Smarter, Faster, Better: Strategies for Effective, Enduring and Fulfilling Leadership

reviewed by Robert Pritchett, November 2006

This is an executive coaching book designed to help with one-on-one training sessions from Karlin Sloan and Company.

What they say

“To meet the demands of a global marketplace, you've invested time and money to attract top quality leadership talent. How do you leverage, develop, and retain your most valuable resources?

At Karlin Sloan & Company, we offer real-world solutions for business leaders and the organizations they inhabit. Our mission? Fostering greatness in organizations worldwide…

In this groundbreaking book, acclaimed executive coach Karlin Sloan offers leaders a variety of self-assessments, habits, strategies, and sustainable practices that they can use to become what today’s marketplace demands; smarter, faster, and better. Karlin Sloan shows what it takes to make the move to the next level to become a leader who both grows the bottom line and contributes to stakeholders and the world in a positive way. Based on research, study, and the author’s extensive experience as a coach to leaders of top organizations, this book shows how to become smarter, faster, and better by examining these questions:

• What are your key strengths and what do you need to develop or leverage?
• What are you focused on now and what do you need to accomplish to really get ahead?
• Are your values in line with your work? What is the end you are trying to achieve?

What I say

What kind of people do we surround ourselves with? Working “smarter” entails gathering more intelligent people around you and having enough confidence and trust in them by letting them work things out.

Do we handle overload well or thrive on stress? “Hurry up and wait” isn’t necessarily the best strategy for improving business. Sometimes we have to slow down and think things through before rushing headstrongly into the future.

We can be better by serving others, instead of being serviced by them. This book is anecdotal in that it provides a number of “for-instances” we can learn from. And I’m all for learning from others, because I’m like the ancient Greek philosopher who once said that the older he got, the less he realized he knew.

So this book’s title is really an anti-title that by reading through the book, we can begin to use common sense and intuitive obviousness in bettering the lives of others thereby, bettering our own.

From my own experience, a leader is one who is out front and has earned the trust of his or her followers, because he or she cares about those being led with love. A manager manages to dot “I”s, cross “T”s and keeps the house generally in order while carrying a heavy stick of fear to get work done.

This book shows that if we follow our human tendencies to play nice and share, that we can get more done in less time and the work will be of better quality, because we show a genuine interest in those we work with from day to day, week to week and year to year.