“A refreshingly candid exploration of what it takes to lead effectively in an environment defined by constant change”

“A must-read for anyone interested in transforming organisational design and strategy. It doesn’t just inform; it inspires and equips you to make a tangible difference in your organisational landscape.”

“At a time when many organisations are still wrestling with bureaucratic inertia and outdated processes, Wholehearted offers a pathway to more effective decision-making and leadership.”

"I can’t recommend Mike’s books enough, and this one is truly quite special."

This book will change two things for you: how you think about organisations, and how you engage with their challenges. At its heart is the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation, a fresh, complexity-aware, and ground-up reconstruction of Stafford Beer’s Viable System Model. The diagnostic power of this classic organisational model remains unrivalled, and to it we bring a truly 21st century approach. We work with rather than against the grain of two key realities: that everyone's experience of the organisation is different, and that they see different possibilities emerging for it.

Not only does that turn the traditional change management paradigm on its head, it helps leaders better understand what it means for them to be “creating the conditions” – creating the conditions for performance, emergence, innovation, self-organisation, adaptability, resilience, and so on – everything we look for in the pursuit of business agility.

With reference to a number of complementary frameworks, including the OODA loop, the Cynefin framework, Lean, Agile, and multiple models of trust-building leadership, this book’s main focus is the digital-age (though not necessarily technology-centric) organisation, in which product development, customer-focused service delivery, and organisational renewal are becoming increasingly integrated. With that come issues of context and scale, for which process-based approaches are ill-equipped to meet.

Former Executive Director and CTO Mike Burrows is the author of Organizing Conversations (2024), Agendashift (2nd edition 2021), Right to Left (2019, audiobook 2020), and the Lean-Agile classic, Kanban from the Inside.