"An altogether novel paradigm for leadership and collective performance.... I remember reading Peter Senge's The Fifth Discipline and having my mind blown. I had a similar experience with this book.... Equips leaders to succeed amid constant disruption. Provocative and groundbreaking."Kevin Cox — President, LKC Advisory
"Excellent, important, smart, and timely work. A fascinating book. Nagel is addressing a vitally important topic — organizational flourishing. What he is selling is what organizations truly need."Michael Emerson, Ph.D., Chavanne Fellow in Religion and Public Policy
The leadership playbooks most organizations run on were built on flawed foundations. Not wrong in every detail — but wrong at the root.
They only see what's visible, tangible, and material — measuring the surface but missing the forces that actually determine whether organizations break through or plateau.
Whether your organization is struggling or simply not operating anywhere near its actual capacity — the same hidden forces are at work. This book names them. And gives you the tools to work with them.
The pace never lets up. Decisions pile up faster than you can evaluate them. Transformation strategies underdeliver, and the exhaustion compounds.
Your high achievers struggle to perform together. Individual excellence, somehow, creates collective dysfunction. You know what needs to change — but the patterns persist.
And beneath it all, a fear you may rarely name: watching potential go to waste while feeling powerless to unlock it.
Your organization is performing. By most measures, things are working. But you sense the team is nowhere near what it's capable of.
Breakthroughs that should be happening aren't. The collective energy is there — but something keeps it from converting into the results you know are possible.
The gap isn't a crisis. But it's real. And it isn't closing.
"Michael Nagel opens our eyes to the grave peril of leadership blinded by an exclusive and impoverished empirical grasp of reality. In this outstanding paradigm altering book, we encounter the essential importance of sixth sense leadership, becoming increasingly aware, attentive and attuned to unseen realities ever present and continually shaping both individual and organizational flourishing. Breakthrough Intelligence matters not only for your workplace, but also for your own life."Tom Nelson, DMin — Executive Chairman, Made to Flourish
Flourishing Together introduces Breakthrough Intelligence (BIQ™) — the capacity to sense and work with the real but unseen forces that produce organizational outcomes. Drawing on 25 years of research across hundreds of organizations worldwide. Not inspiration. Explanation.
The forces don't operate in isolation. They interact — and that interaction is where breakthrough lives.
"This book challenges fundamental assumptions leaders typically bring to organizational change. Nagel provides a rigorous framework for understanding why capable people and well-resourced institutions so often fall short of the breakthroughs they seek. Using the concept of Breakthrough Intelligence, he offers practical guidance on what actually drives lasting progress. For leaders, board directors, and advisors navigating complex change, this book delivers both research depth and actionable insights."D. Michael Lindsay, Ph.D. — President, Taylor University
Imagine team dynamics that multiply rather than diminish — where 1+1+1 = 10, not 3 — and teams of stars finally perform like the powerhouses they were assembled to be.
Imagine navigating complexity with the collective capability to actually transform underlying conditions — ending the paralysis of knowing what needs to change but being unable to make it happen.
Imagine leading sophisticated teams with confidence rather than anxiety — where team dynamics become a strategic advantage instead of your biggest burden.
This is what becomes possible when you learn to work with the forces that actually drive collective breakthrough.
"Dr. Michael Nagel wants your organization to flourish by helping you imagine and achieve a breakthrough future. This book overviews why traditional approaches come up short. Grounded in rigorous academic research and decades as an organizational development strategist, Nagel provides a roadmap to collective flourishing. Using the concept of Breakthrough Intelligence, he provides illustrations, guided questions, and practical steps to help organizations get from where they are to a place they could hardly imagine. Take advantage of the wisdom in this book."Dr. Jay Barnes — President Emeritus, Bethel University
Those responsible for shaping culture, strategy, and progress across organizations — public, private, and nonprofit — especially leaders who guide collectives toward bold new futures.
Executives, team leaders, board chairs, strategists, people and learning leaders, and emerging leaders who sense their organizations are capable of far more and are ready to break through the hidden patterns holding progress back.
"For more than forty years, I've witnessed Pittsburgh's transformation to innovation hub and covered countless regional and organizational change stories. Dr. Michael E Nagel's Breakthrough Intelligence provides a framework for understanding the unseen structural and cultural forces I've encountered that either block or propel breakthrough — whether in products, services, organizations or entire regions. Economic development is organizational transformation at scale, and in today's era of disruption and institutional reinvention, this framework empowers leaders across domains with a fundamentally different way of identifying barriers, promoting collective action and igniting genuine transformation."Bill Flanagan — Business Reporter & Former Chief Corporate Relations Officer, Allegheny Conference
The free Collective Breakthrough-Readiness Assessment — introduced in the final chapter — evaluates your collective across five key areas and delivers actionable insights for sustained flourishing and relevance.
Take the Free Assessment