Your Leadership Moment

This book is for:

1. Social entrepreneurs.​ Much of the insight in YLM comes from the author’s pioneering work on leadership for social enterprises and impact investors. Through work with organizations such as Acumen, which is the world’s pre-eminent impact investor, YLM has a potential audience of approximately 800,000 change-makers, students of leadership, and highly-influential thought leaders worldwide, all of whom have been directly exposed to me and my work. There is a strong market here.
2. Current/former clients, students of Adaptive Leadership and purchasers of previous books. ​The leadership model upon which YLM is based has a strong following of approximately 12,000 students from Harvard Kennedy School and another 15,000-20,000 who have taken an in-person course. This is the kind of audience that has already demonstrated its willingness to purchase this kind of book. I reach about 1,000 participants per year in person, each of whom would be required to purchase a copy of the book. I also have deep reach with key influencers in emerging markets in Kenya, Nigeria, India, and elsewhere across East Africa, who are committed to democratizing leadership.
3. General leadership development readers, practitioners and trainers. ​The leadership development market in the US alone is approximately $50 billion annually and growing. Figures are hard to come by on how much is spent on books. As a proxy indicator, Harvard Business Review (HBR) and Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR) have approximately 2.5 million unique visitors per month. HBR also has 286,000 paying subscribers. Given HBR and SSIR’s demonstrated interest in the leadership model described in YLM, a coordinated effort to engage them in promotion is worth pursuing.
4. Grantmaking executives and program officers working on democracy building and civic engagement.​ Philanthropic and grantmaking organizations give approximately $140 billion/year, of which about $26.8 billion go to causes of topical interest to YLM. A number of my clients are drawn from this audience, including the Obama Foundation in Chicago, the Democracy Fund in DC, the Heinz Endowment in Pittsburgh (John Kerry’s wife’s family’s org), USAID, and the Rockefeller Foundation in NYC. All have expressed a strong interest in supporting the message and circulation of this book.
5. Executives of companies and organization who are trying to democratize “X”. ​It seems these days that everyone is trying to democratize something, e.g. technology, data privacy, blockchain, energy access, health access, etc. I have worked with organizations such as Google, Microsoft and the premier blockchain company on the nexus of YLM and their work. These executives and the thousands of employees I have worked with over the years are a ripe audience for this book. In fact, Google’s former head of HR Laszlo Bock has written his own book ​Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You  Live...,​ which ​acknowledges the value of the adaptive leadership model to Google’s growth.
6. People like the author’s own family. ​Last, but not at all least, the hope is that this book and its message will find its way into the hands of people like the author’s father. Blue-collar, “purple” state, Trump-Obama voters, who hold tremendous sway on the direction of American democracy. People such as PTA Presidents, local political hopefuls, and other local civic groups hold the most hope for restoring a vibrant democracy. The down to earth, un-jargony tone of YLM aims to reach this audience as a secondary target.