Author Douglas McEnroe draws an original and illuminating analogy. He compares the steps that ensure good cooking with the process for changing companies and developing corporate leaders.

Doug’s metaphor spans all stages of making a great meal: thorough preparation, first course, main, dessert, selecting wines, creating stocks and sauces, and using herbs and spices. At each stage he shows the parallel steps in carefully preparing a company for change,

clarifying corporate strategy, developing and coaching executives, and embedding the benefits throughout the organisation.

In this clear and compelling story, Doug passionately proposes that leadership development for a company’s top executives is highly strategic. It is a form of risk management. When handled well, the process can help secure a company’s survival and future prosperity.

This book promises board members, CEOs, business analysts and senior executives including HR directors a fresh look at corporate leadership and significant insights into how to set organisations for success in turbulent economic times.

Introducing Douglas McEncroe

Doug McEnroe is a serious chef and a highly experienced consultant on developing leadership in corporations.

Doug grew up in a famous catering family in Sydney, Australia. He trained as a chef and worked as a professional cook in restaurants for four years. He left Sydney to live and work in Italy. Later, in Madrid, he founded The Douglas McEnroe Group, a consultancy specialising in leadership development and organisational change.

In Spain, Doug’s consultancy became known as the pioneer of leadership development. For 25 years the firm designed and executed hundreds of organisational transformation projects in 150 Fortune 500 companies spanning 22 countries.

Doug has been a senior lecturer at Hult Ashridge Management College near London, delivering their Open Leadership Course, and a senior faculty member at the Centre of Creative Leadership (CCL), Development Dimensions International (DDI) and

Oliver Wyman/Mercer. He is an expert in his field and a keenly sought speaker.

Doug lives in Sydney with his wife Cécile and twin daughters Chloé and Elsa.
 
 

International Success

First published in Spanish by Planeta, the leader in the publishing market of Spain and Latin America, due to popular demand Leadership The Slow-Cooking Way was then published in English to ensure businesses across the globe could benefit from Douglas’ decades of experience.

Praise for Leadership the Slow-Cooking Way

“A lot has been written about organisational transformation and leadership skills. Douglas McEnroe has had a long and successful career consulting on both. He has now delivered his ideas in a very useful book, using the interesting and clever analogy of slow cooking. In my career in stockbroking and as a company director I have seen successful-sounding strategies fail to be implemented, usually due to the lack of depth in leadership. I commend this book as I think it makes a very worthwhile contribution to help improve leadership in organisations.”

Peter Burrows, A0, Senior Adviser, Bell Potter Securities

“Only a great professional in human resources and an accomplished cook such as Douglas could have devised such an illuminating comparison between leadership and cooking, which provides pleasure as well as insight to the reader.”

Francisco Roman, CEO, Vodafone Spain; former CEO, Microsoft Spain

“Outstanding business figures are distinguished by their vision of genuine and compelling leadership and its positive impact on the company culture. This takes thought, commitment and deep engagement of the management team at all levels of the organisation. Douglas McEncroe’s book captures this “recipe” perfectly, and the arguments he makes I see reflected in some of the best-run, most engaged and engaging corporate success stories.”

Helen Dalley, journalist and broadcaster, Sky News Australia

“Leadership is not a place where power is exercised, nor is it a gene or a special kind of charisma, exclusive to the enlightened few. It is a process, an encounter, a conversation with others, a transforming experience that generates a relationship inspired by trust and credibility.

Subjected to the law of reciprocity, both sides, sustained by individual freedom and responsibility, win and enrich each other. Douglas makes his reader think but also feel about the challenges and secrets of such an intangible phenomenon as leadership.”

Santiago Alvarez de Mon, Professor of Leadership, IESE Business School, University of Navarra, Barcelona