(1998) suggests that onlycontextual leaders are able to make and implement decisions to help individualsand organizations adapt and thrive in complex and competitive environments.Indeed, inthis complex living system, leaders must be visionary, creative, inspiring,innovative, and courageous to explore new opportunities (Dubrin, Daglish &Miller 2006). The ability to lead effectively is a rare quality, and it hasbecome more and more difficult to find genuine leaders.Despitethe anti-leadership argument, in which it is defended that leaders does notinfluence organizational outcomes (Dubrin 2010), I strongly believe that the individual leadership styleis an essential fact in organizational performance. Furthermore, whenconsidering the impact of leadership, and how to improve the leadershipculture, it is crucial to deliberately analyze all the key factors that mayinfluence outcomes, evidencing the need of ongoing adjustments and synchronizationsbetween every component of the organizations internal and external environment(Hollenbeck and Hall 2004). One of the events through mycareer that have shaped my perspective on leadership was when I worked throughthe merging of two companies, in which operations were shut down and transferredto the acquiring company, and many people lost their jobs. Contractor andLorange (1998) argue that interactions between two companies can be complicatedespecially when there is lack of knowledge of the capabilities of each business.Working as operations managerat that time, my role was to elaborate a long-term strategy for the growth ofkey business areas from process and technology perspective. Thus, I startedconcentrating in identifying problems and developing solution for them. However,unfortunately, I soon realized that my engagement in embracing new ideas wasnot aligned with the interest of some shareholders and even with some managers.Burnes (2009) suggests that the relationship among stakeholders is crucial todetermine and control the strategic direction and performance of anyorganization. Iconfess that I was very enthusiastic to be an operation manager of a big company.In my mind, I was there to bring strategic changes to the business and I couldnot see any impediment to develop great projects. But truly, this was not thecase. The new company was highly bureaucratic and its decision-making processeswere extremely slow. Staff did not have access to their managers for directionand many projects were not being completed. Situations that demanded urgentdecisions simply failed because there was no clarity as to who had decision-makingauthority. Additionally, many meetings where called to make the same decision,because often one of the key persons was not present, and the group could notdiscuss the issue. I gradually perceived that there was no engagement of thetop management in the decision-making processes, and also it seemed to me that,despite the organizational belief of collaboration, there were no discussionsand no knowledge sharing. Ireland and Miller (2004) state that the decisionmaking process requires constant refinement of knowledge gained from previousexperiences. Moreover, formal analysis of techniques, behaviours, personalcharacteristics and power politics are all important parts of the decisionmaking process (Blake2008).While I was broughtinto the new company to help in the development of innovative operationsstrategies, I realized that interest in changes was driven solely by theimmediate short-term demands of specific clients or executives, not by whatcould really impact the status quo. Thus,I decided to write to the President of the company