My Book – Building the Agile Business

I said a good while back that I intended to write a book, so what's happened since then? Well, after lots of to-ing and fro-ing with various publishers, we found one who really shared the vision for what we wanted to do. And so I'm delighted to announce that we have a publishing deal with the lovely people at Kogan Page and that our book, titled 'Building The Agile Business', will be published early in 2017.  

As I said before, this really is an itch that I need to scratch, having written, spoken and consulted on and about agility in business for over six years. It's my belief that we are in the midst of huge change that is impacting businesses not just in marketing but right across organisational functions. It's change that is far more fundamental than just being about technology, and so the way in which businesses need to respond should be just as comprehensive. That response runs across processes, resourcing, structures, thinking, approaches and the very fabric of the way in which a company operates. Digital transformation is already becoming a well-used phrase but it really is transformation from the top-down and ground up.

Our observation is that there is plenty of material out there that talks about why this change is necessary, but very little (as Tim also noted recently) that effectively captures what good looks like, and truly enables a better understanding of the how. So that's what we're going to write about. It's a big challenge, and a lot of thinking to process and distill into a defining text (I think it was Antony who said to me before I started that writing a book was like an intellectual marathon, and he's not wrong) but that's our ambition.

My companion on this journey is Peter Abraham, a long-time collaborator of mine and one of the smartest digital and business practitioners I know, who will be co-authoring the book with me. We'll be setting up on Medium to share some of our thinking as we go (more on that soon), and I'll also be posting related content here of-course. Watch this space.