This chapter highlights leadership lessons from positively deviant organizational performance – that is, the achievement of extraordinary success well beyond the expectations of almost any outside observer. It recounts the story of an organization that reached a level of performance that was considered impossible, so that adjectives such as spectacular, extraordinary, remarkable, and astonishing are apt descriptors. This account, based on Cameron and Lavine (2006), describes how a single organization experienced a devastating loss – the loss of mission and subsequent languishing performance – and then, despite its problematic circumstances, achieved astounding success. The chapter highlights the key role leadership values played in this extraordinary level of performance, and it explains the values that leaders in other organizations can apply in enabling their own spectacular success.

Rocky Flats

On March 23, 1951, the Atomic Energy Commission publicly announced that the nation would build a top-secret nuclear weapons plant in a rocky but flat ranching area 16 miles northwest of downtown Denver, located at the base of the beautiful Flatirons on the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains. The site began operation in 1953 and functioned until 1989 when it was abruptly closed after a raid by the FBI. Rocky Flats was owned by the US Department of Energy (DOE) and managed by a series of weapons contractors during its years of active operation: Dow Chemical (1952 to 1975), Rockwell International (1975 to 1990), EG&G (1990 to 1995).