Diagnose the pattern. Apply the right lever. Build capability that lasts.
Hi, I’m Neil Walker — welcome.
This is where transformation leaders come when the frameworks aren’t working.
For over 30 years, I’ve been the strategic troubleshooter organisations call when escalations multiply and established approaches fail. From the Bank of England to UBS, from Barclays to UK Government — I’ve recovered failing programmes, coached executives through complexity, and built operating models that actually deliver.
That pattern recognition is now documented in Thriving in Turbulence — a diagnostic framework (CIRCA-CLEAR) born from 200+ real-world interventions across banking, government, technology, and professional services.
The core insight: Most transformation failures aren’t execution problems — they’re misdiagnosis. Teams apply the wrong intervention because they haven’t accurately read the conditions. CIRCA-CLEAR fixes that gap.
Whether you’re navigating turbulence, building adaptive capability, or simply trying to work out why progress has stalled — you’re in the right place.
Thriving in Turbulence
Diagnose conditions. Apply the right lever. Build capability.
Published November 2025 | Available on Leanpub and Amazon
The book organisations need when transformation stalls despite everyone working harder than ever. CIRCA-CLEAR provides:
- Pattern recognition that diagnoses conditions in 2-3 days
- Matched interventions with 2-4 week testing cycles
- Leading indicators (ThroughFlow, Human Pulse) that predict problems before they escalate
- Framework integration that makes your OKRs, SAFe, and Team Topologies work better
Foreword by Giles Lindsay, author of Clearly Agile and The Adaptive Leader.
👉 Get the book → Available on Leanpub and Amazon
CIRCA-CLEAR Framework
CIRCA diagnoses five turbulence conditions: Complex, Insecure, Rapid, Contradictory, Anxious.
CLEAR provides five matched responses: Clarity, Learning, Empathy, Agility, Resilience.
Most frameworks tell you what to do. CIRCA-CLEAR tells you why it’s not working — so you apply the right intervention at the right time.
👉 Learn about CIRCA → 👉 Explore CIRCA-CLEAR →
Latest insights
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The Human Pulse Signals Published Metrics Can’t Capture
What 15 years of ground-level observation reveals about DSO’s real trajectory BOTTOM LINE Published metrics tell one story. Ground-level observation tells another. I’ve watched Bayer’s evolution for over 15 years—close enough to see patterns that analyst reports miss. The signals…
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What Zappos Learned That Bayer Hasn’t—Yet
Precedents, patterns, and why scale changes everything BOTTOM LINE The largest Western self-management experiment before Bayer was Zappos. They had 8 years as “best place to work,” 1,500 employees, and voluntary departures. They still quietly retreated from holacracy. Bayer has…
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The Diagnostic Question Bayer Isn’t Asking
Why DSO might be the right destination reached by the wrong path BOTTOM LINE Bayer’s Dynamic Shared Ownership isn’t wrong. The diagnostic sequence is. Harvard Business School is already writing the case study. The question they’re examining: “Could fewer bosses…
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The Case Study That Didn’t Make the Book
Why Bayer’s DSO transformation deserves its own series BOTTOM LINE When writing Thriving in Turbulence, I had to make difficult cuts. Some material was redundant. Some was tangential. But some was too current, too unfolding, too significant to compress into…
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The Bungy Jump: Why Agile Transformations Fail
Pattern Recognition Across Contexts Thirty years troubleshooting transformations teaches you something valuable: the best explanations come from outside the problem domain. When banking executives struggle with trust deficits, I don’t reference other banks. I talk about bungy jumping. When government…
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Beyond Process Optimization
How CIRCA-CLEAR Transforms Lean Six Sigma Into Human-Centered Excellence What if the most powerful improvement methodology in the world has been operating with one hand tied behind its back? For decades, Lean Six Sigma has dominated the organizational improvement landscape,…
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The Meeting-to-Meeting Pattern
Work moves only between recurring sessions. Actions picked up right before the meeting, clarified during it, stalled until the next slot. Calendar inertia, not flow. Why this matters: Classic Lean waste: delays, over-processing, rework, bloated WIP. Decisions depend on people…
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