GLUE
The cohesion framework for senior leaders.
The problem
Most organisations have a strategy. Most have talented people. What they lack is glue — the quality of relationships that turns individual capability into collective performance.
When glue is absent, you see it everywhere: siloed decisions, duplicated effort, leaders who perform brilliantly alone but struggle to lead together. Strategy stalls not because it's wrong, but because the organisation can't hold it.
GLUE is the framework that diagnoses that gap and builds the solution — through keynotes, workshops, and leadership programmes designed for senior teams who need to move faster together.
GLUE: Transforming Leadership in a Hybrid World won Leadership Book of the Year at the 2024 Business Book Awards, with five-star reviews and endorsements from leading voices in leadership theory and practice.
The reality
You don't need a consultant to tell you your strategy is sound. You can see that yourself. What you can't always see is why it isn't moving — why a room full of talented, experienced leaders keeps producing decisions that don't stick, conversations that go in circles, and a nagging sense that the team is less than the sum of its parts.
That's a GLUE problem.
Not a skills problem. Not a structural problem. A cohesion problem — and it's more common at the top than most leadership teams would care to admit.
GLUE is the framework that helps senior teams diagnose that gap honestly and close it deliberately. It works because it starts where most leadership development refuses to go: with the quality of relationships across the firm, not the content of the strategy on the wall.
What a GLUE engagement looks like
Keynotes — 30 to 90 minutes A GLUE keynote is designed to do more than inform — it's designed to disturb, in the best sense. To make a leadership team look at how they work together and decide they want to change it. You choose the depth: a 30-minute provocation to open a conference, or a 90-minute session that moves a room from insight to commitment. Either way, people leave with something they'll still be talking about at the next Senior Leadership meeting.
"The best talk on organisational culture I have ever heard."Senior Executive, Global Telecoms
Leadership Workshops — half day to full day.
Designed for off-sites, strategy days, and leadership team events. GLUE workshops go beyond the surface issues — they create the conditions for a leadership team to have the conversations they've been avoiding. Facilitated with pace and precision, these sessions consistently produce new insights and committed decisions, not just discussions.
"The team were buzzing. You did a great job — energy levels stayed high throughout."Director of Marketing, Global Bank
Executive Programmes — module or full programme
For senior executive audiences on leadership and strategy programmes, GLUE provides a rigorous, evidence-based framework with immediate practical application. Relevant for business schools, corporate universities, and in-house development programmes working with top talent, high-potential and senior leader cohorts.
“You’ll be pleased to hear that your session inspired the group so much that in our closing, they collectively decided to bring the topic of “how to create more GLUE in our organisation” to the agenda of their next GLT (top 80) meeting in March. This is impact!”Academic Director, Business School
What happens after a GLUE session
After a three-hour workshop with a senior leadership cohort at a leading business school, the group collectively agreed to put "how do we create more GLUE in our organisation?" on the agenda of their next Global Leadership Team meeting — their top 80 leaders. That's the measure. Not a good session. A session that changes what gets discussed at the top.
The book
GLUE: Transforming Leadership in a Hybrid World was awarded Leadership Book of the Year at the 2024 Business Book Awards. GLUE was published and created stir, with five star ratings on Amazon, endorsements from experts in leadership theory and management practice.
See below for more information, some early endorsements, and a selection of video materials about this provocative and important new book.
One of the world’s great management thinkers, Gary Hamel said: ”GLUE is practical, provocative and essential reading for twenty first century leaders."
Short films about Glue
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?)
What people are saying about GLUE
"GLUE challenges us to rethink modern leadership. It is a timely roadmap for leaders navigating the key post Covid organisational challenge of the hybrid age: How do we maintain a cohesive and motivational "office culture" when the traditional office no longer meets the needs of our teams?"
INGER ASHING, CEO, Save The Children International
"John Dore’s fascinating new book scours the modern landscape of work, proposing a new model of managing and leading that better coheres people around a genuine purpose, shared meaning and a freedom to experiment."
JEREMY DARROCH, former Executive Chairman and Group Chief Executive of Sky
"In John Dore’s timely new book he lays out a new approach to management where leaders unite employees around bold goals, a shared purpose and a passion for experimentation. GLUE is practical, provocative and essential reading for twenty first century leaders."
GARY HAMEL, one of the world’s most influential and iconoclastic business thinkers
"With infectious passion for his areas of expertise, anecdotes in abundance and tools for immediate application, John Dore is the glue on the programmes he directs. Happily for readers, he is as inspirational on the page as he is in the classroom."
RICHARD HYTNER, Adjunct Professor of Marketing, LBS, founder Blue Hat Man
"This is the book we all wish we’d read in February 2020. We needed Glue more than ever then, and we certainly need it now. The concept of GLUE is a brilliant shorthand for bringing together people, purpose and leadership – and making it stick."
CATHERINE FAEIRS, COO Autotrader
"As organisations adapt and reinvent for the Never Normal, the physical and hybrid workplace will continue to rapidly evolve. John Dore’s entertaining new book explores the future of work and reimagines the role of the leader."
PETER HINSSEN, Founder of nexxworks, and author of The Day After Tomorrow
"We live in challenging times, with record levels of disengagement and employee turnover. In this thought-provoking and inspiring book, John Dore explains the vital role of social capital – glue in his words – as the hidden ingredient that leader can nurture to help them create vibrant and purposeful organisations."
JULIAN BIRKINSHAW, Professor and Vice Dean, LBS
"GLUE is a wonderful book that addresses one of the most pressing challenges of our time—how to create and maintain stronger interpersonal bonds among our employees in a world where work is increasingly becoming more remote and hybrid. The book is full of ideas and examples on how to achieve this. It should become essential reading for leaders everywhere.
COSTAS MARKIDES, Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship, LBS
"I have known John for many years and I can vouch for his understanding and knowledge of what it takes to bring people together and form expert leadership teams. John is a master of this, a topic which has assumed such importance post Covid lockdowns and in a more flexible, hybrid working world."
CHRIS ALLEN, CEO, Quintet Private Bank
"Whether the distance that separates your team is geographical, operational or emotional, the required ‘hybrid’ leadership strategies to re-engage, re-equip and re-inspire your teams can be found in this ground-breaking new book. Put simply, GLUE is a leader’s guidebook for the future of work."
JIM STEELE, Performance Coach and author of Unashamedly Superhuman