Leading Through Uncertainty: How Umpqua Bank Emerged from the Great Recession Better and Stronger than Ever

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The New Normal

Destiny is not a matter of chance; it is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.

—William Jennings Bryan

The effects of the global financial crisis continue to affect our economy: growth and unemployment rates haven't yet stabilized, and change is constant and faster than ever before. We're in the new normal—a time when there is no normal. Now more than ever before, leaders must be looking over the horizon to the next revolution—before it overtakes their businesses and their customers along with it.

Since my book Leading for Growth was published in 2007, the world has been through an economic tsunami that has wrought incredible damage. Although Umpqua Bank, a regional community ...