My books

The Agile Leader

My second book, The Agile Leader: How to create an agile business in the digital age, is published by Kogan Page.

This book builds on my first book, Connected Leadership: How to Build a More Agile, Customer-Driven Business. 

The Agile Leader exposes how leaders can safely guide their teams to organisational stability and prosperity through developing more agile leadership and building more agile cultures.

With the rise of political unrest, protectionism and economic uncertainties, business leaders have to assess, react and implement strategies rapidly and with enough responsiveness to re-calibrate their efforts should circumstance change. 

When presented with key moments of choice, agility allows them to move quickly and responsively, and offer coping strategies for this unprecedented rate of change. 

By adopting agile ways of working that focus on facilitating mental agility, ruthlessly prioritising, devolving decision-making, investing in customer research, encouraging organisational learning and driving innovation, teams and organisations can flourish in this new, uncertain world.

With diverse case studies from leading organisations including the British Fashion Council, Airbnb, Standard Chartered and Three, I hope this will be an invaluable book for leaders seeking to adapt and continuously evolve in a fast-moving environment.

Connected Leadership

My first book, Connected Leadership: How to Build a More Agile, Customer-Driven Business, was published by FT Publishing in 2015. 

It was shortlisted for the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) Management Book of The Year and was WHSmith Business Book of the Month in January 2016. You can order it on Amazon. 

I wrote this book to provide clear, practical guide for leaders of organisations who wish to create a more connected, agile and customer-oriented organisation in a digitally connected, customer-driven 21st century business environment.

It lays out the key factors of the connected organisation and the leadership behaviours that enable these factors to become embedded and sustainable. It includes a range of case studies from much-admired organisations including Standard Chartered, Marks & Spencer, PayPal, Mandarin Oriental, Three UK and Shop Direct. These demonstrate what effective connected leadership looks like in practice.

The book also contains a series of tools and techniques that you can use to diagnose your organisation's current position and plot a successful course to achieve these more connected ways of working. It is, at heart, a real-world guide to changing your leadership style and approach to align an organisation's culture and values with those needed in a world where the prevailing models of command and control are so obviously failing.

Connected Leadership will show you how to:

* Create a more agile organisation and respond swiftly to changing markets and customer needs
* Cope with increasing market complexity and uncertainty
* Build trust, reputation and become a more authentic leader
* Develop a 'connected leadership' approach


Readers' endorsements

“This is a great read for managers and leaders who want to make a difference, full of stories and tools everyone can relate to. The companies of the future will be those connecting not only with their customers but also with their own people and shareholders. That is easily said but needs lots of focus to achieve. This book will really help you.”

Paul Matthews, CEO, UK & Europe, Standard Life

“Adopting the principles of connected leadership has had a lasting impact on Three UK. We have improved collaborative working and communication across the business. Speed of decision-making has also increased and we are performing better as an organisation. Everyone is aligned to and excited by our core purpose, increasing the momentum of deliverables.”

David Dyson, CEO, Three UK

“Simon Hayward has helped us to build more connected leadership across Marks & Spencer as we develop the capability of leaders in line with the values and attributes at the heart of the M&S brand. Forming these meaningful connections has galvanised leaders to lead change.”

Tanith Dodge, Director of HR, Marks & Spencer

“Big businesses are good at articulating ‘what' they're trying to achieve, whether that's a financial or customer target, but they often forget ‘how' you achieve those targets, which is more important. The connected leadership model encompasses core elements of the ‘how’, such as values, agility and collaboration. It has helped to transform our business and I’d recommend it to any business leader who needs to drive change in our fast-moving world.”

Mark Stevens, Managing Director, CCD, Provident Financial Group

“Simon Hayward has helped us develop our thinking on what is required from our leadership at Pentland Brands. We are big believers in connected leadership and are evolving to ensure we are focusing on leading appropriately for the next decade.”

Andy Rubin, Chairman, Pentland Brands

“For an organisation to be productive, its people need to be aligned to a core purpose and direction. This book offers fascinating insights and very practical tips which can help leaders create a connected organisation. Building a culture of collaboration supports shared decision inspired by that core purpose and direction. It builds engagement and increases productivity.”

Angela Spindler, CEO, N Brown Group plc

“Connected Leadership represents a marked shift away from the transformational ‘heroic’ individual leaders of the late 20th century. Much has already been written about these leaders. This book is about a new ‘post-heroic’ style of leadership – one which is values based and advocates shared responsibility.”

Rachael Borthwick, Corporate Services Director, FirstGroup plc

“Simon Hayward’s book draws on extensive research to demonstrate the need for more connected leadership. He also includes real-life examples to show how leaders can form meaningful connections to build trust and create more agile and adaptable organisations, better able to respond to the needs of customers in a rapidly changing environment.”

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor, The University of Manchester

“Command-and-control leadership is failing employees in our modern, unpredictable world. This book is a very practical guide to changing your leadership style to encourage shared decision making.”

Professor Fiona Devine OBE, Head of Manchester Business School

"The value of this book is its blend of a scholarly foundation and real-life practical insights.  Dr Hayward uses a strong theoretical base from the social sciences to help ground and contextualise a series of interviews, to draw some valuable lessons for leadership.  The book is well-written and highly relevant in today's knowledge economy.  I highly recommend it."

Professor Michael Luger, Former Dean, Manchester Business School