Instead of studying leadership, why not spend some time studying leaders and strategies in the wild? You can learn a lot from leadership experts, but you always see the leader and what he or she does through the expert’s personal lens. Supplement that learning with studying real leaders in real life situations and draw your own conclusions. The posts in this series will help you.

Every week I’ll point you to articles by and about real leaders in real situations and to articles about how real companies are faring in the marketplace. Read them. Think about them. Draw your own lessons and conclusions from them. Then try to apply those lessons in your own real life.

This week I’m pointing you to articles about Ferrari, Apple, David Henshall, Alex Cruz, and Horst Schulze.

From Michael Blanding: The Ferrari Way

“Secretive sports car maker Ferrari opens up to Professor Stefan Thomke about how it has achieved success—by bucking industry trends.”

From Adam Lashinsky: Why Apple’s New Services Will Succeed Even if They Don’t Impress

“Zack Van Amburg, an Apple executive for not quite two years, already has mastered the company’s art of aspirational dissembling. Monday morning, he helped announce the technology giant’s yet-to-launch Apple TV Plus subscription product with a show of force and money that included Steven Spielberg and Oprah Winfrey. ‘It’s not just another streaming service,’ he declared. He was partly right: Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu, HBO Go, and others have apps and pricing plans. So far Apple TV Plus has neither. Other than that, Apple’s looked quite similar.”

From Joel Trammell: Citrix CEO Leads Business Model Pivot

“David Henshall became the President and CEO of Citrix in 2017, after working there since 2003 as CFO and then CFO/COO (He served as acting CEO in 2013-2014). He has more than 25 years of technology management experience. During his tenure over the last year and a half, he has led the company through a massive business model pivot and made a significant investment in its technology. The results are impressive: Citrix has expanded into new markets while remaining profitable and consistently beating earnings expectations quarter-over-quarter.”

Thanks to Smartbrief on Leadership for pointing me to this story

From Rob Morris: Flying through disruption

“British Airways’ Alex Cruz on steering the airline into uncharted digital airspace.”

From Gabriel Perna: Ritz-Carlton Founder Horst Schulze On Creating A Gold Standard

“If there were ever an unlikely person to make waves in the hotel industry, it would have been Horst Schulze. The man who co-founded the Ritz-Carlton company had as unlikely of a journey as you’ll find considering his upbringing”

For some ideas about how to get more from this series of posts, check out “Studying Leaders in the Wild.“