The Rule of Attention

Abstract

In our Introduction to this book, we explained our intention to adopt an approach that sets us apart from more populist writers on leadership. We did this because we believe that the success of civil democracies and free markets relies less on the skills of social elites and more on the skills accessible to everyone driven by a desire to make their life and the lives of others worth living. In our elaboration of the skills underlying open source leadership, we have created examples of leaders from three areas — the world of enterprise, the world of public service and the world of the volunteer community. Each person is a composite of key themes or collective patterns of behavior that emerged from the many people who took part in our study. This allowed us to uncover the essential skills required to become a competent open source leader. In adopting this somewhat unusual approach, we hope to avoid the copious use of case studies to illustrate our point.