First Look

Apples Are Square

By Susan Smith Kuczmarski and Thomas D. Kuczmarski
Kaplan Publishing, July 2007
235 pp., $25

The Kuczmarskis, innovation consultants and teachers, profile 25 values-based leaders--mostly fresh faces--to discover a new model of leadership for the 21st century. An excerpt:

"Squared apples" symbolically stand for a new way to lead in the workplace and a new way to measure success--both personally and professionally.... We, as a society, need to take bruised work environments and reshape them into dynamic, inclusive, and collaborative organizations. Likewise, we need to reexamine the central core within our own personal life. Is the core selfish or selfless? ... Is our orientation geared toward using people or getting the most out of them for themselves as well as for the good of the organization? Serving others, helping others, and inspiring others to bring out their inner core of strengths and talents is what the new definition of success is all about.