About the Author

Eddie Obeng pioneered the concept of the New World throughout the 1990s. He focuses on helping businesses create and deliver business strategies that allow people to work together to their fullest potential in appropriate virtual organisation structures, using e-enabled information and knowledge to achieve business success in this dynamic New World economy.
The Daily Telegraph described him as the "Max Headroom" of the business school world and "unusual to back his own ideas with his own money".
The Sunday Times described his Pentacle The Virtual Business School as "one of the few which combine continuous learning with remote management".
Eddie regularly presents his New World philosophy concepts and success stories to large audiences. His presentations have been described as:
"As energetic as Tom Peters but not as long..." Human Resources Magazine
Eddie is also a regular contributor to journals, magazines and TV.

Perfect Projects

A collection of short essays on exceptionally effective project management behaviours, tools and approaches. Dr. Eddie Obeng at Pentacle the Virtual Business School has developed a no-nonsense, anti-bureaucratic, anti-paperwork, practical approach to implementing all change. The method helps you chunk down the change and then systematically select the best approach behaviours, team members, tools and techniques to make it happen.

Eddie Obeng's 'Perfect Projects' is a companion book to 'All Change!' and 'Putting Strategy to Work'.

Never Re-organize Again!

Dr Eddie Obeng at Pentacle The Virtual Business School has invented a New Organisation designed for the fast-paced, complex, global New World. An organisation which self organises. Several of Pentacle The Virtual Business School's clients have now implemented this New Organisation over the past six years with impressive results. This book is an introduction and guide to reasons and methods for evolving your current organisation to be in line with the challenges and opportunities you face in your New World.

Eddie Obeng and his team of virtual tutors will work with you and the key executives, managers and leaders in your organisation to help you create the solution for you. Alternatively, you can find out more about the New World management approach and how it applies to your organisation by contacting Pentacle. Dr Obeng also provides regular audio broadcasts / webcasts and answers business specific questions through Pentacle's on-line communities.

Eddie Obeng's Money Making Machine

Five questions and a strange machine called an ArgentMeter^TM

It's fair to say that you won't ever have seen a business book like this. First impressions are that you've picked up a child's book - the pages are glossy, the typeface is as large as that in any six-year-old's favourite. A fair amount of the book is taken up with a story. The whole thing takes little more than an a half hour to read. But...

This genuinely is a very useful business book. If you can suspend disbelief enough to actually read it, there are some extremely useful lessons that make it well worth adding to any business library. The two biggest lessons - I'm not going to give away the details, but it dispels the myth about how companies make money, and it shows how to change approach to deal with the new commercial imperatives - that many traditional companies (just look at airlines, for example) simply haven't learned.

Eddie Obeng puts the fun into funky and the beauty into booty. With around 1½ million money making machines in the UK only a fraction are making money at maximum speed, according to Dr. Eddie Obeng of Pentacle The Virtual Business School.  Unlock the secret of turning a business into a lean, keen money making machine – and learn how to keep making money fast with 'Eddie Obeng’s Money Making Machine' - £12.99 from www.amazon.co.uk

This is a book of stories. Each tale paints a picture of good intentions gone wrong. Through the stories you will meet a cast of characters familiar to anyone in business - the Empowering Manager, the Uncertain Strategist, the Global Communicator and the Merged Chief Executive. Each story has a moral, a New Rule for the New World. A practical rule which would have prevented failure.

Even if you read many books, and take the best available advice from inside your organisation and from consultants, and put in place a painstakingly crafted plan for implementing strategic change, and motivated your colleagues and staff behind the plan...
the chances are that it will all go horribly wrong. It nearly always does.

"Making it happen is Obeng's constant refrain and his books are an antidote to the dryness of much managerial theorising. They come complete with their lessons in fictional form and implementation techniques such as rat-holing, blowing bubbles and the sticky steps approach to planning. Old world they are not." Financial Times

"At last, ground rules from a leading management thinker who puts his own theories into practice before taking them out to the world." "We knew our business practices were not as effective as they had once been. Now we know why. The New World creates a whole new set of rules." "Now I understand why our Old World approaches are not yielding as much as they used to." "To lead the world you must think in a New World way. New Rules for the New World provides the ideas and guidance to make it happen…and happen…and happen again." "You can’t have global leadership without leading thinking and leading behaviour. New Rules for the New World is a short cut to the front."

"Eddie Obeng… a man to watch for the millennium" Human Resources

"I had the pleasure of not only reading this book but also meeting the author. He spoke at a recent conference and was very entertaining. The book is divided into 2 sections. One section focuses on change management principles. The principles are practical and can be applied in almost any business/personal situation. The other section of the book has 'tales' about change. The Tales were more interesting reading and it was easy to see the application of the principles through the analogies used in the Tales. The writing style is very relaxed. He often takes side trips or even commentates on his own writing." Amazon Testimonial: A reader from Salt Lake City

Putting Strategy to Work - The Blue Print for Transforming Ideas into Action

In a world of rapid, chaotic change the only way to transform strategy into reality is through programs of linked, but flexible, projects. Directing programs of strategic change carries great responsibilities as you influence the future of your organisation forever. 'Putting Strategy to Work' covers all the techniques for successful program management.

British Airways Business Life Magazine wrote:-
Equally thought provoking is Eddie Obeng's Putting Strategy to Work. It is unlike virtually any other book you will read on the subject and is a companion to Obeng's previous best-seller, 'All Change! The Project Leader's Secret Handbook'. The first half is written as a novel complete with the semi-mystical presence of Franck, an all knowing business guru and father confessor. The second half is more traditional, not that Eddie Obeng is capable of a traditional thought. This is the new world of strategy and as Obeng points out, "Strategic change is weird. Strategic change is different". Obeng creates a surreal world of changes in chunks and invisible leadership, which remains cunningly connected to reality. Henry Mintzberg it isn't.  

Once you pick Putting Strategy up you won't be able to put it down.

Putting Strategy to Work contains Eddie Obeng's most innovative story-line to date.
You will laugh out loud at the characters and will find yourself being dragged along to the exciting finish.

Written by authors with experience implementing major strategic change in a variety of organisations, this book bridges the gap between strategy formation and implementation. It aims to provide managers with practical guidance for success. The content and structure of the book are based on the original ideas, research, and teaching material developed by the authors. Each chapter contains diagrams and frameworks that managers can easily adapt for their own use.

All Change! The Project Leader's Secret Handbook

An Amazon.com Customer: While ALL CHANGE!/The Project Manager's Secret Handbook has a great series of steps for properly managing your projects (it takes up the reverse half of the book), Obeng's focus is on helping you get the right thinking on your project. No easy answers like in most management books, but ways to approach projects and manage them to a successful completion.

The first half, ALL CHANGE!, is actually a narrative about a project manager coming to understand why his projects always seem to go wrong.

I'd compare this to Mythical Man-Month in how much it shaped my thinking.

All Change! The Project Leader's Handbook is just about the most  enjoyable and informative management book available.
The first half is written in the first person in the style of a rather good mystery novel. Through discussions with Franck, an old friend, now mentor, the narrator is brought to a higher level of understanding about managing change through projects. Throughout the novel section serious comments about the art of managing change are helpfully emboldened.
The second part starts by helping you diagnose your project type (is it foggy or a quest?) and then guiding you through easy to follow quizzes and then suggesting the right behaviours, tools and techniques to apply. All Change! will become your favourite handbook.

Sticky Steps Planning - "Takes the Terror out of Planning!"

Fiona Powell reviewed All Change! for Project Manager Today and discovered more than she bargained for:
"If you want to make a Blue Lagoon, look no further than page five of All Change! The Project Leader's Secret Handbook."
Until reading this book, I hadn't realised that the theory of managing projects could be so sensually appealing. Manuals on this subject are not normally noted for their cocktail recipes. All Change! is teasingly unlike any other project management book: Delia Smith instead of Mrs Beeton. If you open the cover - lurid if eye-catching - you'll find that the first 86 pages are written in the first person in the style of a rather good mystery novel.

'I' am a confused, frustrated , yet experienced project leader 'resting' in the South of France after a serious difference of understanding on a very important project. I bump into an old friend, Franck, who, we are told, spent six years studying 'psychological diagnostic technique of the narrator, supporting his unravelling and learning process. Interspersed with delicious descriptions of wine, food, sunshine and the sand-castle-building efforts of Franck's little daughter, you realise that serious comments about the art of managing change are on almost every page, helpfully emboldened.

Franck, through a series of unasked-for but much-needed lessons in self-discovery based on simple, real-life examples, brings me, the narrator, to a higher level of understanding about people, organisations and managing change. This is when, and only when, I can appreciate the second part of the book, The Project Leader's Secret Handbook.This is the meat, but the softening up of the defences which takes place in the 'story' makes us more open to its daring ideas and demanding approach. The handbook is in three parts; Diagnosing your own project, Try these and All those new words. Work through what kind of project yours is: Fog, Movie, Quest and Painting-by-numbers. Then work out how you can develop the thinking, skills and behaviour frame works to use to manage changes in chunks. Using the easy-to-follow quizzes and checklists is fun as well as analytically effective. Look up definitions of terms in the last section.

Actually admitting that attempting to influence people's thinking and learning is 'dangerous', demonstrates to me that Eddie Obeng has a deep understanding of managing people and change. He advises: 'I recommend Patience and Humility, two qualities which I have never possessed but have sometimes been able to fake.'

If you enjoy listening to stories, you'll love the audio tape version of the book. Read in a wonderfully listenable-to-gravelly voice, the first section is brought to life like a good Radio Four 'Book at Bedtime'. You'll have to get the book, though, for the Handbook section.

Making Re-Engineering Happen

...may not be the book the publishers thought that they were going to get when they commissioned it. Another in the Financial Times series, this one is quite different.

The first half of the book is a novel about a poor mug who has been put in charge of re-engineering his company. Fortunately on an aeroplane he meets Franck, a bald guru,  who sorts him out. This section is fun to read and could be a very useful way of getting people to think clearly about what they want and expect from re-engineering.

Part two sets out an Action Plan for re-engineering under the following sub-headings:
· Understanding your business
· Moving from functions to processes
· Making the most of information
· Getting people on board
· Beyond re-engineering.

Once again this could provide the basis for your own programme and schedule since it covers all the bases clearly and uses simple process charts to help you do things in order.

Soundbytes

From the Financial Times Thursday August 5