Book: Tapping into the crowd

My new book “Tapping into the crowd – creating competitive advantage from the inside out” came out last week. It has probably been one of the books that has been in the making for quite some time, this time last year it was already in draft format. Because the business took off more and more, putting the finishing touches to the book became harder and harder to achieve. But I am glad and proud that my 4th book has hit the Amazon shelves both on Kindle and in Paperback.

The aim is to give an insight into the current trend of crowd-sourcing but used from an employee engagement perspective. In my work in gamification as well as a prior career work in change management, I realised very quickly that change was best achieved by letting people influence decisions. I used the techniques mentioned in the book with teams and even for whole organisations, to great effect. In one example, a manager that followed the previous leader, who had brought me in to work with his teams and create a positive transformation together, asked if I could come back and undo some of the work I had started. And that is exactly the thing, once you unleash the driving force in employees, turning back the clock is not so easy.

I tend to start the work as a paper and people based exercise sitting around tables discussing strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. In order to sustain this exercise, technology can work as an enabler. In the book I give examples of how I have used the paper exercise, the technology I recommend to embed some of the new goals into day to day business as usual.

The amazing cartoonist Nigel Sutherland was commissioned to draw chapter summaries and the cartoon on the frontage, which I absolutely love. At the Learning Technologies exhibition last week, the cartoons printed on postcards turned out to be collectors items with people wanting full sets of all 9 of them (no not 10, as one exhibition visitor persisted).

Off course I am biased and want you to get a copy of the book, so below is the link to buy and I sincerely hope you find value in my nuggets of wisdom…