This Is What Leaders Do by Russell E. Justice

New Book Shows How to Simplify Leadership and Accelerate Organizational Improvement — Across Any Industry

Leadership isn’t actually that hard. We’ve just been overcomplicating it.

In This Is What Leaders Do: Seven Essentials to Inspire and Empower Your Team (KeyPress Publishing; May 2025), veteran coach and leadership expert Russell E. Justice draws on more than 60 years of experience — from picking cotton to working on Advanced Systems at NASA — to reveal the clear, proven methods that help leaders drive rapid, lasting improvement.

Much like a conductor brings an orchestra to life — not by playing the instruments, but by setting direction and rhythm — leaders must orchestrate excellence by focusing the team’s energy on what matters most. This book shows how to do exactly that.

Whether you’re running a global corporation, a nonprofit, or a small team, this book offers practical tools to:

Focus your organization on the vital few issues for your business.
Align and mobilize the efforts of your workforce toward the focus.
Go beyond just projects to enterprise-wide improvement.
Tap into everyone’s discretionary effort (the difference in “have to” and “want to”).
Get unstuck when tackling a problem and at a dead end.
Trigger innovative and creative ideas that directly apply to your organization.
Experience quality of management.

Justice introduces the ACI (Accelerated Continuous Improvement) approach and shows how it can be implemented across cultures, geographies, and industries.

“People make leadership harder than it needs to be,” he says. “This book simplifies it. You’ll walk away with a clear, doable road map for unifying your team, improving faster than your competition, and achieving extraordinary results.”

More than a philosophy, this is a hands-on guide to developing the habits and behaviors that fuel lasting organizational success. It’s filled with real-life case studies, battle-tested advice, and a lifetime of lessons learned—from the fields, the boardrooms, and the front lines.

This Is What Leaders Do: Seven Essentials to Inspire and Empower Your Team
by Russell E. Justice
KeyPress Publishing
Trade Paperback; May 13, 2025
ISBN: 979-8-9922514-2-5
$29.95; 6 x 9; 232 pages

About the Author
Russell E. Justice picked cotton, worked the second shift in the village textile mill in high school, and participated in the cooperative education program at Marshall Space Flight Center while earning his engineering degrees from Auburn University. During his days at Eastman Chemical Company, Russell combined behavior science with his engineering background to create the Accelerated Continuous Improvement (ACI) process — the process that would launch his successful consulting and mentoring career. Working with leadership teams around the globe, his five decades of experience designing and implementing continuous improvement initiatives prove leadership can be simplified and transformative.

About ABA Technologies, Inc. and KeyPress Publishing
Our mission is to disseminate the science and technology of behavior. Our relentless effort to bring the science of behavior to the world began in 1992 with the founding of ABA Technologies, Inc. by Dr. Jose Martinez-Diaz. ABA Technologies, Inc. became a pioneer in developing and delivering online and professional education. In 2020, ABA Technologies, Inc. expanded our impact as a learning company by creating KeyPress Publishing. We combine experts from the field of behavior analysis in such areas as business strategy and cultural development, behavior-based safety, systems analysis, and instructional design, with carefully crafted project management, art design, and marketing to publish both print and digital books.