Located in Jordan at the nexus of Africa, Asia, and Europe, Jordan's Red Sea port city of Aqaba is a lifeline for commerce to the region and has operated for more than a millennium. But in 2003, maritime traffic had become so congested that ships were waiting an average of five days to be off-loaded, and international shipping lines suspended business with the port, costing Jordan $120 million per year.

Something had to be done, but the government could not afford an estimated $500 million to update the long-neglected facility. That was when Minister of Planning Imad Fakhoury stepped forward with a bold idea: If the bottlenecked ships could not get to Aqaba, Jordan would literally bring Aqaba to the ships. Moving the container facility up the coast would free up the ancient city for tourism, without the pollution and heavy industry of the terminal. It was win-win, and surely everyone would agree.

Not entirely. Parliament opposed the plan because it would involve private interests in a public port, and the resorts and casinos envisioned for the port city might clash with Jordanian culture. Shipping agents opposed it because their own association had run the port for as long as anyone could remember. Labor unions opposed it, concerned with job security.

But Fakhoury had studied the seaport closely. He was a Harvard-trained MBA who wrote his thesis on the problem; he was also a master scuba diver who knew Aqaba's famed 8-kilometer marine coral reef and the commercial pollution that had disturbed it.

Proposing an enterprise zone that could attract foreign investment, Fakhoury and allies, including the Jordanian king, held 20 meetings to negotiate with key stakeholders and launched a public relations campaign that communicated both progress and obstacles through the media. To address the concerns of stakeholders wary of change, Jordan agreed to maintain ownership of Aqaba and contract with a private operator for a trial period. If the contractor did not meet performance benchmarks, it would soon be apparent.

The plan was a success. The contractor improved working conditions and the cargo waiting time dropped from 129 hours to zero within a six-month period, and within a year, the facility was rated one of the top three ports in the Middle East and India. Meanwhile, in the old city, Jordan attracted $20 billion in investments in resorts and established a university of hotel management and tourism where students could gain practical experience in the industry they were studying.

Beyond the narrow geography of what occurred in this story, there were broad leadership lessons to be learned. For example, even though the catalyst for the port project was a crisis, Fakhoury had thought deeply about the problem and was not proposing a hastily drawn solution. He won buy-in and assembled a team of supporters to sell the vision. He worked diligently to communicate, understand, and address the concerns of stakeholders, and he developed a model for rapid success or failure.

In this section, we dive deeper into what it takes to actively shape your future. In Chapters 14 through 16, we cover how, in order to be an effective leader, you can build a personal leadership brand that aligns with your values and how you can communicate a long-term vision to others and learn to practice authentic ways to promote yourself. Finally, recognizing that the world is in a constant state of disruption, Chapters 17 through 19 explore how to navigate change by building trust, how to cultivate and contribute to an effective network, and how to adopt a mindset of “seeking” opportunity and growth so that your leadership journey will be unending.