A psychological orientation towards status, control, and self-protection may overpower the collaborative instincts that good project management usually requires. A few different bodies of literature speak to this. I wanted to dig further into some of these.

Sometimes that means working with strategy. Sometimes it means working with governance, delivery, readiness, operating models or change. The specific tools vary but the underlying purpose of Wrixle is consistent: helping people to transform ideas into reality.

One of the most counterintuitive things I do when preparing a major change announcement, a team away day, or the launch of a high-risk, uncertain project is I discourage people from reaching a decision too quickly.

As part of a wider transformation agenda focused on flexible working, a large organisation explored whether tablet devices could become a standard, supported part of its end‑user computing estate

Not every project requires readiness management. Every project requires planning, governance and delivery management. Readiness is only needed when the project will culminate in a consequential decision that stakeholders must consciously authorise and then stand behind.

Most transformation programmes begin with no shortage of ideas, ambition, vision, opportunities and potential solutions - but transformation can falter because its difficult to bridge the gap between thinking and doing.

When people work on a transformation programme, they are not always just delivering tasks; they may also be living with uncertainty about their role, their team, their managers, their status, their expertise, their workload, and sometimes their future employment.

Every transformation introduces friction. These frictions are temporary problems created by the act of transition. They are not defects in the plan, they are the point at which the plan meets reality.

Businesses can end up trapped in a game: a sole focus on winning is often the enemy of creating new value.

In a period of transition, rewarding the highest target, the fastest adopter, or the top scorer is a mistake.

While resistance is real and ever‑present, it is only one piece of a much wider and more valuable discipline.

Talcott Parsons’ work sought to answer a big question: “How do societies maintain stability and order over time?”

Changing your business name can be a strategic move, but it comes with several risks that are worth considering and mitigating.

Strategy language is deliberately conceptual, written so the organisation can explore, ideate, innovate, and shape multiple possible routes without prematurely locking into detail. Without proper translation however, they can create chaos when they reach delivery teams.

Whether you have a CTO or not, the principle is the same: technology works best when the business itself is understood clearly.

Capacity often becomes the biggest friction force hampering change delivery - not lack of ambition, not lack of vision, not lack of support, not lack of skill, not lack of money.

I mean……I’m biased……but I’m ready for Transformation to steal some spotlight from it’s sexier-seeming cousins - Business Development and Innovation. Here’s my case.

A recent World Economic Forum/Bain analysis noted that “It’s now clear the rules of long-term planning are being rewritten” in an era of rolling disruptions.

A favoured quote from Professor Jean-Paul Carvalho of the University of Oxford, speaking on the critical role technology has always played in the history of human innovations.

Diane Coutu’s Harvard Business Review article, How Resilience Works, reminds me that resilience, in people and in organisations, starts with the courage to see things as they are, not as we wish they were.

Many of these theoretical frameworks are both older than many realise, and influence us more than we might think.

Here are some of the key dangers, supported by several noteworthy strategy and innovation theorists.

For decades, management has been framed around a single dominant idea: managing people to a defined performance standard. But that framing becomes limiting when organisations are trying to change, not just perform.