The Leader Upheaval Handbook

One of the barriers to innovation in professional services is a lack of training in how to apply design thinking principles and lead multidisciplinary teams in collaborative problem solving. With this handbook, which accompanies her other books Leader Upheaval and Legal Upheaval, Professor Michele DeStefano attempts to fill in this training gap.

DeStefano – a former marketing executive and now a professor at the University of Miami School of Law and Affiliated Faculty and Program Chair in Harvard Law School’s Executive Education program – has spent over a decade researching client-centricity, collaboration, and innovation. This handbook, and the method it is based on, are the fruit of DeStefano’s 13 years of experience leading over more than 230 multidisciplinary, multicultural, and intergenerational teams on a 4-month innovation journey from a problem to a viable solution.

In a conversational and descriptive fashion, DeStefano provides detailed instructions on how to get teams to proactively collaborate and innovate with a process she developed over the years. The 3-4-5 Method™ helps teams move from problem to innovative solution in 3 Phases, over 4 months or less, in 5 Steps. With real examples, this handbook brings to life how to help teams collaborate on solving problems or seizing opportunities of any kind and yield a higher level of collaboration, inclusivity, creative thinking, and actionable results.