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.

The businesses that cope best right now are not the most polished; they are the most responsive. When you build that responsiveness into the way your business functions, uncertainty becomes something you work with, not something that works against you.

If you want to build space for thinking how to change the game, try these prompts in a leadership meeting, planning session, or strategy day. If you are a solopreneur, try them in a journal or a thinking walk.

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.

Monetising value at multiple layers is highly protective.

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.

Project accounting offers multiple benefits - across understanding profitability of a specific project, spotting early warning signals, and building a bank of data that, over time, improves pricing and estimating.

“Changing the game” can sound grand, like inventing a brand new industry but it can be far more practical and specific. Here are just three pretty straight-forward ways to find some Blue Ocean in your world.

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.

Fail fast everyone says. Often offered as a cure-all for uncertainty but I find this is unhelpful advice for many small businesses

You may not even need a tool. You may simply need to make the best use of the tools you already have. Sometimes the problem is not technological at all. The important thing is that the business need comes first.

Project accounting is the practice of tracking, managing, and reporting money at project level, rather than only at business, department, or cost-centre level.

Create capacity, improve customer experience, and raise quality by using the digital tools you already have, or choosing better ones with more knowledge and more confidence.

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.

A favoured quote from fantasy author Guy Gavriel Kay

Testing ideas, trying new approaches, and learning from what happens are all essential. Without experimentation, innovation remains theoretical. But experimentation on its own is not innovation.

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.

“Analysis” has a reputation problem. It is often positioned as the opposite of creativity, something you endure in order to get back to the interesting work. And yet, much meaningful innovation can come from understanding how things actually fit together.

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.