New book · Fons Trompenaars & Bas Kemme
In 2003, Nokia's president publicly endorsed Christensen's theory of disruption. Four years later, Nokia failed to respond to the iPhone. The theory was there. The organisational capacity to act on it was not.
The paradox that opens this book
Tension to Traction
How Exceptional Leaders Master Decisive Dilemmas in a Polarised World
Tension is not the problem. One-sidedness is.
A new book on how exceptional CEOs turn the dilemmas that paralyse organisations into the engine of lasting performance.
About the book
From tension to traction
Every organisation faces genuine dilemmas: short term versus long term, innovation versus stability, global coherence versus local autonomy. Under pressure, leaders default to one of two responses — they pick a side, or they split the difference. Both weaken the organisation.
Tension to Traction charts a third path. Drawing on in-depth interviews with exceptional CEOs across industries, it reveals how the best leaders identify the decisive tensions that define their organisation, resist the forces pulling toward one-sidedness, and turn those tensions into the engine of lasting performance.
The result is a book that works as both a leadership portrait and a practical guide — not abstractions about complexity, but specific, recognisable interventions that real leaders actually make.
01
Identify the decisive dilemma
Not all tensions matter equally. The book shows how to find the few that genuinely determine an organisation's future.
02
Name the pull toward one-sidedness
Past success, incentive structures, and external pressure all conspire to simplify. Learn to see these forces before they take hold.
03
Intervene with precision
Concrete leadership moves — redesigning structures, roles, and routines — that hardwire reconciliation into daily behaviour.
04
Build virtuous cycles
How leaders who hold tension well don't just survive it — they make their organisations more capable of doing it again.
Featuring leaders
CEOs featuring in Tension to Traction
Each chapter is built around a deep, in-depth conversation with an exceptional leader. These are not admiring portraits — they are honest accounts of the decisive dilemmas each leader faced, the forces pushing toward one-sidedness, and the specific moves that turned tension into traction.
Jan Derck van Karnebeek
CEO, FrieslandCampina
Rob Kolkman
CEO, Sanoma
Roy Jakobs
CEO, Philips
Jesper Hojer
CEO, Jumbo
Ian Edwards
CEO, Atkins Realis
What's different
Beyond 21 Leaders — what this book adds
Tension to Traction is a sequel to 21 Leaders for the 21st Century (Trompenaars & Hampden-Turner, 2001) — a book that featured leaders such as Richard Branson and Michael Dell, and showed that exceptional leaders outperform not by avoiding tension but by knowing when to decide and when to reconcile. That book was ahead of its time. This one arrives as those dilemmas have become urgent. What has changed is the context in which leaders operate. Today, leaders run organisations and institutions under sustained pressure, from technological acceleration and climate challenges to geopolitical tension and societal polarisation. In this environment, the central leadership risk is often not a lack of awareness of tensions, but the tendency of systems to drift into one-sidedness, either by overemphasising one dimension or by getting into a polarising conflict between opposing camps.
Strategy and culture, finally connected. Culture change programmes too often run independently of strategy. This book makes the link explicit: culture is the operational expression of strategy, and it changes when the decisive dilemmas change.
One-sidedness named as the dominant failure mode. Leaders rarely choose one-sidedness deliberately — they are pulled into it. The book goes deeper than its predecessor in mapping these forces: past success, identity, incentive structures, and the way polarisation between camps destroys the capacity to hold tension at all.
From admiration to usability. 21 Leaders portrayed leaders who reconciled well. This book shows how. Each chapter closes with reader-addressed takeaways — specific, behavioural, and based on what these leaders actually did.
For the reader
What you will take away
This is a peer-level read for experienced leaders — not generic advice, but honest accounts of how senior executives have handled the tensions you recognise from your own organisation.
After reading this book, you will be able to:
- Spot the decisive dilemma beneath a deadlock — and distinguish it from background noise
- Identify what is pulling your organisation toward one-sidedness before it becomes a crisis
- Reframe a polarised conflict into a question that opens rather than closes
- Make specific structural, cultural, and behavioural changes that hold tension productively over time
- Recognise the pattern of vicious cycles in your own system — and know what it takes to reverse them
The authors
Written by practitioners, for practitioners
Selected works
Fons Trompenaars — major publications
Over four decades, Fons Trompenaars has built one of the most influential bodies of work in international management and leadership.
1993 — 2020
Riding the Waves of Culture
2019
Capitalism in Crisis, Vol. 1 & 2
2018
Servant Leadership Across Cultures
2015
Nine Visions of Capitalism
2010
The M&A Tango
2010
Riding the Waves of Innovation
2009
Teaching Innovation and Entrepreneurship
2008
Mastering the Infinite Game
2007
Innovating in a Global Crisis
2006
Managing Change Across Corporate Cultures
2006
The Enlightened Leader
2006
Riding the Whirlwind
2004
Marketing Across Cultures
2004
Managing People Across Cultures
2003
Business Across Cultures
2003
Did the Pedestrian Die?
2002
100+ Management Models
2001
21 Leaders for the 21st Century
2000
Building Cross-Cultural Competence
1993
The Seven Cultures of Capitalism
The New Business Culture series
With Peter Woolliams · Emerald Publishing, 2023–2025
2025
New Approaches to Mergers & Acquisitions
2024
New Approaches to Creating a Culture of Innovation
2024
New Approaches to Recruitment and Selection
2023
New Approaches to Flexible Working
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Get in touch
Contact the authors
Whether you're interested in speaking engagements, media inquiries, or simply want to share a thought — Fons and Bas personally value every message they receive.
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