Leading and Managing Change in the Age of Disruption and Artificial Intelligence, reviewed

Leading and Managing Change in the Age of Disruption and Artificial Intelligence, reviewed

By @SimonCocking, 

LEADING AND MANAGING IN AN AGE OF DISRUPTION

 How to manage and lead a business through:

• Automation: It is predicted that 1.5 million people in England are at high risk of losing their jobs to automation.
• Geopolitical Change: Geopolitical change can devastate unprepared businesses, such as a no-deal Brexit threatening to cost businesses £27 billion.
• Climate Crisis: Over 200 of the world’s largest listed companies forecast that the climate crisis could cost them a combined total of almost £790 billion.

In a global age of disruption from artificial intelligence, Brexit, climate crisis, trade wars and changing employee demands, future organisational change is not avoidable. The effects of disruption will be immediate, with consideration and preparation being paramount for the survival of organisations and the leaders of tomorrow.

 Leading and Managing Change in the Age of Disruption and Artificial Intelligence is the essential guide for management in the new economy written by Dr Mathew Donald, a leading academic with over 30 years business experience.

The book brings the topics of management, leadership and organisational change into the future for leaders and managers of organisations, arming them with case studies, exercises, tools, tables and analysis to assist with preparation for organisational change.

The book expertly tackles modern disruption, ranging from EU destabilization, rebalancing world powers, financial trade barriers and the influence of technology. It provides practical insights and strategies to help managers and leaders to future proof organisations of all sizes for the wave of disruption on the horizon, which is threatening large scale loss of jobs, occupation and even whole industries.

In a time of change, Dr Mat looks at the changing demands of managing a modern workforce, from the skilling your force now in areas such as data analysis, to adapting to the demands of a millennial workforce for flexible working and the adoption of corporate social responsibility to maintain values in times of tumultuous change.

Leading and Managing Change in the Age of Disruption and Artificial Intelligence is an imperative read to futureproof organisations, as it provides the skills to critically think about what the future holds and to prepare your organisation for whatever disruption is around the corner.

Review

There is a lot to like in this book, it covers the issues well, and explores a range of important issues, with well reasoned arguments and insights. However the size of the text is brutal, far too small, and really gets in the way of making this an accessible and easy book to read. Coming in at less than two hundred pages of content it could surely have gone up a size or two and easily still been less than three hundred pages long and a more engaging and pleasant reading experience. Normally you get more out of reading a book in hardcopy, but this is one where having it as a kindle would at least allow you to increase the text size.

A second, perhaps minor issue, is that at the beginning of every chapter the opening quote is by, …, the author himself. This seems a little bizarre and redundant. Naturally the whole book is written by him, so we are already a captive audience, and there are so many other interesting people out there with thoughtful and provocation ideas on these topics, Elon Musk, Stephen Hawkings, Andrew Ng.

Surely it would have made more sense to lead with some of their comments and provocative ideas in these chapters? After awhile relentlessly quoting yourself rather than others seems counter productive and, combined with the far too small text, made this book feel overly academic when it could be reaching a far wider audience.

Leading and Managing Change in the Age of Disruption and Artificial Intelligence by Dr Mathew Donald is out now, published by Emerald Publishing, priced £65. For more information go to www.drmat.online

About the author: Dr Mathew Donald is a leading academic in the field of management, leadership and organisational change, with over 30 years business experience. He is a fellow at CPA Australia, and a member of the Australian Institute of Project Management. As an academic, he has taught in the topics of management, accounting, business strategy, international business and leadership.

Dr Mat is also helping organisations through change with his Modern Change Assessment Tool, as well as appearing as a keynote speaker for businesses.

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