The question isn’t whether you’re changing. It’s whether you’re changing fast enough.

The manuscript hit 150,000 words before I stopped counting.

Too big. A motivated leader doesn’t have time for a 600-page read. They need something they can finish in a single sitting and apply on Monday. So I cut it. Ruthlessly. Down to around 75,000 words.

That’s not editing. That’s prioritisation under constraint — the same discipline I spend my consulting life asking leaders to apply.

The discipline I teach

Every chapter has to earn its place. No padding. If it doesn’t change what you observe, decide, or do, it doesn’t belong. The same filter I use with clients: if it can’t be seen, measured, or tried by Friday, does it belong?

Half the manuscript didn’t pass that test. Not because it was wrong. Because it wasn’t next.

What got cut

Two categories survived the filter. Two didn’t.

Kept: The diagnostic framework (CIRCA-CLEAR). The single-team navigation playbook. The patterns that help a team recognise which turbulence condition they’re facing and which lever to pull.

Cut: The why — why organisations end up in chronic turbulence in the first place. And the scale — how to coordinate across teams when the whole portfolio is navigating at once.

Both matter. Neither was the priority for Book 1.

Where those 75,000 words went

They didn’t get deleted. They got repositioned.

Some are becoming Books 2 and 3 — portfolio-level coordination and structural adaptation. The work that happens when single-team navigation isn’t enough.

But first, a prequel.

Book 0: The question before the question

Thriving in Turbulence opens with an assumption: you’re experiencing turbulence and need to navigate it. Here’s how.

But that skips a question. Why is your turbulence worse than it needs to be?

External disruption is a given. Markets shift. Technology accelerates. Competitors move. Everyone knows this.

What’s less visible: how much of the friction is self-inflicted. Leadership instincts that backfire. Not malice, just well-intentioned behaviours that accumulate what I’m calling “adaptation debt“.

The question isn’t whether you’re changing. It’s whether you’re changing fast enough.

When an organisation’s adaptive capacity falls behind its environment’s rate of change, the gap doesn’t stay stable. It compounds. And much of that compounding comes from inside — from the very leaders trying to close the gap.

What adaptation debt looks like

Five behaviours show up repeatedly. Each one feels like responsible leadership in the moment. Each one widens the gap over time.

• Clamping down on autonomy when pressure rises
• Deferring structural changes that feel politically expensive
• Protecting legacy success at the cost of future optionality
• Overloading the system with concurrent initiatives
• Treating adaptive challenges as technical problems

None of these are evil. Most are instinctive. All of them accumulate debt that someone will eventually have to pay.

The prequel’s job

Book 0 makes the invisible visible. It shows leaders how they’ve been building pressure without realising it — and why “trying harder later” doesn’t work when the gap compounds.

It’s not about blame. It’s about the mechanism. Once you see the pattern, you can interrupt it.

What’s coming

Book 0: Adaptation Debt — the prequel. Why you can’t afford to wait. Currently in development.

Book 1: Thriving in Turbulence — single-team navigation. Published November 2025.

Book 2 — portfolio-level coordination. When single teams aren’t enough.

Book 3 — structural adaptation. When the operating model itself needs to evolve.

The 150,000 words didn’t disappear. They found their place in the sequence.

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If you’re already navigating turbulence, start with Book 1. If you’re wondering why your organisation keeps ending up there — or why initiatives stall before they gain traction — Book 0 is for you.