When a world-leading drug company suddenly loses control of the patent on its number-one selling product, the effect on its well-laid schemes of strategy and organisation – not to mention on its share value – is volcanic.

The authors show how, in the face of such a cataclysmic event, Eli Lilly found a way forward, analysing leadership as the factor that acted as a catalyst for strategy and organisation, and enabled constant and adaptive change, leading to organisational renewal and, ultimately, transformation.

Instancing Weick’s classic story of a platoon of Hungarian soldiers lost in the Alps but which found its way home safely using a map of the Pyrenees, the authors discuss sensemaking and the essential qualities of leadership (its connections with energy and a sense of direction, and its axiomatic concern with people). They note how ‘leadership does expressly in practice what strategising and organising do conceptually in theory’, and conclude that, when the business environment shifts to reflect rapid, constant and discontinuous change, leadership can become the defining factor of organisational success.

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