The Journey of Not Knowing: How 21st Century Leaders Can Chart a Course Where There Is None (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780997813906)

The Journey of Not Knowing offers a fast paced, entertaining read that gets to the heart of a critical state in today's business climate and society overall: the constantly changing, ambiguous 21st Century and the uncharted waters ahead. This book will inspire leaders of any size organization to come to grips with the scariness of the unknown. It advances a new approach to leadership that leverages the discomfort of the new as a source of inspiration rather than a deterrent to building a better future. It received a 2016 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Silver Medal for Business & Economics and an IBPA Benjamin Franklin Gold Medal.

Written by former Amazon executive, coach and lawyer Julie Benezet, the book combines storytelling, business experience and human psychology to create a roadmap through the ambiguity of building something better in the context of the realities of humans in organizational life.

The book tells a story of a day in the life at Arrow, Inc., a fictional company. It follows the defended behaviors throughout that day of its eight very recognizable leadership team members as they work first to avoid and then finally to solve the mystery of why a client fired them. The reward of the discovery is a critical piece of new business and substantial personal growth. To get there, each of team members must face their past, present and future. The memorable characters in the book are persons with whom the readers may cringingly identify. The book creates a framework them to confront their own resistance to change, and tools to start them on their way toward pursuing new possibilities for their lives once they can confront and embrace the scariness of the unknown.

The author opens the book with a description of how her experience as an early Amazon executive led to her beliefs about leadership and the unknown. It ends with a primer on the Journey of Not Knowing leadership model, using the Arrow story to illustrate its principles.