From Expert to Executive: Mastering the SOPs of Leading

“From Expert to Executive: Mastering the SOPs” of Leading illustrates the importance and power of demystifying, deconstructing, and rebuilding our notions of leadership in a bid to overcome the most pressing crisis facing modern organizations and their members: not enough leaders are actually leading. Written by Ed Tyson, a former Marine-turned-executive-turned-coach, as a fictional case study within a novella, “From Expert to Executive” highlights a matrix of interconnected stories of personal and professional struggle, through which a solution is presented: the LeadershipSOPs. Behind the model’s elegantly compact SOPs acronym, lies a mnemonic double entendre, implying both a methodology identifying the process (developing and leveraging standard operating procedures) and the work of leading (structuring, operating, and perfecting communities of effort). Too frequently, new and veteran leaders are left to find and travel the road from subject matter expert to executive alone. And, even when we do support them, we often doom our efforts to failure by overloading development programs with training on interpersonal skills and leadership styles (an approach which wrongly assumes these leaders already know how to differentiate their work from the team’s). A far cry from a dry textbook, “From Expert to Executive…” succeeds in depicting real-life leadership scenarios through the eyes of six fictional leaders and one applicant across more than a decade. It is a must-read, delivering tangible guidance to new leaders grappling with their responsibilities, veteran executives searching for scalability and sophistication, and mentors trying to simplify coaching conversations.