Teaching the Dinosaur to Dance

Business as usual is extinct. Disruption and social pressure are the new norm and change is inevitable for enterprises of all kinds—businesses, governments, non-profits and social institutions. We’ve reached a turning point and it’s time to evolve, or else go the way of the dinosaurs.

Enterprise everywhere needs to act now, but in an age of polarized debates on complex issues (fairness, discrimination, reconciliation and climate change to name a few), how can leaders find a new way forward? How can enterprises re-invent themselves to make capitalism work better for more people? 

Teaching the Dinosaur to Dance provides the roadmap enterprise builders and rebuilders need to rethink, redesign, and revitalize their organizations to remain relevant and sustainable in a new and very different future:

• Offers fresh approaches to organizational leadership and the imperative of adaptability, and highlights the personal leadership capabilities required to do this work.

• Features inspiring stories and experiences of enterprise teams challenged to move beyond the status quo and create new value.

• Shares insights on how to tell your enterprise story in an authentic, engaging way.

• Guides enterprise teams in setting core organizational values and purpose, including ways to move from compliance to sustainability and, ultimately, stewardship.

• Shows how to increase your enterprise’s engagement with a wider range of stakeholders, to understand the diverse range of viewpoints and generational context needed to boost innovation and resiliency.

• Includes three practical tools and user guides—A Measure of Integrity, The Enterprise Onion and Essential Elements of Leadership—to support your organization in designing a new path forward. 

This book is for those enterprising individuals and organizations committed to teaching the outmoded, struggling dinosaur to dance—into a bright, sustainable future.

Donna Kennedy-Glans is a boundary-crosser, adding value throughout her career to enterprising projects in over thirty-five countries, in the public, private and non-profit sectors: as an energy insider rooted in Alberta’s oil patch; founding a non-profit to build the capacity of women in Yemen; serving as an elected politician and cabinet minister; holding leading roles on boards of directors; and helping to steward the family farm enterprise. She is a political commentator, community builder, writer and speaker, weighing in on energy, leadership, governance, community and integrity issues.

Andre N. Mamprin has been a student of strategy and leadership for over two decades. As Leader of Knowledge Architecture at The Next Institute and Executive Director of The Banff Centre Leadership Development, he has designed leadership learning content and delivered programs and solutions to more than 20,000 leaders and to blue-chip organizations across North America.