The Leader's Oracle

Using Ancient Wisdom to Improve Strategy and Decision-Making

Published by Prometheus
Distributed by Simon & Schuster

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About The Book

In a world of tremendous change, uncertainty, and simplistic AI-driven answers, it is easy to look to an uncertain future with anxiety. In The Leader's Oracle, Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer Roopa Unnikrishnan shows that the wisest leaders instead look to the ancient past for inspiration. By channeling the Oracle of Delphi, these leaders ask better questions and challenge their organizations to transform. Offering a provocative lens on the future of strategic leadership, The Leader's Oracle is not just a book about strategy—it is a call for a cultural shift in how we lead, how we think, and how we build organizations.

Through this uniquely powerful framework, readers examine and harness the timeless wisdom of the ancients to help their own business and career:
  • operate at the edge of clarity
  • interpret patterns and possibilities
  • provoke transformation, not comfort
  • serve the powerful, but answer to the truth
  • protect future-facing wisdom in a reactive world

This unique framework on business strategy and leadership explores a critical paradox in today’s corporate environment: in a world obsessed with operational excellence and short-term wins while struggling with historic transformational changes, we often neglect the voices of the long-term thinkers, the strategic questioners, the ones who highlight or introduce ambiguity to force clarity. The Leader's Oracle serves as a call to arms for leaders, board members, and aspiring strategists to embrace their inner Delphic voice—one that cuts through noise, evokes questions, and drives tectonic shifts, not just tactical maneuvers.

About The Author

Product Details

  • Publisher: Prometheus (February 16, 2027)
  • Length: 224 pages
  • ISBN13: 9781493097197

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Raves and Reviews

“After decades of working around inspiring leaders, I've come to believe that wisdom—not certainty—is the antidote to uncertainty. In The Leader's Oracle, Roopa Unnikrishnan offers a refreshing perspective for all of us navigating a world that is unpredictable and complex. Rather than chasing easy answers, she challenges leaders to ask better questions, embrace ambiguity, and find clarity through disciplined inquiry. Drawing from both ancient wisdom and modern leadership experience, Unnikrishnan has created a thoughtful and timely guide for anyone seeking to lead with greater insight, courage, purpose, and humanity. This book invites leaders to think deeply, see clearly, and lead wisely.”

– Richard Sheridan

"In an age of fast churn algorithms and impatient leadership, Unnikrishnan makes the case for slowing down and asking harder questions. The Leader's Oracle is a generous and warm guide to strategic judgment, grounded in real organizational experience and illuminated by ancient wisdom." 

– Mei Fong, Chief Narrative Officer of Windfall Trust, Pulitzer-winning WSJ journalist and author of One Child: The Past and Future of China's Most Radical Experiment

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