Videos
-
George Talks Business with Ashley Goodall -
Ashley Goodall | Leadership is Not A Thing
-
Time to Retire Performance Reviews? Leadership Expert and Author Ashley Goodall Explains
-
There's a real gap between what workers want and employers need, says former Deloitte executive
-
Why unnecessary layoffs and disruption makes it harder for employees -
ASBN: Nine Lies about Work, and how to expose the strengths of your team
-
Cheddar: Is Everything You Know About Work Culture a Lie
-
BNN Bloomberg: The truths and lies about what makes a workplace work
-
Yahoo! Finance: New rules for workplace survival
Learn More About Ashley Goodall
How are leaders in business and in HR meant to navigate the swirl they find themselves in today? The onrush of AI, the question — foregrounded by the issue of DEI — about the balance between the people stuff and the business stuff, and, indeed, the fundamental identity and purpose of a company — all these are in play at once, and the job of finding a direction amid the tumult is harder than it has ever been. Meanwhile, the traditional toolkit of HR—reviews and ratings and top-down initiatives—seems increasingly inadequate for the world we’re living in.
Ashley Goodall has two decades of experience reinventing the people side of work, not in theory but in practice. Working with CHROs and senior business and HR leaders, he’s created new approaches and systems at scale and has implemented them in organizations with tens of thousands of employees. Running through them all are these threads: that we are better when we make things simpler; that the complexity belongs in the people, not in the systems we ask them to use; that we must understand and appreciate human nature before we can help humans work; that tools must be useful to employees if we want them to be used; and that no organization can sustainably grow that does not help its people grow. “My fundamental conviction is that if an organization doesn’t work for the humans in it, it doesn’t work,” Goodall explains.
Across the areas of leadership, organizational culture and talent management, Goodall offers a series of practical and research-based methods for increasing employee performance and engagement, and for helping leaders navigate through uncertainty.
The Problem With Change and How to Fix It
In his most recent award-winning book “The Problem with Change: And the Essential Nature of Human Performance” (named Porchlight Books’ Best Management and Workplace Culture Book of 2024 and a Financial Times and Globe and Mail Best Business Book of 2024), Goodall reveals the psychological costs of constant change and demonstrates how it can stymie the progress it seeks to create. Instead, he argues, leaders should rethink the narrative that insists innovation and success can only come from change and disruption to instead allow improvement to emerge as opposed to forcing it from above.
“The conventional wisdom is that if you run an organization, you need to change it—and the more change the better,” he explains. “So, we have a predominant management philosophy that is purportedly about improvement, but actually, because of the way that constant change and instability make it harder for people to do their jobs, has the effect of creating unimprovement on the front lines.”
In the book, Goodall emphasizes that stability is the foundation of improvement. He explains that stability is not the same as standing still and offers practical steps leaders can easily take to ensure effective stability management in the face of change:
- Prioritize team cohesion instead of reshuffling teams at will.
- Use real words rather than corporate-speak.
- Share secrets not mission statements.
- Honor shared rituals rather than mandated bonding.
- Fix only the things that are truly broken instead of moving fast and breaking everything in sight.
By drawing a clear distinction between “change” and “improvement,” Goodall provides leaders with a new understanding of the consequences of implementing change initiatives simply for the sake of shaking things up.
Reinventing Performance Management
While annual goal setting, a five-point rating scale, and once-a-year feedback delivered in a performance review has become almost universal, the system is hardly universally loved by employees.
With extensive experience implementing an alternative approach to performance management at two multinational organizations, Goodall shows that the traditional tools used for performance reviews not only cause frustration and take up a huge amount of organizational time, but also put workers in an unreceptive frame of mind, ultimately having the opposite effect of their intention.
“By focusing instead on team engagement, you turn an individual performance measurement tool into a team improvement tool,” explains Goodall, Deloitte’s former Chief Learning Officer for Leadership and Professional Development. “An accessible system of feedback and check-ins can bolster great teams that in turn help people do better at work.”
Trained at the University of Oxford as a classical music conductor, he’s uniquely qualified to understand how, much like the members of an orchestra, engaged employees who are uniquely useful to one another can work together to create something special. He offers this powerful analogy:
“In an orchestra, you have a group of people who each bring different strengths, and each have a different role to play. When the musicians and their leader all work together, those individual contributions become fused into a single, coherent, whole—and when that happens, it’s nothing less than magical.”
Ensure HR is Working for Employees
Co-author of “Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World” (selected as the Best Management Book of 2019 by strategy+business), Goodall urges HR leaders to embrace their core purpose – to create a better, more productive working environment by giving employees the tools they need to succeed. His practical three-step framework for reestablishing HR as a full-throated advocate for employees envisions Human Resources as a truly empowering function of an organization.
“The best way to serve an organization is to serve the people in the organization,” explains Goodall. “The way to achieve that is to understand what humans need at work in order to contribute their best.”
###
Ashley Goodall is an advisor, author and executive. He’s spent two decades working in the areas of leadership and human resources as a consultant, Fortune 50 executive, speaker, researcher and writer.
In his advisory work, Goodall helps companies and leaders discover the path to sustained performance, through sustained improvement in their people practices.
In his writing, he explores the lessons from the real world that help people and teams thrive, and that make work a more human place for all of the humans in it.
In Goodall’s executive roles, he has created and instituted new approaches to leadership development, feedback, team performance, coaching, employee engagement, performance management, people analytics and more.
Goodall’s most recent book, “The Problem with Change,” was Porchlight Books’ Best Management and Workplace Culture Book of 2024, and a best business book of the year in both the Financial Times and the Globe and Mail. His work has been featured in publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Forbes, Business Insider, Inc. Magazine, the Sloan Management Review and Harvard Business Review.
Goodall is the co-author, with Marcus Buckingham, of “Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World” (Harvard Business Review Press, 2019), which was selected as the best management book of 2019 by strategy+business and as one of Amazon’s best business and leadership books of 2019. He is also the co-author of two cover stories in the Harvard Business Review: “The Feedback Fallacy” (March/April 2019) — which was named as a Harvard Business Review must-read article of 2019 — and “Reinventing Performance Management” (April 2015).
Goodall’s first experiences of teams and leadership were as a student musician and conductor. He was fascinated by the unspoken understanding between people playing together and carried this fascination into the corporate world. He most recently spent six years as a Senior Vice President of HR at Cisco, where he led organizations focused on leadership, teams and research. Prior to Cisco, Goodall spent fourteen years at Deloitte as a consultant and as the Chief Learning Officer for Leadership and Professional Development.
Ashley Goodall is available to advise your organization via virtual and in-person consulting meetings, interactive workshops and customized keynotes through the exclusive representation of Stern Speakers & Advisors, a division of Stern Strategy Group®.
Leadership is Not a Thing
Of all the myths we have come to believe about the world of work, the idea that there is a single, universal and easily learned set of characteristics that make a person a leader is perhaps the most harmful. In this presentation, Ashley Goodall weaves together an examination of our traditional concept of leadership—and an examination of its shortcomings—with insights from the Civil Rights movement in the USA to provide a powerful illustration of leading at its finest.
Organizational Resilience and The Problem with Change
In today’s fast-paced business world, many have come to think of change and disruption as the building blocks of innovation and success, but what if the reality is actually the opposite? According to leadership expert and former Deloitte and Cisco HR executive Ashley Goodall, change initiatives are often launched with little thought of the cost in human terms, thereby alienating employees and harming innovation and productivity. In this eye-opening presentation, Goodall draws from his award-winning book “The Problem with Change,” to illustrate the psychological costs of constant change, and to demonstrate how change can itself stymie the progress it seeks. Instead of reflexively instigating disruption, Goodall argues, leaders should focus on embedding stability into their organizations through people practices designed to help people do their best work. With these practical “stability management” strategies in hand, leaders will see innovation and improvement begin to emerge naturally from their organizations.
Change Management for Humans
Organizations are constantly changing—and so leaders are constantly grappling with how to manage change, whether it comes from within or without. But the most commonly used approaches to change management pay little heed to the fundamentals of human performance, and as a result many change initiatives flounder. Building on the insights in his award-winning book “The Problem with Change,” Ashley Goodall describes an approach to change centered on clarity and resilience, designed to sustain employee and team contributions in uncertain times.
How to Build Magical Teams
One of the stranger quirks of corporate life is that the systems and processes we use to manage performance—cascaded goals, ratings, consensus meetings and so forth—don’t actually help people improve their work. They are more an annoyance than an accelerator. Beginning with an analysis of why this is, Ashley Goodall then reveals the conditions that do, in fact, lead to increased performance at work and demonstrates that all of these emanate from teams. He shares three core principles that organizations can use to put teams at the center of their approach to organizational performance and build more (magical) teams like their best teams, along with examples of these principles in action.
The Future of HR and the Importance of Building People-Up
In today’s business environment of constant disruption, workplaces have become surprisingly hard places to get things done. How can Human Resources rethink its function to give employees the tools they need to do their best work? In this revealing presentation, drawing from his award-winning book “The Problem with Change,” Ashley Goodall argues that the fundamental role of HR is to “Build People-Up”—that is, to ground every people practice and program in the essential nature of human performance. Audiences will leave challenged to reestablish HR as a full-throated advocate for employees and as a truly empowering function in an organization.
The Problem with Change: And the Essential Nature of Human Performance
(Little, Brown Spark, May 2024)
Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World
(Harvard Business Review Press, April 2019)
Rethink Your People Practices From the Humans Up
According to leadership expert and HR executive Ashley Goodall, organizations risk losing sight of the human aspect of the workplace. Urging leaders to rethink their people practices through the lens of human performace, he helps them understand what makes the best teams special and how stability can lead to powerful innovation from within. Ashley Goodall is available to discuss any or all of the following topics during keynote presentations and consultations plus small group and one-on-one advisory meetings. Each program can be customized to meet the needs and goals of your organization with the added option of meeting virtually or in-person.
- Elevating Leadership Performance
- Increasing Organizational Resilience
- Managing Change and Innovation
- Elevating Team Performance
- Defining your Talent Strategy
- Designing Software for Humans
Leading for Resilience
The conventional wisdom in organizations is that change and disruption necessarily lead to innovation. But, according to advisor and executive Ashley Goodall, this is often not the case. It’s vital for leaders to understand the essential nature of human performance and how change and instability can actually impair performance. In this highly interactive workshop, Goodall draws from his award-winning book “The Problem with Change” to guide leaders through a practical breakdown of the human impacts of change. With this understanding as a foundation, and through hands-on exercises and group discussions, participants go on to gain practical methods for strengthening organizational stability, and thereby for giving people more of what they need at work in order to contribute.
Praise for "The Problem With Change"
"'Business worships disruption' to its own detriment, according to this refreshing treatise. Business consultant Goodall (coauthor of Nine Lies About Work), a former Cisco executive, argues that mistakenly conflating frequent internal changes with innovation hurts employee morale. In his view, mergers and other shake-ups often cause breakdowns in communication that leave workers uncertain about their employer’s future, producing unease and distracting from productive activity. Case studies illustrate other negative consequences of disruption, as when Goodall recounts how a South African banker quit his job because a company reorganization caused constant disputes between coworkers about 'who was responsible for which pieces of work.' Outlining commonsense principles for reining in unnecessary overhauls, Goodall recommends that business leaders 'raise the bar on what we consider sufficient cause to embark on a large change initiative' and consider such 'programs and transactions the exception, not the rule.' It’s not always clear how directly the numerous animal studies cited relate to the business world (for instance, Goodall emphasizes the importance of employees feeling that they have agency over their work by describing a study in which dogs became distressed after failing to figure out how to avoid electric shocks). Nevertheless, the book’s heterodox thesis puts needless corporate reshuffling to shame. It’s an emphatic case for staying the course."
“In a world that can be obsessed with disruption for its own sake, 'The Problem with Change' is an urgent wake-up call for managers and executives at all levels. In this refreshingly clear-eyed new book, Ashley Goodall argues that excessive and indiscriminate change comes at a steep cost, one that leaders are often unaware of. For change to be beneficial, it must be undertaken thoughtfully, deliberately, and with the employees and their experience front and center.”
“How incredibly refreshing to find a leadership expert who will admit the truth—that change isn't the same as improvement, and that companies need stability, community, and real respect for workers as much if not more so than (yet another) round of ‘disruption.’ Corporate leaders could save a lot of money, time and pain by taking Goodall's advice.”
“Ashley Goodall has achieved something rare and wonderful: he has taken a subject with which we are all deeply familiar — change — and turned it upside down. And in so doing, he has not only revealed “the problem with change,” but also how to find within it all the resiliency and creativity we need to succeed. 'The Problem with Change' is a completely engaging book that causes us to reassess much of what we’ve all mistaken for “truth” and reveals insights and ideas we can never unsee. Given how much change we are all grappling with today, this book could not be more timely. It is a must read for any leader trying to find their bearings in these wildly turbulent times.”
“Do you know that research shows that people undergoing organizational change are more likely to take antidepressants? While change and disruption have become catchwords, they exact an enormous toll on employees and their companies. This smart, well-written book can help leaders resist the temptations toward chaos so currently popular.”
“Change is neither good, nor bad—and much of it is essential. But that doesn’t make it easy. In his brilliantly thought-provoking 'The Problem with Change,' Ashley Goodall argues persuasively that a big part of the job of leaders is to create stability—to dampen the disruptive nature of change and to allow their teams to perform.”
“Ashley Goodall's 'The Problem with Change' is a timely exploration of the complexity of organizational transformation. It dispels the myth that change is an unqualified good and tackles the hard truths about the challenges it brings. With an honest and insightful look at the intricacies of change management, Goodall offers a fresh perspective that questions our readiness to disrupt and provides a nuanced discussion on stability in the workplace. As someone deeply invested in the growth and development of leaders and organizations, I believe this book is a crucial read for anyone looking to navigate the often turbulent waters of change.”
Praise for "Nine Lies About Work"
- Named one of "Our 10 favorite new books for people managers" by SHRM (Society for Human Resource Managers)
- One of the Financial Times "Business Books of the Month"
- Named a Bloomberg Businessweek pick
- Named one of "14 business books everyone will be reading in 2019" by Business Insider
- Named one of "10 Leadership Books to Watch for in 2019" by the Washington Post
- Named one of "10 Business Books You Need to Read in 2019" by Inc. magazine
- Named one of "The 19 New Leadership Books to Read in 2019" by Adam Grant on LinkedIn
"'Nine Lies About Work,' by Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall, the year's best management book, challenges the assumptions that underlie contemporary managerial practices, many of which date back to Drucker's day. In doing so, the book offers a glimpse of a new management paradigm that may prove to be better suited to the times."
"'Nine Lies' is utterly readable, often entertaining, and not just polite, but carefully reasoned and argued using some unusual real-world examples and even some from literature."
"Leads to some free thinking about the way we do our jobs and how we can approach what we do in a different way."
"If a business book teaches me something new--and offers a fresh perspective on leadership--then I know it's a rare find in the category. 'Nine Lies About Work' is just such a book. It's so thought provoking, I contacted the authors to speak with them directly."
"…should be on every boss's bookshelf."
"A stimulating, no-nonsense, research-based look at things you likely believe that aren't true – and how to apply the new findings."
"The act of work is human. Leading and following and working together is about human interaction and human relationships. The workplace, and the marketplace beyond it, is about emotions and attention and the desire to be seen. It is about trust and, yes, it is about love. I am always grateful to be reminded of that, to see it again clearly, to have it acknowledged. 'Nine Lies About Work' is a great reminder, and a great guide."
"Give a copy of this book to everyone in your organization who's leading a team and make it essential reading."
"If you're looking for a refreshing read that challenges the conventional wisdom of the business world, this is a book for your shelf."
"There is much we can learn about managing and leading our schools from its pages."
