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The Blueprint
6 Practical Steps to Lift Your Leadership to New Heights

Part leadership manifesto, part practical manual, Doug Conant teaches leaders how to work through six incremental steps to lift their leadership and make meaningful change in their organizations and in the world.

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Praise for The Blueprint

“Doug Conant has long been one of America’s most effective and enlightened leaders. And now he has written an essential book on leadership. Unlike many books in this genre, his is not a collection of wispy platitudes — but an eminently smart and practical guide for building a foundation for your entire professional life.  If you’re hungering to become a better leader, The Blueprint belongs on your shelf and by your side.”
— Daniel Pink, author of  When and Drive

“Longtime Fortune 300 CEO Doug Conant has translated a career’s worth of wisdom into a practical manual on leadership in the face of turbulence. The Blueprint is a rare offering with perfect timing. Leaders at every level in today’s organizations must now be more courageous, well-equipped, and resilient than ever before. Conant’s process will help you to explore your unique strengths—fearlessly. The Blueprint will help you find your own clear voice as a leader (no matter what’s swirling around you). Read this book now – and better yet, buy a copy for everyone on your team.”

— Amy Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management, Harvard Business School

“Doug Conant has proven himself to be a very disciplined CEO – focused, able to let go of what doesn’t fit, building greatness step-by-step, laying foundations for decades down the road while delivering results today. His example shows how effective business leadership can be quiet and bold, studious and decisive, disciplined and creative. Conant has so much to teach, and aspiring leaders at all levels would do well to learn from him.”

— Jim Collins, bestselling author of Good to Great

“Doug Conant and Amy Federman’s brilliant book will change your life – and your leadership – if you incorporate its ideas, using their in-depth six-step approach. The Blueprint shows you the importance of courage, integrity, humility and staying true to yourself as you grow into the authentic leader you are called to be.”
— Bill George, Senior Fellow, Harvard Business School; former Chair & CEO, Medtronic; and author of Discover Your True North

“Doug Conant is a special breed: a hard-edged corporate CEO with an introspective nature who attributes his success to reflection, study, and thoughtful inner work rather than birthright or bombast. In The Blueprint he offers a powerful—and approachable– process for more fully connecting with the unique gifts that will allow your special leadership voice to come alive and impact the world.”
— Susan Cain, bestselling author of Quiet

“As a leader, being self-aware and deliberate are keys to success. The Blueprint provides a simple but powerful opportunity to leverage the experience and wisdom of Doug Conant to refresh your thinking and approach. It can help you maximize your impact.”
— Doug McMillon, President and CEO, Walmart

“Today’s busy leaders often question how they can lift their leadership profile while staying true to themselves. The Blueprint is the answer.”
— Indra Nooyi, Former Chairman & CEO, PepsiCo.

“Doug Conant hasn’t just been a highly successful leader—he’s an unusually thoughtful one.  In this hands-on book, he shares a model that you can apply right away to elevate your impact.”
— Adam Grant, New York Times bestselling author of Originals and Give and Take, and host of the TED podcast WorkLife

Watch The Blueprint  Trailer

Learn the true story that inspired Doug Conant to write The Blueprint, and how reading this book can change your life.

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Examples to Inspire

Personal Leadership Models

Albert Morales, Chief Transformation Officer at AmerisourceBergen
(Boot Camp Alumni)

Kristen Heffernan, General Manager, Henry Schein MicroMD
(Boot Camp Alumni)

Linda Hagerty-Dotterer, Executive Director, Change Management & Culture at CSL Behring
(Boot Camp Alumni)

John Kreger, VP, Chief Operating Officer for MITRE Engenuity
(Boot Camp Alumni)

Chris Abboushi, Commercial Learning + Development, Astellas

John Wooden, Legendary UCLA Head Basketball Coach

Stephen Covey, Author of the Bestselling Book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”

Organizational Leadership Models

Partnership for Public Service: Public Service Leadership Model

Centered Leadership, How Talented Women Thrive

Gallup Engagement Hierarchy

Servant Leadership Model

What is The Blueprint  Process?

Doug Conant has codified over 40 years of leadership experience into his 6-step Blueprint process for reflection and model-building that he himself used to transform his own leadership trajectory and deliver top-tier results in global industry. Using this same 6-step process, you can embark on a practical exploration of your own values, beliefs, and competencies.

Upgrade Your Leadership and Your Life

The Blueprint Process: 6 Steps

1: Reach High — Envision

Envision what success looks like to you and set the intention to do better. In this step, you will take your first crack at articulating your Leadership Purpose.

2: Dig Deep — Reflect

Reflect on your experiences to uncover your leadership beliefs and dig deep to uncover what makes you, you. In this step, you will uncover the life lessons that anchor your leadership and develop a deeper understanding of your unique personality and skillset.

3: Lay the Groundwork — Study

Study to fill in all the cracks from your dig, laying the groundwork with all the learnings and insights from the world that exists beyond your personal experiences.

4: Design — Plan

The fun part. Using design thinking as well as thinking prompts, Post-Its, and pen and paper, conceive your Plan: an exquisite design for your personal Leadership Model, derived from your Leadership Purpose and Leadership Beliefs.

5: Build — Practice

Practice your change process. You will brainstorm small, actionable practices that you can begin to fold into your habits and begin to create your Practice Treasury, a stable of behaviors that will help you bring to life the leadership Plan you designed.

6: Reinforce — Improve

Improve, continually learning from what you did right and what you could have done better, reinforcing the strength of your Foundation in perpetuity. Here you will also work to align your personal leadership approach with the expectations of your organization.

LEARN TO LEAD LIKE ONLY YOU CAN

The BLUEPRINT Boot Camp

Lifts Your Leadership to New Heights

Two days of virtual training. A lifetime of results. At BLUEPRINT Boot Camp—a 2-day program followed by a year of mentorship and correspondence with Doug Conant–you will experience a total immersion into the craft of leadership. Using patented prompts for reflection, high-impact exercises, and collaborative group work, participants unearth powerful insights from their own lives to develop personal leadership models that empower them to lead with greater impact.

Now Accepting Registrants for 2024:
June 5 & 7 (Almost Full!) | Nov. 13 & 15
ALL VIRTUAL | $3500

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The Author, Doug Conant: The only former Fortune 500 CEO who is a NYT bestselling author, a Top 50 Leadership Innovator, a Top 100 Leadership Speaker, and a Top 100 Most Influential Author in the World.

Your Life Story is Your Leadership Story

Many of the problems leaders face today are rooted in compartmentalization. Leaders believe their work life and their “real” life are two different things, so they develop a siloed self-expression: a “work” identity and a “personal” identity. And they’re at odds. Managing this tension becomes yet another task in a crushing litany of expectations and pressures. It does not have to be this way. It’s time to try something else.

Many leadership books teach you to emulate somebody else’s leadership approach; this one empowers you to lead more like you. Leveraging groundbreaking insights from a 40-year leadership journey coupled with the most current science on habit-building, The Blueprint combines true-and-tested exercises for self-discovery with an experience-backed manifesto on the ten foundational tenets of “leadership that works” to create the quintessential treatise and manual on leadership for our times.

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