The Forward-Focused Organization: Visionary Thinking and Breakthrough Leadership to Create Your Company's Future.

By Stephen C. Harper. Amacom, 259 pages. $27.95.

The highlight of Harper's book is really the ending, where, in two appendices, he offers "One Hundred Ways to Self-Destruct as a Leader" and "One Hundred Ways to Drive Away Customers." While nothing here is laugh-out-loud funny, his precepts show how negative thinking can be downright dangerous to leaders and their companies.

While the book jacket extols Harper's "blueprint" for "positioning your company in the forefront of breakthrough leadership, anticipatory management, innovative systems and revolutionary culture" -- it's often hard to see that blueprint. The Forward-Focused Organization consists largely of a series of maxims fleshed out with quotes from (or anecdotes about) people chosen to amplify the author's points. Many of these have previously been published in magazines like Fast Company, Fortune, Business Week and Harvard Business Review. This leads to a profusion of footnotes and an index at the end of each chapter.

It's probably too much to ask that Harper, a consultant and professor at the University of North Carolina/Wilmington, confine himself to primary research. But since little in the book seems particularly original, the heavy use of magazine clippings weighs more than it might in any final assessment.