Pragmatic Change: A modern pragmatist's guide to leading complex change

You've been doing this your whole life. So has every person you lead.

Nobody in your organisation is bad at change. They've changed careers, cities, relationships, beliefs. They've rebuilt themselves after things you'll never hear about.

You're leading something genuinely hard, with capable people, and it still isn't moving the way it should...

Between 2016 and 2022, employee willingness to support enterprise change fell from 74% to 43%. The playbook most executives inherited was built for a workforce that expected direction. The workforce they lead now expects a conversation.

Pragma is Greek for action. Pragmatism has one test, and statistically your last transformation would have failed it: does this actually work, here, with these people?

Not what the framework says should work, or what the consulting slide deck promised. What actually works, in the room, with the people you have.

Drawing on twenty years leading change at scale - including work with Stockland, the University of Melbourne, Elders, and Carl Zeiss Vision - Winter sets out seven concurrent principles a senior leader can carry into the next meeting.

Through cases including Robodebt, the Boeing 737 MAX certification failure, and Toyota's kaizen on the factory floor, the book examines what actually decides whether change survives contact with reality. Twelve chapters organised into five modules: Understanding Change, A Pragmatic Approach, Change in Yourself, Change in Teams, and Change in Organisations. Practical tools throughout, including the Let-Go Inventory, the Framework Stress Test, Quiet Influencer Mapping, and the Coherence Filter.

Written in plain language for the senior leaders who don't read change-management books - and for the change practitioners working alongside them who suspect there's a better way.