Book Review: Leading in a Changing World

In September I attended the Global WIN Conference in Rome. One of the plenary speakers was Keith Coats. A South African, he's now based in London and is a founding partner of TomorrowToday Global, a strategic insights firm. His plenary talk was on-point for the challenges faced by leaders and business today. He focused on something he calls Adaptive Intelligence, making clear that this is a cultural challenge rather than a strategic one.

After listening to Keith, I bought the book he and his TomorrowToday Global partner Graeme Codrington have written together. What follows is my review of the 2015 Edition of their book Leading in a Changing World.

Business Change from IT Projects - Infographic

What Is Your Best Advice To Be A Good Project Manager?

Recently I received an email from Rogerio Manso. He's involved in IT project management and also teaches others on the topic. Rogerio's contacting other subject matter experts around the globe because he's putting together a collection of advice that he'll offer for free to his project management students and anyone seeking to learn from others. In order to do this, he's asked a question. It might seem a fairly straightforward question but when you sit down to think about it, there are many possible responses that make it challenging to fix on just one thing.

The question?

What is your best advice to be a good Project Manager?

What Moving 6 Cubic Meters of Gravel Can Teach Us About Change

We’re doing some landscaping. It’s not a huge amount but it’s enough. Landscaping = change and just like any change, it’s exciting and a little scary all at once. What if we’re being too ambitious? What if we don't know what to do? What if, in the end, it doesn’t meet our expectations?

Regardless, we made a start and had 6 cubic meters of gravel dumped in our driveway. Looking at that gravel and what we had planned got me thinking about how organisations approach change and why they’re often disappointed with the results.

Here then, are 4 lessons that came to mind as I helped shovel, barrow and spread that gravel around…