I've just finished reading Bob Johansen's "Leaders Make the Future".To be quite honest I'm not quite sure what to make of the book. It is a fairly easy read. But is also quite "American" in that it has 10 (of course ten) points that make up the content of the book…
1. Maker Instinct
2. Clarity
3. Dilemma Flipping
4. Immersive Learning Ability
5. Bio-empathy
6. Constructive Depolarizing
7. Quiet Transparency
8. Rapid Prototyping
9. Smart Mob Organizing
10. Commons Creating
As you can gather from the ten points the book is well positioned in a modern view of the world. However, each chapter is a wee bit academic and abstract (as are some of the chapter titles used) and surprisingly short. Despite the shortness a number of the key points get repeated too many times. One gets the impression that Johansen didn't have enough material for a whole book. And a very annoying recurring theme in each chapter is a subsection on warfare. I can't find any reference to it, but my guess is that some of Johansen's work was funded by the military. The content on warfare seems doesn't fit in very well in the whole, to say the least.
Still, all this said, I still think the book is worth reading. It gives a sketchy picture of the leadership role in the near future and ahead, which is more than most management thinkers have managed lately. Most of what I have seen still focuses on an old leadership paradigm.
I also found this clip in which Johansen doesn't specifically talk about his book, but explains some of the terms used in the book and also provides some background that could be of interest to anyone considering to read the book.
//jan