Schol­ar and teacher Dr. Nor­man Cohen presents solu­tions to many of the chal­lenges lead­ers must face — by draw­ing on bib­li­cal accounts of how Moses resolved the prob­lems he con­front­ed from the time of his birth in Egypt until he reached the bor­der of the Promised Land, where he reluc­tant­ly turned over the lead­er­ship of the Israelites to Joshua. He then cites cas­es where con­tem­po­rary cor­po­rate or gov­ern­ment lead­ers were faced with anal­o­gous prob­lems and shows how Moses’ approach remains applic­a­ble today.

Among the many issues Cohen deals with are over­com­ing iner­tia, deal­ing with self-doubt, team build­ing, set­ting and clear­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ing objec­tives, del­e­gat­ing author­i­ty, tak­ing dis­ci­pli­nary action, and prepar­ing for suc­ces­sion. Con­tem­po­rary exam­ples are drawn from the expe­ri­ences of such lead­ers as Win­ston Churchill and Michael Bloomberg, as well as cor­po­rate exec­u­tives such as Fred Smith of FedEx, Herb Kelle­her of South­west Air­lines, Bill O’Brien of Hanover Insur­ance, Ani­ta Rod­dick of The Body Shop, and even Red Auer­bach, the famed coach of the Boston Celtics.

Busi­ness exec­u­tives who give lit­tle or no thought to read­ing the Bible and cler­gy who have lit­tle or no under­stand­ing of busi­ness will find that they can learn much from one anoth­er and that Moses remains an excel­lent mod­el for them both. Notes, sug­ges­tions for fur­ther reading.