Hope Is Not a Strategy: Leadership Lessons from the Obama Presidency

This is a book on leadership, which uses the many mistakes and failures of Barack Obama’s first term as illustrative examples for leadership lessons to be learned. The mistakes and failures during Obama’s presidency are nearly all traceable to his fundamental leadership and experience shortcomings. Barack Obama’s grand intentions and soaring rhetoric have not translated into effective leadership—and that is the great learning opportunity. Amidst the many differences about ideology and challenges of the US presidency, one fact emerges clearly: Barack Obama lacked the leadership skills and breadth/depth of experience for the job. Elected with expectations that he would be a “uniter,” Barack Obama failed at the most important role of a leader and has, in fact been a “divider.” His stated goal: “to fundamentally change America” has materialized in mostly negative results—unfulfilled “Hope” and “Change" for the worse. In thirty short, easy-to-read chapters, the book offers useful lessons about what to do differently and how to do that more effectively—translated to business and personal situations. A summary of the “Lessons” is also provided at the end of the book for a quick review. This is a great resource for current and aspiring leaders, who can learn a lot from the book’s familiar high-profile situations, the problems that Obama had or created, and how the right kind of leadership would have dealt with them.