SHIFT.

The Peppered Moth

Why adaptation and evolution are essential in twenty-first-century business

Industrial England blackened the birch trees with soot, and the pale moths that had spent their whole existence invisible against that bark were suddenly the easiest thing in the wood to spot. The darker ones lived. It is the plainest case of adapt or die there is, and the chapter turns it straight back on the reader: your environment never stops changing, so transformation is not a programme you run once and finish. Setting the direction, and stating it clearly enough that everyone can act on it, is the leader's job and nobody else's.

The Chicken KPI

Focus on outcomes and progress will come

A fried chicken chain sets its managers a target: as little leftover chicken as possible at the end of the day. One outlet reports zero waste, every single day. Head office wants to bottle the secret, so they send a consultant, who finds it in about an hour — the manager stops cooking at five, six hours before the doors close. Measure the proxy and the proxy is exactly what you will get. The chapter is about what to measure instead, how the act of measuring becomes the thing that changes behaviour, and the KPI tree that connects one team's numbers to the outcome the business actually wants.

The Queen's Gambit

On designing an experience around what the customer needs rather than around what looks impressive in a deck. Every component of a winning Formula 1 car is deliberately designed for performance; most customer experiences are assembled out of things that seemed cool at the time. The chapter works backwards from the question the customer is actually asking — and includes the sofa bought in a shop after weeks of research online, because the website had decided its job was to convert him then and there.