A book about GLUE is out now. See below for more information, some early endorsements, and a selection of video materials about this provocative and important new book.
The adoption of remote, hybrid and flexible working is the new normal. But like the old normal, no one seems very happy. The solution is the not just about adjusting working patterns, office rotas and zoom protocols, but requires a different type of leadership. One that unites, transforms and elevates performance. Leadership that creates glue.
From the Book cover:
In a world of remote and hybrid working, leaders urgently need to refocus, not on themselves, but on harnessing relationships, making their organisations more humane, and finding new ways to engage and unleash talent. To do that, the single, most impactful thing leaders can do - and few succeed at this - is to create and nurture an intangible yet essential factor called glue.
Amidst a war for scarce talent, post-pandemic disruption, and the phenomenon badged the ‘great resignation,’ the world of work seems to be coalescing around the primacy of the individual (who can work from home, work abroad, work flexibly, work anywhere, anytime). In liberating the individual, firms may be simultaneously sleepwalking into a mode of deepening disengagement. Organisations need glue now more than ever.
So, this book sets out some ideas about glue: where to look for it, how to use it and, most importantly, how to cultivate glue amongst your most valuable people. It explores the approach of some unusual leaders, and of firms transformed through the ‘organisational advantage’ of smartly configuring and harnessing talent. Featuring fascinating stories from firms such as Alibaba, Apple, Sky, Barclays, HSBC, Husqvarna Group, and Richer Sounds, it sets out practical new ideas for leading, creating, and organising with glue.
Based on two-decades of experience of working with talented leaders, it shows how you can shape the effectiveness of your team, workplace, and business to retain the loyalty of customers through the talents, ideas, and energy of your best people. It explains how you can find your organisation's glue, use its power, and encourage others to do the same.
Who is it for?
This book is for anyone who has a genuine interest in leading others with impact. There is no management hierarchy, or seniority, assumed in that. You may be on the Executive Management team of your firm. If you are, then you will find some unusual role-model approaches to emulate and inspire. You may be new to a leadership role. If that is you, then the principles described apply, regardless of your years of experience, or the size of your firm. Glue is for anyone who wants to better harness the skills, energies, and ideas of others. Whatever your role, function, sector, or seniority, this book sets out a distinctive vision of the firm and shows the profound impact you can make through creating and nurturing glue.
Short films about Glue
Each month a new short video is released based on one of the stories in GLUE - Transforming Leadership in a Hybrid World.
GLUE - TEASER TRAILER
The wide adoption of remote, hybrid and flexible working is the new normal, but nobody seems very happy. The adoption of remote, hybrid and flexible working is the new normal. But like the old normal, no one seems very happy. The solution is the not just about adjusting working patterns, office rotas and zoom protocols, but requires a different type of leadership. One that unites, transforms and elevates performance. Leadership that creates glue. This teaser video is the first in a sequence of short films have been produced to illustrate some of the key stories in the book GLUE. Please feel free to share from here, or you can find these and other resources on YouTube.
HANGZHOU GLUE.
In July, we shared a short film about Jack Ma, and the founding group of Alibaba, huddled together in a flat in Hangzhou, China in 1999. The Alibaba story is key to this book about GLUE - a story about Jack Ma, an unusual leader who galvanises a group of talented people to dare and create extraordinary things. Ma was quirky, and unconventional and convinced of the need to fuse Chinese skills and a particular understanding of customer needs, with a US ‘Silicon Valley’ style work ethic of long hours, complete commitment and a determination to succeed. Since 2019, Ma has rarely been seen in public in China, though he is glimpsed at the end of the film here, visiting a School he founded in Hangzhou - where it all began for him and for Alibaba.
2. BOWLING ALONE.
An early inspiration for a book about GLUE, was Robert D. Putnam’s ‘Bowling Alone’, a breakthrough study (published in 2000) about declining social capital in late twentieth-century America. I could not help but draw parallels between the sense of social dislocation that Putnam saw emerging across the USA, and the very sudden enforced dislocation many of us experienced during mandatory social-distancing in 2020 and 2021. Strangely, as restrictions ended, millions of workers decided not to rush back to the office, preferring to remain apart than suffer the commute. Many organisations and their CEO’s respected the “business case” for remote working, and various degrees and patterns of hybrid working have now become the new normal. My worry then, as we enter the third decade of this century, is that we may have replaced Putnam’s Bowling Alone, with a world where for many, the world of work, is about “scrolling alone.”
3. THE ORGANISATIONAL ADVANTAGE.
A short film here inspired by a book called 'The Individualised Corporation', written by the late Professor Sumantra Ghoshal in 1997. Ghoshal also came up with the enigmatic term “the organisational advantage", hypothesising that a “firm's ability to create and utilise social capital contributes to performance differences among firms”. When we enter any organisation, we cannot help but notice the subliminal signals of atmosphere, mood and tone, which we quickly absorb. These are clues to the typical behavioural context in which the firms’ employees either survive, or hopefully, thrive. Ghoshal memorably described this environment as either feeling like the “energy sapping environment of downtown Calcutta in mid-summer, or the Fontainebleau Forest in spring.” I had the pleasure of attending a class with Professor Ghoshal when I first attended London Business School in 2002. His legacy remains an extraordinary one.
4. DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN GOING TO WORK FELT LIKE THIS?
Another short teaser for GLUE, though this time with no gloomy VoiceOver. Instead, I have collated some fun images, full of nostalgia for in-person working. Of course, working in the office was never THAT amazing. I certainly don’t remember dancing on tables! But there is an underlying truth about that energy and creativity created in-person simply not being replicated through remote working and ‘haphazard’ arrangements for hybrid working. As covered in the book GLUE, we don't have to give up on in-person collaboration. We just need our leaders and managers to get stuck in again. (PS one of the clips is from SpaceX in 2017 when they landed a rocket back on the landing pad safely. The employees erupted. Can you imaging having a day at work like that?)
5. WHY WRITE A BOOK ABOUT GLUE .
Someone asked why I wrote a book about Glue? Well, I don't know about you, but personally I found the 2020/21 lockdowns deeply unsettling. The social ties that bind - school, college, university, church, community, sport - and yes, our workplaces, matter enormously. But we now live and work in a hybrid world. Our modes of life, work, study and play are different and leading hybrid organisations - harnessing people together - is enormously challenging. Leaders need to be better equipped to connect and cohere people around goals that they find meaningful and to do that - they need to create and nurture glue. My book is finally released on Wednesday 4th October. If you have three minutes (and some headphones) this short film visually explains why I wrote a book about glue.
