Above the Clouds

The entrepreneur Time magazine called “the Bad Boy of banking” is back with crucial insights about the importance of business culture in a dizzyingly complex global marketplace.

In business, breaking rules is easy. What’s really hard is what comes next: building the right company culture — the lifeblood of effective leadership. In a complex, 24-7 globalized marketplace, how do you answer the question “Who are we?” Culture-driven leadership is as much about the why as the how. Long-term and short-term. Reacting and reflecting. It means identifying, creating, and sustaining a company culture. For a culture-driven leader, spending time “above the clouds,” or finding the sweet spot of perspective, can make all the difference.


Entrepreneur and pioneering financial services CEO Arkadi Kuhlmann offers a seasoned antidote to navigating blind through our increasingly competitive landscape. Drawing on ten key principles from his time at ING Direct and his many years’ experience on the front lines of innovative customer-focused leadership, Kuhlmann explores real-world leadership challenges and both the bullseyes and missteps of Disney’s Robert Iger and Starbucks’s Howard Schultz, as well as Elon Musk, Richard Branson, and others. Kuhlmann makes a compelling case for how leaders can use the right culture to meet the formidable challenges that lie ahead.


In the end, it’s about making leadership count. And making a difference.