Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the team at Pearson for their support and professionalism throughout the publishing process, and especially David Crosby for his faith in this project.

I would like to thank the various clients and friends who have contributed research support, ideas, cases, quotations and feedback in order to make this book more interesting and real. In particular I would like to thank: Jacqueline Moyse, director of organisation development at Mandarin Oriental Hotels Group; Tanith Dodge, group HR director at Marks and Spencer; Dave Dyson, CEO, Graham Baxter, COO and Lesley Davies, director of people experience at Three; Andy Rubin, chairman at Pentland Brands plc; Andy Long, CEO at Pentland Brands plc; Anton Zelcer, global head of executive and management development at Standard Chartered Bank; Jacqui Humphries, people director at Shop Direct; Angela Spindler, CEO at N Brown; Nancy Rothwell, president and vice-chancellor of the University of Manchester; Mark Stevens, MD at Provident; Sarah Dickins, previously people director at Provident; and Roger Whiteside, CEO at Greggs.

My sincere thanks go to everyone at Cirrus who has helped with ideas and feedback on the manuscript, and for helping me to take time for researching and writing both my doctoral thesis and then this book. Thanks especially to Jane O’Hara, Laura Mazur and Jack Hutchison, who have helped enormously with research and editing throughout the writing process.

This book is based on the research I conducted during my doctoral studies at Manchester Business School (MBS), where I received my DBA in early 2015. MBS has a worthy reputation for research, ranked number one globally by the Financial Times in 2014 for its doctoral programmes. Its approach with the DBA was to combine excellent academic training and standards with an appreciation of the way research can benefit practitioners in business and public administration as well. My special thanks to Professor Cathy Cassell (now Deputy Dean at Leeds University Business School), who was my primary supervisor at MBS and whose support, challenge and thoughtful dialogue helped me enormously throughout my research. I would also like to thank Professor Mike Bresnen, who was my second supervisor and whose wisdom was always present. It would be remiss of me not to acknowledge the contribution to my studies of Professor Michael Luger and Professor Jikyeong Kang (now Dean at the Asian Institute of Management), both of whom made the whole process more enjoyable. I would also like to thank very much the organisations that participated in the research as cases, as without their patience over an extended research period of two years my research and this book would not have been possible.

Finally, I am indebted to my family and friends for their patience and for putting up with so many weekends and evenings of me tapping away at my keyboard. Thank you Clare, my lovely wife, and Harry, Max and Freddie, my wonderful sons. Their sometimes more sceptical perspective helped to keep the book real and reasonably grounded.