In 2024, I started a research project with a central question:
As a leader, how are you adapting to meet the rapidly shifting expectations of your teams, customers, investors, and regulators?
300+ people shared their experiences, goals, frustrations, and hopes. Since then, I’ve been making sense of what they shared – the patterns, tensions, and contradictions. What people shared has shaped the book I’m now writing.
Change and transitions are where I’ve always worked.
For 30+ years, I’ve brought together strategy, design, and tech to lead, design, and deliver strategic change in complex, mission-critical environments. I’ve also worked alongside and coached thousands of leaders and founders to navigate these transitions.
My first book, Solve Problems That Matter, finishes with a chapter called Sustain Momentum. This is really where my new book begins.
What’s the Book About?
Change is what shifts around us. The transition is the human journey through it – moving ourselves, our teams, and our organisations from where we are to where we need to be.
This book is about leading both.
It will be a short, insight-led book grounded in the research, wider evidence, and what I’ve learnt through 30+ years of practice. And continue to learn.
At the heart of the book is a tension that ran through the research.
Leaders are expected to juggle more as the work becomes faster, more complex, and more scrutinised… but the conditions around them haven’t kept pace with what’s being demanded of them.
My working premise is that leading change well is about designing the conditions for people to do meaningful work together – bringing purpose and performance together to build momentum and deliver results that matter.
Who’s This Book For?
My aim with this book is to help the people who lead, design, and deliver change navigate complexity and transitions – and build momentum with more confidence, clarity, and purpose.
I’m focusing on the people leading and governing change at the strategic end – across organisations, teams, products, services, and experiences – and the goals, questions, and challenges they face.
This book is for you if you’re:
- Leading change you’re accountable for but can’t really control
- Navigating complexity with increasing ambiguity and uncertainty
- Feeling exposed as your teams, customers, investors, and regulators all expect more
- Looking for meaning and recognition in a demanding role
- Caring for everyone’s wellbeing but dodging your own burnout
- Firefighting the tactical when you want to lead the strategic change that matters
Your Goals
You care about more than delivering change.
You want to make a meaningful difference through the work – building your own capability, helping others grow, and strengthening the teams and organisations around you so progress can be sustained.
This book will help you with these goals:
- Build your leadership capability to navigate complexity, make better decisions, and influence with or without formal authority
- Bring people together around a clear purpose and direction, nurturing your team and emerging leaders to contribute, grow, and do their best work
- Grow an organisational culture that can solve problems that matter in more empathic and innovative ways
- Lead strategic change that creates meaningful value for all stakeholders and drives performance without sacrificing wellbeing
Your Big Questions
I’ve collected the questions I hear a lot – and want to explore. Before locking them in, I’ve included this in my quick poll below to understand what’s on your mind and matters most to you.
My Ambition for the Book
I want this to be short enough to read quickly and digest, but deep enough to keep you coming back.
My ambition is to help you navigate complexity and transitions with more confidence, clarity, and purpose – and to design the conditions for momentum in the work that matters.
The bigger ambition is to help more leaders bring purpose and performance together.
This is so we lead change that accelerates the transition to more regenerative ways of living and doing business – so people, organisations, and communities are happier… and our planet is healthier.
All of this is a work in progress, not a finished promise. Part of writing this book in public is testing what resonates, what’s missing, and where ideas need to be challenged.
I think of my books as products that refine over time rather than finished objects. I’ll share ideas and questions as I write, listen to what comes back, and use that to make the book more relevant and useful.
I’m working towards launching in October. A milestone month… Dynamic4 turns 25 and Solve Problems That Matter turns five.
I’ve been working out loud on this since I started my research in 2024, including sharing interim findings and stats… I’m grateful to everyone who has helped shape it since the beginning. 300+ research participants with over 4,000 data points. More about the research here.
Here’s another opportunity to help shape it…
What Should I Call It?
I think the subtitle will be: Design the Conditions for Momentum. But I’m testing that too.
It’s time to vote on the title. You also have the option to share why.
I’ll keep you in the loop as it progresses – and of course send you the special pre-launch offer 😃. Thanks to everyone who already has!
Let’s design the conditions for momentum… together.
