I recently finished Liz Wiseman’s 2025 book, Multipliers, and while I appreciate the intent behind the framework, I walked away feeling like I’d read a well‑packaged version of ideas that have been circulating in leadership circles for years. It’s not that the book is wrong — it’s that it’s not new. And in some cases, it oversimplifies the very real complexity of how people and organizations actually work.
Research to Support a Framework: My training in sociology makes me suspicious of repeated claims of quantification of things like "productivity." Wiseman repeatedly cites percentages of “productivity” people report under different types of leaders. But the more I read, the more I wondered: How exactly are we measuring this?
The appendices describe structured interviews and multiple rounds of coding, but the core data is still self‑reported perception, not actual productivity. And in knowledge work, “productivity” is a slippery concept. Some of the best thinking happens:
- in the shower
- on a walk
- during a commute
- while knitting or exercising
- in the quiet space between meetings
If someone says they’re operating at “70% of their capability,” what does that even mean? It certainly doesn’t map cleanly to output. Insight doesn’t happen on a clock, and the brain’s default mode network (the part responsible for creative leaps) activates when we’re not visibly “producing.” So if you're always "busy" -- can you actually be productive or are you just following the ruts in the road?
So the numbers make for good storytelling, but they’re not metrics. They’re sentiment.
The more I read, the more it felt like Wiseman started with the Multiplier/Diminisher idea and then went out to collect stories that fit the model. There’s nothing wrong with that, and most leadership books do it, but it’s different from discovering a pattern organically.
Once you’ve worked inside large organizations, you’ve seen dozens of these frameworks come and go. At Abbott, for example, we had the “in the box / out of the box” model -- another metaphor wrapped around basic human behavior.
Some of Wiseman’s recommendations are genuinely solid:
- run 30‑day experiments
- give people ownership
- ask better questions
- encourage people to bring solutions, not just problems
But these aren’t new ideas. They’re foundational leadership practices. They show up in Agile, Lean, design thinking, and every decent management training program of the last 30 years.
The User Manual Trap: One section encourages leaders to identify their “native strengths” and create a personal user manual so others know how to work with them. In theory, this is great. In practice, it can go very wrong.
I once worked with a CMO who had a user manual that was… memorable. Snarky, rigid, demanding, and completely inflexible. Instead of creating clarity, it broadcasted:
“Here are all the ways I refuse to adapt. Please adjust yourselves accordingly.”
A tool is only as healthy as the person using it. And a user manual can reveal more about a leader’s blind spots than their strengths.
Culture is the real missing ingredient in this book, and this is the part most leadership frameworks gloss over.
You can teach people any model you want: Multipliers, Radical Candor, Situational Leadership, “in the box,” “above the line,” whatever the flavor of the year is — but unless the organization has:
- psychological safety
- aligned incentives
- leaders who model the behaviors
- trust
- clarity
- and buy‑in at every level
…nothing changes.
Frameworks don’t transform organizations. People create culture, and there are many conditions required for cultural shifts. Rarely are culture changes top-down. Without the right environment, a leadership model becomes vocabulary, not behavior.
FINAL THOUGHTS:
If someone wants a leadership book that actually grapples with complexity, I’d recommend:
- David Marquet’s Turn the Ship Around - a true operating model for distributed decision-making (see my review http://www.livegreenwearblack.com/2017/12/review-turn-ship-around-true-story-of.html)
- Daniel Coyle’s The Culture Code - a grounded look at psychological safety, belonging, and high‑performing teams (see my review http://www.livegreenwearblack.com/2018/02/review-culture-code-secrets-of-highly.html)
Both authors understand that leadership isn’t a set of behaviors you adopt, it’s a system you design.
Multipliers isn’t a bad book. It’s just not a deep one. It offers a tidy framework, some useful language, and a handful of practices that can help leaders reflect on their impact. But the real work of leadership - the messy, human, systemic work - lives far beyond any model. If you want to change an organization, you don’t start with a framework. You start with culture, safety, and trust. Everything else is just packaging.
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