The first half of my career was spent inside one company, BP, in a variety of commercial leadership roles, living and working in several countries. The second half is quite the contrast: I run my own company where I advise organisations how to approach, manage and shift culture and I sit on several company boards in the FTSE and globally.

So why write the book? Having spent 5 years leading the culture re-set of BP after the Deepwater Horizon accident, I know what works and what doesn’t, I know the pitfalls and the blind alleys: it doesn’t take business school models, technical jargon, spreadsheet macros or large budgets to make progress. It takes a different approach – not project management but air traffic control, behavioural economics not re-engineering. But not many people have written about this approach yet and certainly not from the experience of having done it.

And the timing was right: culture is finally beginning to take its rightful place in mainstream business thinking alongside strategy as core to business delivery.

Culture Shift is a handbook for anyone who has the responsibility of managing and shifting culture for their organisation: for CEOs, for the change agents and everyone in between. It’s a practical guide providing you with the questions to ask and issues to consider. It doesn’t provide you with a right or wrong in terms of what culture to have (that’s unique to each organisation), but how to approach the topic and where to really focus attention. It’s peppered with short case studies to bring to life the points I make. It’s not a front-to-back read, but a book to dive into when you get stuck. Each chapter has an “at a glance” section at the end with the headline reminder of every issue discussed. I’ve written it in a deliberately conversational style to underscore its practical nature.

Writing the book has provided me with insights I didn’t expect – from the tactical (where, how and when to write and how much energy and concentration it takes to record the audio book), to the strategic (forging new business partnerships and bringing the topic to previously disengaged stakeholders purely from the tangibility of it being written down) and everything in between (including regular TV slots as a culture commentator and becoming a bit of a dab-hand at a podcast).

But most of all, it’s rewarding to know that writing the book is playing its small part in solidifying culture’s seat at the table alongside strategy as a core driver of business delivery.