Heart Ally Books, LLC
By Roy D. Bridges, Jr. and Tim Kotnour, PhD
Transformations are hard.
Especially when everything around you is on fire.
Your organization is in crisis. Pressure from your boss. Rumblings from stakeholders. Demands from stockholders. Disruptions in the marketplace. Deeply frustrated staff and workforce who need to be heard and respected. Who need their dignity. Who need your leadership. Where do you begin?
If you’re in the middle of a transformation, your days are chaotic. You have one foot in the old business model and the other foot in the new one, trying to incorporate it into the daily work of running your business. It feels like both feet are being held to the fire. Meanwhile, your world is burning.
You need a plan and a practical map to lead you through the labyrinth of your transformation’s chaos. Conquering Chaos has a proven path that has led organizations out of crisis for years. How?
By story. We’ve shared a detailed look at the inside story of one successful transformation.
By experience. We’ve both faced hard transformations and succeeded. Using the strategic techniques in this book, we’ve helped organizations not only survive but thrive, in the short term and the long term.
By adaptability. We’ve presented these techniques in a flexible format, so you can customize them to serve the unique needs of your organization's transformation.
Five essential views will guide you: Presence. Perspective. Process. People. Dignity. Working through this book, you will learn everything that you need to lead with confidence.
Transformations are hard.
You got this.
Bridges and Kotnour share leadership lessons from their work revitalizing the Kennedy Space Center.
At the height of the Cold War in the 1960s, perhaps no government agency commanded as much respect, awe, and national pride as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Its John F. Kennedy Space Center represented the best of American ingenuity, gumption, and visionary leadership. By the 1990s, both the government’s commitment to and the general public’s interest in space exploration had waned; this shift, combined with initiatives to downsize the federal government, fostered an “existential crisis” among KSC employees. It was during this dark period that the Center’s director, Bridges, partnered with Kotnour, a consultant and professor of industrial engineering and management systems at the University of Central Florida. Together, they revitalized the center’s internal culture and morale in the late 1990s and early 2000s. In this account, they share their personal stories from inside of one of America’s most beloved institutions and present their experiences as examples from which other leaders can learn to revamp their own institutional cultures. The book is divided into five sections representing the central aspects of the authors’ approach to organization leadership. The most important component is fostering a “sense of dignity” among the workforce, from leadership teams down to the “Pit Crew.” The other components include presence, perspective, process, and people—all of which require the active presence of leadership in the day-to-day operation of the organization and are built on empathy and clear expectations and objectives. A former astronaut with a distinguished career in both the civil and private sectors, Bridges offers an engaging insider’s account of NASA; Kotnour’s expertise in strategic management provides a solid grounding in best practices. The prose is jargon-free, and the text includes graphs, illustrations, and other visual elements.
An engaging case study of the transformative power of intentional, personnel-driven leadership.
Plot/Idea: This book uses the author's work transforming the Kennedy Space Center's operations to respond to political changes as a model for transformational change in other organizations. While the KSC case study is very granular and detailed, the takeaway advice is broadly applicable and provides thoughtful guidance for navigating uncertainty and finding renewal.
Prose: The writing is clear, outlining both steps for psychologically weathering the chaos of organizational transformation, as well as strategic points drawn from the author's personal experience.
Originality: Conquering Chaos carves out a unique niche as it examines the discomfort of structural change on a business and corporate level. There's an internal tension in this book between the very specific and individual example of the KSC and the authors' desire to give generalizable advice based on that unique example. The author largely succeeds in providing actionable advice while also portraying a specific scenario.
Character/Execution: This work is informed by the authors' role in transforming the KSC, so the work may be particularly useful as a case study. But Kotnour does offer general wisdom for leaders seeking a path forward, broadening its appeal.
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