“Invent best practice.”  ”Let action precede strategy.”  “Throw a whole lot of mud at the wall and see how much of it sticks.”

This is the advice of Peter Sheahan, the globally renowned expert in workplace change with a client list that reads like a prime time ad break (and all at the tender age of 28!). His book ‘Flip: How to Succeed by Turning Everything You Know on its Head’ flies refreshingly in the face of conventional thinking by highlighting the powers of counter-intuitive business strategies. ’Flip’ includes lessons on embracing change and succeeding in an ideas economy from ‘flipstars’ such as Richard Branson, Google and Nintendo.  

There are some intriguing concepts here, such as:

• Powerlessness, not power, corrupts
• Style is substance
• To get control, give it up
• Fashion is function
• Feelings are the most important facts
• The soft stuff is the hardest stuff, and the hardest to get right

But the overriding message is clear: “The only way you won’t be relevant in the future is if you keep doing exactly the same thing as you’ve done up until today.”