ROOTED

Leadership expert and author of Nine Lies About Work Ashley Goodall explains why change is bad for companies (hint: because it's bad for people), reveals what companies get wrong about people, and shows how to create environments where talent can thrive.

The business world is obsessed with changeor as it is more commonly known among its disciples, "disruption." For a business buzzword, this is an unusually apt descriptor. Organizational change is disruptive. And to celebrate it is to ignore its profound human cost. Constant uncertainty produces anxiety and helplessness, and undermines our trust in leaders. Knowing that we could be discarded at any moment irrespective of job performance drains our motivation and hampers our ability to derive meaning and fulfillment from our work. All of which takes a massive toll on well-being, productivity, performance, and profitsas well as the company's ability to recruit and retain talent.

What if, instead of subjecting employees to an endless torrent of stress-inducing change and upheaval, companies offered them the stability, security, and agency they need to do their best work? Of course, change in the service of true innovation isn't bad for business, Goodall says. But change undertaken for the wrong reasons (e.g a management fad, a publicity gambit, an attempt to distract shareholders after a bad quarter), can be the enemy of innovationand in most corporate settings this is not the exception, but the rule. Rooted is part call to action, part playbook that draws on social science research as well as the author's two decades in top HR positions at Deloitte and Cisco to show leaders at any level how to create the conditions for people to flourish.

Ashley Goodall is a leadership expert and author who has spent his career exploring large organizations from the inside, most recently as an executive at Cisco. Prior to Cisco, he spent fourteen years at Deloitte as a consultant and as the Chief Learning Officer for Leadership and Professional development. Goodall has been quoted in the New York Times, The Washington Post, Forbes, and elsewhere. He is the co-author, with Marcus Buckingham, of Nine Lies About Work, which was translated in 13 languages. Goodall is also the co-author of two cover stories in the Harvard Business Review, one of which was HBR's most popular article of 2019. Originally from the UK, he holds a BA in Music from Oxford and an MBA from Columbia Business School. He is based in New Jersey.