I am an adjunct professor with the MBA program at Maastricht School of Management in Maastricht, Holland. My primary teaching responsibilities include courses for MBA and DBA students focused on Executive Leadership, Advanced Business Strategy, Strategic Alliances, Mergers and Acquisitions and International Business. These students are located on the main campuses and 36 auxiliary campuses around the world.



I have used the book, The Accidental CEO, as one of the primary resources for my students to get inside the head of what it feels like to be a CEO and to confront the real leadership issues that CEOs have to resolve in their everyday work life. Both the students and I have found Mr. Voccola’s book to be an invaluable source of stimulating class discussion. It offers the students a realistic portrayal of the daily dynamic of corporate leadership. It maps out what it means to gain the loyalty of your core leadership team through the means of an inner conversation about who you are as a CEO. It links the performance of the CEO to his understanding of himself and ultimately how important it is for the CEO to get clear about his or her real purpose and unique contribution.



Mr. Voccola’s book is the perfect segue into the discussion of self knowledge as the key to leadership performance breakthroughs. After reading this book, the students quit speaking in the abstract and begin to really grasp the concrete realities of the leadership journey. It has sparked numerous highly motivated classroom discussions and has caused several of my students to focus on various aspects of successful leadership as their research topic for their MBA theses. I highly recommend this book without reservation for any reader who wants to gain deep insight to the real dynamics of leadership and personal success both in business and in life.



Professor Dr. Stephen L. Gomes

This book uses a story format to describe a process for deepening leaders’ self-awareness and to provide a framework for “creating a game worth playing.” The book is well-organized, engaging, and the content is extremely valuable. By following the framework, leaders can develop clarity around their personal vision and then translate it to their organization’s purpose. The second section of the book focuses on formulating a strategy to engage employees in the organization’s vision and purpose. Voccola provides points to consider at the end of each chapter.

As a leader of a large division of 800 people, I found the book practical and effective in providing me tools to lead my organization to success. I’ve always had the belief that growing into leadership is an “inside job” but have not found many books to help me expand my self-awareness as it relates to being a leader. It was easy for me to translate the story to my own situation and then apply the framework with my leadership team. I highly recommend this book to anyone who either accidentally or intentionally finds themselves in a leader role.

Rarely have I read such in depth and practical lessons on authentic leadership, wrapped in so engaging a story. Having read Tom Voccola's The Accidental CEO several times now, I'm gaining an even deeper understanding of his material.

Following Tom's lead character as he unexpectedly assumes the mantle of leadership, we gain an understanding of the challenges that face leaders in every walk of life as well as the thought processes that occur within the leader. This transparency gives us the unique opportunity to witness the transformation he goes through on his journey from 'manager' to CEO.

We also get to see the dangerous traps that are so easy to set foot in, and how best to avoid them as he walks the path of transforming not only himself, but his entire corporate culture. What was at one time two companies within a company becomes a unified team under a genuine leader.

After reading Tom's book the first time, we engaged Tom and his team at CEO2 to work with our companies. These aren't just academic theories. They work. Our company culture was transformed within one 3 day workshop. The follow up work we did energized our growth as individuals and as an organization.

Read The Accidental CEO, A Leader's Journey From Ego To Purpose. Then visit Tom's CEO2.com website. The journey begins...

A must read for anyone in an organization looking to bring the company together, on purpose and engaged. Living out of purpose and passion drives leaders and organizations to higher levels, and Tom Voccola does an excellent job in his book laying out the process to transform any organization. He sets out a system to move from ego to purpose and passion and create an extraordinary organization. You will not want to put this book down once you start reading!

This is a good book. It's worth taking the time to read.

It is not the self-congratulating story of some guy who made it big in corporate America.

It is about the most important person in the world – YOU!

It is a guide book to understanding yourself. To understanding the things that you are most passionate about. It will help you remember those times at work or school where everything just 'felt right' and where work was really fun and more like play. And it will use those memories to identify what your 'passion' is; that thing that most excites you and most closely aligns with your deeply held sense of who you are. You'll also discover your 'purpose' which is what you do that is most satisfying to your soul.

Identifying your passion and purpose is more than just an exercise in studying your navel. The author then demonstrates how knowing your passion & purpose can influence you interactions with others. How it can benefit you at home, at work and in your community. How you can be happy and successful. Knowledge is power and knowledge about yourself is the most powerful.

Mr. Voccola has been teaching seminars about purpose and passion to corporate customers for many years. This book is the distillation of his seminar work, told in an entertaining fictional manner. It makes the information accessible and easily applied by the reader.

This is a terrific and inspiring story of a CEO who learns how to run a company. It is must reading for anyone who wasn't born a CEO but has the opportunity to learn. It is smart, funny, scary and -- in the end -- exhilarating. Read it -- you'll remember it for a long time.

Tom Voccola has captured the experience of most CEO's in his tale of The Accidental CEO. He tells how quickly the loneliness at the top starts and can get the new CEO mired in their own self limiting beliefs. This is a hopeful tale illustrating how letting go can transform you and those around you into a new more powerful organizational engine. A must read for every new or near new corporate leader.

Some people think that a book about corporate management would be dull, written in a convoluted textbook style, and interspersed with some anecdotal stories. This book, however, blows the lid on that notion.

The Accidental CEO is written in an engrossing narrative style that also serves as an inspirational guide for anyone who desires to become a passionate and powerful leader. Discover how to shift your mind from a state of reaction to pure creation and how to fill more than just a financial need from work, but also an emotional desire.

This book sheds light into the world of business, a place all of us eventually enter, but few of us truly understand. A must read not only for CEOs, but all individuals who seek a deep sense of fulfillment in their careers.

I have just finished my FIRST reading of The Accidental CEO. I say FIRST because I honestly believe this is a book I will read over and over again - to find inspiration, to absorb more, to find ideas and techniques for my own practice.

I loved the book especially the way it unfolds and how it follows Bob throughout his journey. It is quite impressive. There is a lot energy, hope and substance in the story. I am moved at the idea that many lives could be really transformed by this book. How many people today get up to a job they can barely stand, a life of reaction they just let go by.

The Accidental CEO is both compelling and thought provoking. Whether this fast paced, enjoyable reading is fiction or reality it is up to us readers: It is up to our ability to try the ideas on for size rather than dismissing them as far fetched, or plain impossible.

A book where the interior content is as beautiful as the jacket's design. Light a fire, grab a cup of joe and allow this book to tranform your ideas and bank account into a magical garden of success and harmony.