The Phoenix Encounter Method: Lead Like Your Business Is on Fire!

A "dream team" of INSEAD professors join leadership guru Ram Charan to deliver a radical new method for leading your company through these times of disruption and uncertainty

The business world is in full-on disruption mode everywhere, and only the wisest, most advanced leaders can see their companies through it all. Now, three professors from INSEAD--"The Business School for the World" and Ram Charan--lay out a game-changing method that helps leaders throw themselves into the firestorm of change and turn it to their organization's advantage.

The Phoenix Encounter Method establishes new rules for succeeding in the unpredictable, fast-changing world of business based on trials with over 1,500 executives. The authors lay out their method for adopting a new way of seeing, a new way of thinking, and a new way of acting--equipping you to grasp "firestorm disruption" as a path to organizational renewal. At the heart of their method is a sense of urgency and a willingness to walk through fire; at its soul, the method compels leaders to imagine destroying their current organization and Phoenix-like rise from the ashes.

The Phoenix Encounter Method introduces a three-step approach to transforming your leadership effectiveness: 1) Phoenix Attitude, a set of mindsets, habits, and behaviors that allows a leader to achieve organizational renewal; 2) Proactive Scanning, an intense curiosity always on the lookout for new ideas, trends, insights, threats, and opportunities; and 3) Opposite Viewpoint Debates, a form of extreme strategic conversation requiring leaders to engage diverse viewpoints, sometimes unwelcome ideas, and a wider range of radically different options before setting a strategic agenda.  Never more important than in this time of COVID recovery and renewal.

Ram Charan is the coauthor of bestsellers Execution and Confronting Reality and the author of What the CEO Wants You to Know and 10 other books. A noted expert on business strategy, he has coached some of the world's most successful CEOs and helped companies like GE, Bank of America, Verizon, KLM, and Thomson shape and implement their strategic direction.

" The Phoenix Encounter Method by the three INSEAD professors and Ram Charan, shows how leaders can transform their organizations into innovators of tomorrow. It offers a proven method developed based on the authors'' long years of academic research and practice. It is filled with compelling insights and examples. It is a rare blue ocean of the transformation topic and is a must-read." -- W. Chan Kim , coauthor of Blue Ocean Strategy and Blue Ocean Shift and the BCG Chair Professor at INSEAD "The post-COVID world will be very different. What business will need to succeed is leaders with new mindsets and the capacity to engage deeply in very different strategic conversations. The Phoenix Encounter Method delivers on both counts. What''s more, we have used it, and it works." -- Anand Mahindra , Chairman, Mahindra Group "For far too long, strategy has been stuck in a static world. The Phoenix Encounter Method advances a methodology that recognizes that sustainable competitive advantage is a myth and offers an approach to rethinking strategy when advantages are transient, and competitors can come from anywhere. The method introduces not only dynamism, but emotion, mindset and leadership into the creation of your next strategy. It''s a powerful combination to reshape your tomorrow." -- Rita McGrath , Professor, Columbia Business School, and author of Seeing Around Corners: How to Spot Inflection Points in Business Before They Happen "The Industrial Revolution powered the economy for three hundred years, so it''s no surprise that the management approaches from that era have come to dominate the world of leadership. But today, as the information age compresses time frames and unforeseen crises such as Covid-19 destroy existing organizational structures, the most critical leadership question is no longer ''how do we minimize error and maximize efficiency?'' but ''how do we reinvent the future when everything is constantly changing?'' The Phoenix Encounter Method provides an answer. Insightful, necessary, and incredibly timely, this book teaches leaders to abandon outdated methods and begin a journey of dramatic change." -- Erin Meyer , author of The Culture Map , and coauthor with Reed Hasting of No Rules Rules "Thought leadership from world leading management academics, coupled with Ram Charan''s unique ability to make dense and fairly complex content digestible for business leaders, The Phoenix Encounter Method is a must-read for HR and other leaders facing an incredibly difficult business terrain marked by COVID, social unrest, and economic downturn, and then use the method to navigate a new path forward." -- Johnny C. Taylor , Jr., CEO, Society for Human Resource Management, and coauthor of The Trouble with HR "The need to find a burning platform to catalyze change has been well documented. What has received less attention is a way of preparing for and responding to this challenge. At DBS, we found that it paid to be paranoid, to anticipate competition from unlikely contenders, to try and master the new technologies to stay a step ahead. The Phoenix Encounter Method takes many of our learnings and packages them in a program (and in this book) that seems very impactful. It is a systematic way to prepare defense and launch offense, leveraging new work styles and technologies. A fantastic read for leaders seeking to survive and succeed in this dramatically changing world." -- Piyush Gupta , CEO and Director, DBS Group "Written by true experts in the field, The Phoenix Encounter Method , is a direct and clear-eyed approach to help leaders manage and survive potentially fatal disruptions to their businesses. As exogenous threats continue to make obsolete conventional thinking about managing uncertainty, the authors provide an invaluable and practical roadmap to help leaders successfully navigate an increasingly complex landscape. At stake is not just a methodology to help improve a business, but often an approach to save it." -- Paul Meehan , Senior Partner and former Regional Managing Partner, Bain & Company "Although disruptions and a rapidly changing environment present many risks to organizations, they also represent transformative opportunities. This well-researched book provides a practical and actionable approach for leaders in any sector or industry to face up to disruption and protect their business by helping them to find new responses and ways of thinking. A must-read." -- Patrick Cescau , Chairman, InterContinental Hotels Group, and former CEO Unilever "Platforms and ecosystem-based business models are powering growth, innovation, and the future, fueled by massive technology shifts in big data, the Cloud, AI, and Edge computing. The Phoenix Encounter Method is vital reading for leaders and executives currently facing unprecedented challenges to drive innovation, growth, and resilience for a modern connected world." - -Ralph Mupita , CEO, MTN Group Limited " The Phoenix Encounter Method is not only a powerful reframing of the importance of disruptive change in organizations, but it is also just as importantly a hands-on tool for the leaders who are responsible for invoking that change. The Phoenix Encounter Method stresses the necessity of swiftly and courageously breaking down systems that aren''t working, but it equally provides futurefacing blueprints for rebuilding from the ground up, encouraging readers (and leaders) to revisit their roles with radical debate and courageous flexibility". -- Kevin Ryan , CEO and Founder Alleycorp; Founder, MongoDB Inc. "In this world of massive enterprise transformation, The Phoenix Encounter Method is a fresh approach for business to build your fortune and shape your differentiation using new strategic thinking tools developed by expert INSEAD faculty and Ram Charan. What makes this method so different, is that it can be used by leaders at any level, industry, or geography to create cut-through, actionable strategic options and moves, and is tested by more than 1,500 practitioners." -- Raj Vattikuti , Founder and Chairman, Atimetrik Corporation, USA "Is it important for you that the spirit of renewal and innovation permeate your organization? If yes, you must read The Phoenix Encounter Method . This book showcases the exemplary thought leadership that you would expect from leading academics at INSEAD. The authors created the Phoenix Encounter Method to help leaders leverage the instruments of disruption to their advantage. COVID-19 increases the urgency for organizations to use this method to develop a bespoke script for their future." - -Ilian Mihov , Dean of INSEAD and the Rausing Chaired Professor of Economic and Business Transformation " The Phoenix Encounter is not for the faint-hearted. Experiencing it at INSEAD''s Advanced Management Program led by Ian Woodward and seeing your course colleagues and faculty dismantle what you''d thought was a robust and defendable business with disarming ease was confronting. The real value was in the systems thinking around how to proactively plan to evolve and reshape your business to meet the emerging threats. The principles and processes learned through The Phoenix Encounter have been put to good use in our business in response to the COVID pandemic and the unstoppable forces it has unleashed." -- Glen Sowry , CEO Metlifecare, New Zealand "Leading a rapidly growing company in an uncertain and volatile industry requires diverse and opposing viewpoints during strategic debates. I was introduced to the Phoenix Encounter Method while attending an Advanced Management Program at INSEAD. It facilitated the radical thinking that is crucial for crafting our desired future while navigating previously unknown obstacles. I strongly recommend this book to any CEO or company executive involved in crafting business strategy. The book will be prescribed reading for my exco. It is a truly powerful method." -- Andries van Heerden , CEO, Afrimat Limited " The Phoenix Encounter Method is relevant not only at the enterprise level, but also at functional or process levels. It can ask the question: How will we perform for our customers if we completely eliminate some function or process? This forces critical dialogue around waste, non-value-adding work, streamlining, and automation. The creativity and open mind thought process the Encounter method encourages has helped us redefine how work gets done, and in many cases to completely reinvent some functions, freeing up resources to further accelerate growth." -- Stanley Kocon , CEO, Voith Hydro Inc. North America "Adaptive leadership is among the most important determinants of success for businesses today, and the team at INSEAD strike at the essence of that with the work they do. I have witnessed this firsthand through the programs they have led with our senior leadership group over a number of years. I credit that work as an important factor in the success and growth the business has been able to achieve." -- Scott Charlton , CEO, Transurban Group, Australia "Global leaders face unprecedented challenges and urgently need a very different kind of strategic debate. The Phoenix Encounter Method is a breakthrough process to help them do this. Switch attitudes and undertake the kind of ''no-holds barred debates'' that must shape future options to reinvent their future." -- Paula Cal

This item is eligible for free returns within 30 days of delivery. See our returns policy for further details.