In the pages ahead you’ll find 11 strategies we use every day to help leaders seize attention, win hearts and move minds. These strategies can be used in any context, no matter your role, industry or organisation size. While we frequently refer to ‘leaders’, this isn’t bound by job title. To us, a leader is anyone with the gumption to bring about change for the benefit of everyone.

Each strategy contains theories, science and practical ideas, illustrated by examples of leaders who’ve used the strategy effectively. These stories are real — actual projects we’ve been thrilled to work on with some truly amazing folk. All that’s been changed is their name and the company they work for (because: legal departments). While these stories are used in isolation to illustrate the strategies, they’re typically part of a much larger plan.

Finally, it’s not all kittens and sunbeams. There are three areas for wariness. These ‘bewares’ detail the biggest challenges we face on our pursuit of speaking human. Understanding and overcoming these potential perils is essential to producing work that gains attention, engages and influences.

You can read this book chronologically from cover to cover, or skip gleefully through it in any order you please. There’s no right or wrong way to attack it. Except backwards. That would be plain perverse (unless of course you’re reading this in Hebrew, Arabic or tategaki) … but we digress.

Ready?

Onwards …