Hone - How Purposeful Leaders Defy Drift

In a business landscape obsessed with transformation and disruption, Geoff Tuff and Steven Goldbach offer a refreshingly counterintuitive approach to today's organisational challenges in their latest book, "Hone: How Purposeful Leaders Defy Drift".

Tuff and Goldbach argue that it's 'drift' or a subtle erosion of clarity, purpose, and performance that can result in organisations losing their edge. Instead, of large-scale top-down transformations they propose the daily practice of 'honing'.

The book's title comes from an illuminating kitchen conversation with chef Flannery Klette-Kolton, who explained the crucial difference between sharpening and honing a knife. While sharpening removes metal to create a new edge, this can make the blade more brittle and prone to breaking. In contrast, honing it realigns the existing steel so that the knife cuts as it was meant to.

The authors make a striking parallel to business: transformation, like sharpening, can be risky and often fails. But honing represents continuous micro-adjustments that can keep organisations sharp without the need for constant reinvention.

One of the book's most vivid insights is seeing management systems as an organisation's nervous system. Just as our nervous system controls bodily movement, management systems drive human behaviour within organisations. The authors remind us that change only happens when someone, somewhere changes their behaviour, making behavioural change the 'subatomic particle of business'.

This framework elevates the CEO's role to that of a 'chief system designer' or someone who needs to understand how all the interconnected management systems can work together for maximum effect.

The book also profiles four artisans - a chef, a documentary filmmaker, a nautical photographer, and a Canadian rock band. These offer compelling insights into what purposeful honing and continuous improvement look like in practice - such as chef Klette-Kolton's decision to move towards family-style eating, or the rock band Our Lady Peace's approach to navigating three decades of radical music industry transformation.

Two key principles in the book really resonated with me. Firstly, don't overthink things. We can't analyse our way to solutions in a rapidly changing environment and when times are stressful it's all too easy to do this. Secondly, develop deep curiosity about what makes people tick, otherwise how can you really understand human motivation and drive behavioural change.

Hone builds upon their two previous books Detonate (2018), which challenged readers to blow up outdated playbooks and Provoke (2021), which focused on creating future advantage by spotting uncertainties and risk early. This third book addresses the daily work of staying on track once you've positioned yourself for advantage. While the authors admit they didn't plan a trilogy from the start, the three books form a coherent framework for leadership in times of exponential change.

Hone is a timely antidote to transformation fatigue. At a time when leaders feel constant pressure to continuously reinvent, Tuff and Goldbach make a compelling case for the power of purposeful, continuous adjustment and it's so much more elegant than often-brutal top-down corporate transformation!