaders teach, align and motivate their employees to maximize business results?

To answer those questions, The Driving Leader’s Handbook escorts us into the high-pressure world of motorsports and then deftly pulls back to offer cogent advice. It guides us step-by-step through the process that leads a professional driver--or an executive--to a level of performance not previously thought possible. It’s a feeling (yes, feelings and instinct in this realm trump pure knowledge) of calm focus--that relaxed state amidst chaos and confusion that nimbly guides a sports car, or an executive team, through extreme adversity.

The Driving Leader’s Handbook blends the lessons learned from the racetrack with vast experience gained while working with senior executives of some of the world’s largest corporations around organizational change. Leading change is the most daunting challenge today’s leaders face, but face it they must: There’s no alternative. Leadership and change have become synonymous. Drawing from the example of legendary racing team owners like Roger Penske, Chris and Scott show how to build a business case for change by involving employees and wider stakeholders in the process at every level. For the leader, it requires a level of passion, commitment and relentless focus on results.