I can’t quite believe that my first book, Connected Leadership: How to build a more agile, customer-driven business, is about to be published. I’m looking forward to actually holding it in my hands next week.
I’ve
worked in the field of leadership development for over 25 years. During that
time I’ve seen a great deal of change. When I first started working as a
consultant, most organisations were still very hierarchical. There were a lot
of ‘hero’ leaders around – people who single-handedly set the tone, and took
all the decisions. Many created a great deal of dependency and stifled the
people around them.
Then
the world changed. Things started to become a lot more unpredictable. We had a
digital revolution. The pace of change increased. Leaders had to change too.
Command-and-control
leadership still prevails, but it is failing us. Rather than relying on people
at the top of an organisation, we need to devolve decision making across the
business. I became fascinated by this and decided to make it the focus of my
doctoral research over five years at Alliance Manchester Business School. I
also worked more and more with clients who were keen to develop agility in
order to respond to rapidly changing markets and customer needs, and realised
they needed to move decision-making closer to the customer.
The
rigour of academic research enabled me to create a model of Connected
Leadership. Working in partnership with clients, I was able to further develop
the model and ensure it could be successfully applied in the real world.
I decided to write my book because I wanted to provide a
clear and practical guide to Connected Leadership. I’ve included a series of
tools and techniques to diagnose an organisation's current position and plot a
successful course to a more connected way of working. I also hope the book will
help individuals to change their leadership style.
I’m also very grateful to all the organisations who were
happy for me to include their Connected Leadership stories. They really do help
bring the book to life.
I found the whole process of writing the book very
enjoyable – the research, interviewing clients, distilling concepts into useful
tips, and working with the FT Publishing team, who were very supportive
partners. It did of course take over my life at times. It’s nice to have
weekends with family and friends again!
If you read the book, please let me know what you think.
I’d love to hear from you.