Research and Publication Schedule 2022

I typically map out a broad structure for the year, whilst remaining willing to deviate as curiosity carries me: today i’m sharing a broad structure of my key research and publication for 2022, with the caveat that it’s incomplete and liable to change!

In Q1 i have two key related publications: the launch of ‘The Quiet Leadership Guidebook’, and ‘The Humble Leader’.

‘Quiet Leadership’ runs alongside the open programme i’ve been sharing throughout 2021, and draws upon the parallel research thread: it explores leadership in the smallest of actions, across four topics – Humility, Kindness, Fairness, and Grace. This all takes place within a view of the Organisation as Ecosystem. I’m very pleased with this work, and excited to be sharing it. It’s currently in production.

‘The Humble Leader’ is a different sort of book: small and beautiful, it forms a guided reflection. It’s very short (around 3k words) and intended for note taking and gifting forwards, or to share a conversation around. This is currently in production too.

Q1 research: i’m ramping up work on ‘The Experimental Organisation’, exploring how Organisations learn, experiment, and handle failure through change. This is case study based and will be a major focus for me.

An open question is around the ‘Learning’ book: i have a draft structure and a host of writing from the last 18 months. My intention is to draw this into a collection that explores key aspects of learning – from ‘sense making’ through to social collaboration. It’s likely to be somewhat fragmentary, but i’m undecided yet as to how broad to make it, or what format to publish in. It may end up non linear, larger, or smaller!

‘The Work of Place’ is a smaller piece, but very exciting too: it considers how Organisations get ‘back to work’ post pandemic – how they will evolve, to create a space to belong, to be productive and purposeful, but perhaps beyond an office. It’s a follow up to 2020’s ‘Finding your Campfire’, which considered how we are ‘together apart’. I have some key Organisational partners i’m working with exploring this topic, so i find it very exciting.

In theory, ‘The Work of Place may publish fast – or it may grow into something larger, so the Q2 publication date is wildly speculative.

‘The Social Age Guidebook’ has been hanging around for a year… it’s written, and currently being re-drafted! The only really significant task remaining is to decide on illustration style and approach. There’s been no urgency for this book, except that it paints the background to all my other work. It explores 12 aspects of the Social Age, and asks what we need to know, and perhaps to do about it.

‘The Experimental Organisation’ may publish Q3… or not! In some ways i want to work on this fast, but i have a lot of interviews coming up (probably several hundred) so it’s potentially too ambitious.

The Q4 publication will be a magazine – more on this in due course, but i’m interested in editing a collection. This will probably be the first publication out of a new publishing house that i’m keen to set up.

Alongside this work, i have a series of new programmes prototyping too: ‘Social Leadership – Power and Potential’, ‘Storytelling’, and ‘Failure, Complexity, and Control’ are all being tested within various Organisations through Q1 and Q2 and will be offered more broadly after that.

I aim to put 5,000 people through the?Quiet Leadership programme?this year too, and may expand that to an actual paid certification offering as well, for Organisations.

Finally:?Social Leadership Daily?– my daily practitioner publication – has really taken off well – and i want to grow it significantly. So expect to hear more about that too as i build out case studies and interviews to complement the existing thread.

So those are my foundations: my global community, within whose arms i am supported, has grown significantly over the last year, and i feel emboldened, whilst still free to make my mistakes as i go.