I released my second book, “Leading Change: How to Achieve Superior Results with Gentle Pressure Relentlessly Applied” almost one year ago on May 16, 2023. It took me two years to write it. I suppose I’ve spent the last 3 years entirely focused on it. As we lead up to the first anniversary of its release, we’ll spend the next month revisiting the book. 

“Leading Change” has had an immediate impact. It’s been used by the leadership team at Dickies in their annual retreat, offered to every attendee of the Sporting Good Association’s National Conference, used as the Keynote for Vertical Supply Group national leadership conference, and purchased by thousands of individuals. The approach is currently being used in the Running Industry, Bicycle Industry, Medical industry, Outdoor Retailers, Manufacturing, Sales Management, Grocery, Restaurants, and dozens of others. 

If you’re new to this newsletter, let me get you caught up. At its core, our change leadership philosophy is built around this simple phrase: Gentle Pressure is Relentlessly Applied. Even though we’ve used this mantra for decades, we’ve never seen it fully explained. Here’s your overview: 

GENTLE: (Get Agreement on Approach). Before you can implement changes in your organization, on your team, or in your family, you must ensure that everyone involved agrees with your approach and is fully aligned. This requires emotional intelligence, patience, and yes, gentleness. 

PRESSURE: (Metrics for Assurance). Of course, anything you want to change has to have some sort of measurement associated with it—body temperature, weight gain or loss, race times or distances, etc. The proper use of metrics creates the pressure, not you!

RELENTLESSLY: (Training and Coaching). Those who seek excellence are relentless in their pursuit of improvement. This requires disciplined training and coaching with a proven coach. “Perfect Practice makes perfect” requires a coach.

APPLIED: (A Culture of Accountability). Ultimately, when you put the previous three things into action you end up with a culture where people do what they said they would do. You follow up, of course, but mostly because you want to congratulate the success. This is the dream of all leaders. A team that succeeds and is accountable to each other for results. 

This all sounds simple, doesn’t it? Well, it’s not, because there are a lot of moving parts. Stick with us for the next month and we'll dig into this in much greater detail, being as specific as possible. Since you’re still reading, we’ll let you know there’s a good discount coming if you want to purchase the book (stay tuned). In the meantime here’s a previous podcast where I discussed this concept a few years before writing the book.