A review of Anthony Kila’s Crucial Cs around D: The Disciplines of Decision-Making and Leadership
By Ronke Akintunde
At a time when public life is increasingly driven by urgency, outrage and the search for instant solutions, Anthony Kila’s Crucial Cs around D arrives as a welcome reminder that leadership is not built on speed but on thought. This is not another management book filled with fashionable buzzwords or motivational clichés. It is an ambitious, intellectually rigorous work that asks a deceptively simple question: What must happen before a leader makes a good decision?
Kila’s answer is both elegant and profound. Decisions, the “D” in the title, are merely the visible outcome of a much deeper process. Long before a decision succeeds or fails, it is shaped by a set of disciplines that Kila calls the Crucial Cs: change, consideration, common sense, connectedness, consultation, communication, capacity, coordination, checks, certainty, character, consistency, constraint and consequences. These are not presented as management techniques to be memorised, but as habits of mind and institutional disciplines that distinguish effective leadership from merely decisive leadership.
One of the book’s greatest strengths is its refusal to reduce leadership to personality. Kila argues instead that enduring leadership rests on preparation, institutional design and disciplined judgement. Intelligence without discipline becomes recklessness; ambition without capacity becomes theatre; authority without character eventually consumes itself. These observations are as relevant in Westminster and Washington as they are in Abuja, New Delhi or São Paulo.
The scholarship throughout the book is remarkably broad yet never decorative. Classical philosophers converse naturally with modern economists. African, Asian and European traditions of governance appear not as decorative references but as practical sources of insight into how societies organise power, build institutions and exercise restraint. Kila writes with the confidence of someone equally at home in law, economics, political philosophy, strategy and cultural anthropology, weaving these disciplines into a coherent philosophy of leadership rather than a collection of disconnected ideas.
Equally refreshing is the book’s insistence that institutions matter more than personalities. Policies rarely fail because their intentions are bad; they fail because consultation is superficial, communication is ineffective, coordination is weak, checks are ignored, or capacity is assumed rather than built. Kila treats governance not as the drama of individuals but as the discipline of systems. It is this institutional perspective that elevates the book beyond conventional leadership literature.
The final chapters return leadership to its moral foundations. Character, consistency, constraint and consequences are presented not as virtues to admire from afar but as practical disciplines that determine whether power leaves institutions stronger or weaker than it found them. Kila reminds us that leadership is stewardship. Decisions may win applause today; history judges the preparation behind them tomorrow. In Anthony Kila’s words: “Leaders make decisions; history judges preparation.”
Crucial Cs around D deserves to be read by political leaders, business executives, civil servants, military officers, entrepreneurs, academics and students, not because it offers easy answers, but because it teaches readers to ask better questions. It is a rare book that challenges readers intellectually while remaining deeply practical.
In an age fascinated by decisive leaders, Anthony Kila makes a compelling case for disciplined ones. That may prove to be the more enduring contribution.
Crucial Cs around D: The Disciplines of Decision-Making and Leadership is available worldwide on Amazon and in Nigeria through CIAPS and reliable bookshops. It is a book to be read slowly, revisited often, and discussed widely. The book comes in three volumes. You can get all three or any one of the three.
Click here to order your copies today.
https://ciaps.org/product/crucial-cs-around-d-the-disciplines-of-decision-making-and-leadership/
