I’m Jenni Emery, author of Leading for Organisational Change, and the Global People and Culture Leader at Arup, the design and engineering consultancy. I have built my career in the place where humanity and business meet, figuring out how to help businesses and individuals flourish. I am a trustee of Spurgeons Children’s Charity, and a non-exec advisor to two tech start-ups in the legal sector. I live in London with my husband and four children, soon to be joined by our first puppy! I write poetry, shopping lists and a blog, and Leading for Organisational Change is my first business book.

 

I wrote my book to be the book I would like to read when helping businesses and leaders to navigate change projects. It aims to fill the gap between books about organisational change which are concerned entirely with process, and books about personal transformation which overlook the complexity of context and systems. I also wrote my book to bring a practitioner’s voice to a field dominated by theory, to bring a vibrant, younger, female voice to a field dominated by very senior men, and to show that business writing can be beautiful and gripping enough to keep you reading by torchlight late into the night…

 

I hope the result is a book that serves to both inspire and to deliver lots of gritty, practical help. I hope it is warm, intelligent and vivid – full of ideas, humour, personal disclosure and lessons learned the hard way.

 

The book offers a bold, almost subversive, view of change. It shows how building a clear understanding of common purpose and then reinforcing it through storytelling and whole-hearted, authentic leadership can transform a period of change into a period of learning and growth and value-creation.  

 

Writing the book was a deep joy. Putting black scribbles on white paper is how I think. The process of writing the book enabled me to go deeper into the research and to reflect on everything I’ve learned from my practical experience. It gave me the confidence to value and share my ideas. It has also been a privilege in the months since publication to have the opportunity to talk about the ideas in the book with a wide variety of audiences. If I’ve inspired just one leader to be a little braver in the face of change, then the book has served its purpose.