By Claude B. Kershner IV, DBA

Chapter Visual Summaries

A guided tour through the questions, people, and ideas behind Deemed Essential.

A guided companion to the questions, people, and ideas behind Deemed Essential. Start with a chapter, watch the verified official overview where one is available, and use the reflection prompt to carry the work into your own setting.

Chapter 1: Let Us Ride Together

“Individualistic cultures tend to celebrate and promote individual success, competition, and personal responsibility, whereas collective cultures focus on shared responsibility, collaboration, and maintaining social harmony.”

— Geert Hofstede

Official chapter overview: Ethnocentrism, Collectivism & Individualism: Chapter One Summary of Deemed Essential. Watch on YouTube

Reflect: Where do individual responsibility and shared responsibility need to work together in your own context?

Chapter 2: The Essential Worker & Business

“You can have everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.”

— Zig Ziglar

Official chapter overview: The Essential Worker & Business: Chapter Two of Deemed Essential. Watch on YouTube

Reflect: Whose needs become clearer when you define your work as service?

Chapter 3: A Customer Service Culture

“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.”

— Bill Gates

Official chapter overview: A Customer Service Culture: Chapter Three of Deemed Essential. Watch on YouTube

Reflect: What might your most difficult customer experience still teach you?

Chapter 4: The Servant Leader

“The effects of leadership on Organizational Citizenship Behavior are mediated by factors such as trust, satisfaction, and perceived organizational support.”

— Dennis W. Organ & Philip M. Podsakoff

Official chapter overview: The Servant Leader: Chapter Four of Deemed Essential. Watch on YouTube

Reflect: How can trust, satisfaction, and support show up in the way you lead?

Chapter 5: Identity, Purpose & Belonging

“I learned courage was not the absence of fear but the triumph over it.”

— Nelson Mandela

Video companion: This chapter’s official overview is not yet available. Use the book and the reflection prompt below as your guide.

Reflect: What courage does the next honest step require of you?

Chapter 6: Entrepreneurship & Business Evolution

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world… therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

— George Bernard Shaw

Video companion: This chapter’s official overview is not yet available. Use the book and the reflection prompt below as your guide.

Reflect: What must evolve for your work to remain useful?

Chapter 7: The Leadership Transition

“Change is painful. But nothing is as painful as staying stuck somewhere you don’t belong.”

— Dave Ramsey

Video companion: This chapter’s official overview is not yet available. Use the book and the reflection prompt below as your guide.

Reflect: What is it time to leave behind so that a healthy transition can begin?

Chapter 8: Building a Mission-Driven Team

“Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.”

— Michael Jordan

Video companion: This chapter’s official overview is not yet available. Use the book and the reflection prompt below as your guide.

Reflect: What shared mission would help a capable team become a committed one?

Chapter 9: Operational Effectiveness

“Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.”

— Peter Drucker

Video companion: This chapter’s official overview is not yet available. Use the book and the reflection prompt below as your guide.

Reflect: Where would a cycle of action and reflection improve the work?

Chapter 10: Creativity & Innovation

“If you’re competing on being innovative, you’ll spend your time being curious and shipping things that might not work.”

— Seth Godin

Video companion: This chapter’s official overview is not yet available. Use the book and the reflection prompt below as your guide.

Reflect: What question are you willing to keep asking before you know the answer?

Chapter 11: Financing

The discipline of building a sustainable enterprise.

Video companion: This chapter’s official overview is not yet available. Use the book and the reflection prompt below as your guide.

Reflect: What would make the next stage of the enterprise more sustainable?

Chapter 12: Selling the Business

A thoughtful transition in the life of an enterprise.

Video companion: This chapter’s official overview is not yet available. Use the book and the reflection prompt below as your guide.

Reflect: What would a thoughtful transition protect—for the people and the enterprise?

Continue the work

Read with intention. Lead through service.

Keep the book close as you move through these questions, then return to the ideas that meet the work in front of you.

Find the book Explore resources