Paul Gibbons

“While AI technologies have transformative potential, their value is realized only when they are widely adopted and integrated” is the sort of trivial insight often presented as a profundity by management gurus. Few thinkers address the deeper question: What makes AI adoption different from prior technologies like cloud or CRM platforms? And given humanity’s centuries of experience with technological change, beginning with the Industrial Revolution, and decades of experience with IT adoption, will traditional change management approaches deliver AI’s transformative potential? 2025 is a pivotal year for AI. In the words of CIO magazine, “…playtime is over.” Businesses are moving beyond experimentation and PoC to deployment – with tangible returns expected. Adopting AI focuses on the “how.” In a book written for executives, technology leaders, project managers, and consultants on the frontlines of AI deployment, authors Healy and Gibbons propose a three-fold answer: Workforce, Culture, and Ethics & Governance. The authors, both techno-optimists and business ethicists, begin with a fulsome account of why claims like Google’s Sundar Pichai’s assertion that AI is “more profound than fire and electricity” are not hyperbole but might even understate AI’s potential. They provide an up-to-the-minute overview of the latest AI applications as of mid-2025, including an in-depth exploration of AI agents and their implications for businesses, arguing that AI agents are capable of autonomously managing workflows, analyzing data, and making decisions, and thus could redefine the boundaries of what organizations and individuals achieve. Turning to Workforce and Culture, Healy and Gibbons outline why a People First strategy is essential for successful AI adoption and what leaders must do differently to make this approach work. Unlike prior waves of technology, AI demands not just adoption but rethinking organizational DNA, in other words, systemic change that requires leaders to balance organizational restructuring, process redesign, workforce adaptation, culture change, and unprecedented ethical challenges. Drawing on their experience at firms like Deloitte, Morgan Stanley, IBM, and PwC, they offer practical insights for navigating these complex challenges. In the final section, the authors take a cautionary tone. Unlike prior technologies such as the internet or cloud computing, AI places immense ethical strains on leadership. From existential risks to day-to-day challenges like bias, transparency, privacy, and accountability, AI presents ethical dilemmas more profound than any prior human innovation. Healy and Gibbons conclude with concrete guidance for navigating AI legislation, managing risks, and adopting governance strategies that align with this unparalleled technological revolution. Adopting AI studiously avoids reprising anything previously written on AI – inviting those at the coalface of adoption to consider ideas not found in other books that have, as the authors put it, “done a search and replace” on what has been written about previous transformational technologies.

There is a quiet revolution happening in change management – in our understanding of how the human mind handles transitions, in behavioral science-based approaches that are many times more effective, and in how new tools help navigate the complexities of change. Many businesses and even many experts struggle to keep up and, as a result, cling onto old methods that produce mediocre results. Volume I in the Future of Change Management series starts a journey to change the way businesses change. It has up-to-the-minute treatments of the following topics: mental health, ChatGPT, neuroscience, behavioral science and culture change, behavioral science and HR, behavioral science and evidence-based change, design thinking, neurodiversity, people analytics, and behavioral science tools. But why? Imagine that right now, you assemble the best 50 change experts you can find. You ask, “What do you think the most important factor is in organizational change?” Among the hundred different responses you might hear are trust, psychological safety, inclusion, wellness, purpose, empathy, creativity, changing behaviors, coaching, lean, transformational leadership, emotional intelligence, agile teams, changing culture, facilitating conflict, and leadership alignment. Now pull down your dusty old CMBOK, Kotter, Prosci, Conner, CCMP, or other change “bible.” Find how to create trust, empathy, or creativity in there. Find agile, or lean. Find psychological safety or facilitating conflict. The fact is that canonical certifications and the work of esteemed pioneers haven’t kept up. Change is too complex, the world is changing too quickly, and science is moving too fast. The Future of Change Management series aims to bridge the chasm between old-school change and the newest ideas. The Future of Change Management explores the frontiers with expert author-practitioners such as Hilary Scarlett, Newton Cheng, Ignacio Etchebarne, James Healy, Philip Jordanov, Beirem Ben Barrah, Scott Young, Yves Van Durme, Natasha Young, Robert Meza, and Patrick Gallagher. The book’s editors, Paul Gibbons, and Tricia Kennedy published Change Myths in 2023, and Paul has published five other books on change – notably the bestseller The Science of Organizational Change.

Is there a spiritual revolution in society and in business? The Spirituality of Work and Leadership is the most comprehensive treatment of workplace spirituality to date written by one of the “movement’s” founders, and covers meaning-making, work, workaholism, vocation and purpose, happiness, mindfulness, altruism, motivation, engagement, and leadership. Spirituality, the book maintains, uniquely embraces the inner work of personal development and the outer work of what is needed in the world. Some of the best writing on those human topics comes not from psychology, but from spirituality (and philosophy, evolutionary biology, sociology, and systems thinking). The big questions are:  What do we mean by spirituality? How is it different from religion?  What is the link between leadership and spirituality?  What is the relationship between spirituality and science?  What is the historical relationship between spirituality and work?  Can we prove workplace spirituality is of value? What is the evidence?  Can spiritual experiences at work be cultivated?  What insight does spirituality give us into human motivation?  What is the purpose of purpose? How do we create purposeful lives and organizations?  What would a spiritual consulting firm look like? Is there a spiritual crisis in business? Before the COVID crisis, there was another crisis in business—one of meaning. A Gallup poll found only 13% of workers were engaged at work and fully 24% were “actively disengaged.” The problem, says Paul Gibbons, is that you cannot cut a check to buy your workers meaning—you need to provide work that has intrinsic value—a purpose, not just a paycheck. But businesses aren’t temples and business leaders aren’t priests or spiritual gurus. How do leaders lead meaning-making at work and the more purposeful businesses that 21st-century workers claim they crave? Moreover, the “normal” to which we would like to return was really a crisis. Our world is continually punctuated by ethical scandals: Enron, Wells Fargo, pharma bro, BP, Weinstein, Purdue Pharma, Theranos, Facebook, WeWork, Uber, and Boeing’s 737 Max. Can ancient wisdom traditions really provide guidance on 21st-century issues such as AI, human cloning, climate change, inequality, sexual harassment, outsourced jobs, and a surveillance culture? Would spiritual wisdom have made a difference during 2020’s COVID crisis? How do we humanize business using ideas from spirituality? Volume I of the Humanizing Business series is a book for business leaders who want fresh ideas on leading 21st-century organizations. It is a book for spiritual people, the faithful and the mystics, who want to bring their whole selves to work. It is a book for humanists and the secularly inclined who have a hunger for meaning that philosophy, science, and spirituality may fulfill. The book is scholarly in approach, a think-good book as well as a feel-good book. It relies on the work of Nietzsche on meaning, Harvard’s Steven Pinker and Michael Sandel on altruism, Yuval Harari on evolutionary biology, neuroscientist Richard Davidson on mindfulness, Aristotle on happiness, and theologians from the Abrahamic religions. Rather than just a book with philosophical ideas, Gibbons describes his experience putting these ideas to work over the last two decades at Shell, Microsoft, Zappos, and HSBC Bank. According to investment banking EVP Robert Entenmann, “Gibbons towers above business thinkers in the way that Drucker did in an earlier era. Even Drucker did not bring to business thinking the breadth of scholarship and originality of thought that Gibbons does.”

“Since myths can be hard to test and compare, we get an intellectual free for all that allows bullshit to prosper and propagate, for decades, even when subsequent human science research has overturned it.” How humans decide what to believe, in their professional and personal lives, is vital. It applies to our interest area, the myths of organizational change, but also critically to life, such as health and medical decisions, fake news, politics, and more. Once a myth takes root, whether true or false, it sticks. Transmitted by the media and reiterated by gurus, it becomes a cultural “truth”. Take the idea that people are left-brained or right-brained and that the latter are more creative. Psychologists debunk this claim until they’re blue in the face, yet it has mythological stature, including among some change professionals. This idea stickiness is endemic in the organizational change profession. Many of its signature ideas are decades old, yet they have stuck without any re-evaluation as research and knowledge in the human sciences has proved them false. For example, the very first model Paul and Tricia learned as organizational change consultants was the Kübler-Ross “grief model” which was supposed to describe the organizational change experience. Later, they began to wonder how the emotional experience of the dying became a template for business change of all kinds. Similarly, early writers picked up the “unfreeze change refreeze” model, and it became paradigmatic, eventually finding its way into harmful ideas such as creating a “sense of urgency” or “burning platform”. The Science of Organizational Change, published in 2015 and revised in 2019, took the first stab at identifying myths in the world of change. Each myth in that book deserved a chapter-length exploration that it did not receive. Change Myths does just that. It takes six of the most popular and well-known change myths and gives them the exploration they deserve, applying a scientific and critical lens to their origins and supporting evidence. Some of those myths debunked are the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, Learning Styles, resistance to change, and “sense of urgency.” Change Mythsbegins a long-overdue conversation: What does it cost businesses to cling to outdated and disproven ideas? Authors Paul Gibbons and Tricia Kennedy do not position themselves as the final arbiters of truth, as if they were a Supreme Court of change ideas, but rather offer critical-thinking tools and research to equip readers to parse their own beliefs. This, more than any dissection of a specific myth, offers an opportunity to transform the world of organizational change toward one more grounded in evidence and critical thinking. Perhaps more than ever, every professional, business leader, worker, citizen, parent, and adult needs better tools to parse and discern the deluge of information they encounter daily to help make decisions where knowledge sources conflict. The tools in Change Myths will help the reader sift through and debunk myths in all walks of life.

Change is inevitable, whether it represents progress is up to us. Astute leaders know that upskilling, culture change, and mindset are critical ingredients for successful digital change – but do not know how to change those quickly enough to keep up with pace of technological change. That is because our 20th century change models are not up to the challenge of 21st century digital transformation and the future of work – and that explains McKinsey’s finding that only 25% of digital transformations succeed. In Impact, globally recognized culture change expert, Paul Gibbons gives leaders 21st century change tools and models that are based on up-to-the-minute research in behavioral sciences, complexity theory, agile methods, information science, and more. Gibbons shows leaders that “the more technologically-enabled workplaces become (AI and robotics), paradoxically, the more important the “human” becomes – community, purpose, connection, empathy, relationships, and trust.” He continues, “… central to the whole picture of changing how we change, of humanizing business, and of upskilling workforces, is leadership. In a world where advancing human capability is critical, leaders need to lead learning.” Then, using that idea of leader as learner, Gibbons illustrates and how learning can happen faster and more efficiently through understanding the latest research and making appropriate use of 21st century learning technology. Impact is about leading change, and about those “upgrades” to the human side of organizations, leading, learning, communicating, changing, collaborating, deciding, and engaging. As computers do more of our thinking for us, taking over many of our cognitive tasks, our “competitive advantage” is in the social domain. Crudely, we can outsource some of our thinking, but not much of our collaboration. The upside is liberation from cognitive drudgery; the challenge is to raise our game and to become better at what makes us distinctively human – the social, the collaborative, the creative, the visionary. Leaders will learn through case studies from leading business (such as Google and Microsoft) and insights from the latest “human sciences” which will show them that – “shared purpose is more important than traditional incentives; empathy, trust, and psychological safety beat old school methods of behavior change; behavioral science sometimes produces major results through small tweaks to the environment; constant engagement works better than town halls, workshops, and focus groups; and technology-enabled dialog with stakeholders works better than surveys do.” Gibbons, author of the change bestseller The Science of Organizational Change, illustrates the inauthenticity of using analog methods to drive digital change and the irony of using 20th-century change management practices with millennial workforces. Then Impact walks through the most hallowed change models, points out their flaws, and suggests updates, based upon principles such as: human-centered, technology-enabled, systemic, creative, scalable, and a based on a holistic understanding of what inspires today’s generation of workers. The author brings a fresh, challenging voice, that of philosopher, scientist, and economist, to the world of change, strategy, and leadership. In 2017, he was voted top twenty in the world in culture change and nominated for the UK’s prestigious FRSA – Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. His popular podcast Think Bigger Think Better was voted a top twenty philosophy podcast (out of thousands globally.) He has been a business school professor, entrepreneur, CEO, consultant, an investment banker and has degrees in neuroscience, philosophy, and psychology. He is Brexit refugee living in Colorado with his two sons and an international mindsports competitor.

Hailed as “the best book on change in 15 years” and a book that belongs alongside classics such as The Halo Effect, Switch, and the Fifth Discipline – The Science of Organizational Change is a must-read for senior executives and change experts alike. Gibbons offers the first blueprint for change that fully reflects the newest advances in mindfulness, behavioral economics, sociology, and complexity theory. Google’s change expert said, “I loved Kotter when it came out, but this book is my new go-to on change.” Microsoft’s internal culture team called the book revolutionary – “it completely changed how we think about culture change at Microsoft.” In this updated 2019 edition of The Science of Organizational Change, Paul Gibbons takes us on a journey from change mythology, through pseudoscience and change, to New Age change ideas, from “reports in drawers”, and from pop psychology up to the present. In 2014, the change world was introduced to new concepts such as “change agility,” and the terms “humanizing change,” “integral change,” and “evidence-based” change. Readers will discover the first book to bring behavioral science to the change management world and the first book to introduce risk psychology to change and the first to debunk the ubiquitous concept of resistance to change. Though Gibbons is a management consultant with thirty-plus years of experience, he takes no prisoners while bashing some of the most costly and absurd mistakes that the profession makes with case studies from Google, IBM, Shell, British Airways, British Petroleum, HSBC, and Morgan Stanley. You’ll learn which cognitive biases caused the 2008 Financial Crisis, Enron, and the Deepwater Horizon. The new concepts such as change-agility answer the question – “how can organizations be more responsive, so they are the disruptors, rather than the disruptees?” Turbulent environments demand constant change, but the mindset, skills, and behaviors taught to business leaders are unhelpful and sometimes flatly misleading. The book was the first to identify dozens of change management myths, bad models, and unhelpful metaphors, replacing some with twenty-first-century research. Gibbons links the origins of theories about change to the history of ideas and suggests that the human sciences will provide real breakthroughs in our understanding of people in the twenty-first century. Change fundamentally involves changing people’s minds, yet the most recent research shows that the provision of facts may strengthen resistance. On the topic of change leadership, Gibbons goes deeper and broader than any previous discussion. In this multi-disciplinary treatment, you will learn: How a deeper understanding of flaws in human decision-making can help you make far better choices when the stakes are largest. How new advances in neuroscience have altered best practices in influencing colleagues, negotiating with partners, engaging followers’ hearts, minds, and behaviors, and managing resistance. How to bring greater meaning and mindfulness to your organization – and reap their benefits. How new ideas from analytics, forecasting, and risk are humbling those who thought they knew the future – and how the human side of analytics and the psychology of risk are paradoxically more important in this technologically enabled world. How to improve your boardroom, promoting more effective conversations about strategy, ethics, and decision-making. What chaos and complexity theories mean in the context of your own business. How to create resilient and agile business cultures, and anti-fragile, dynamic business structures. How to link science with your “boots-on-the-ground” experience, through interviews with top CEOs who are applying its principles.

Reboot Your Life is a 12-day process for reflecting on where you are in life, on clearing out aspects that don’t work, on designing your mission and vision, creating goals, and learning strategies for realizing those goals with the latest productivity strategies. Each day has a few minutes reading, but then practical exercises and tools to get you quickly into action. “Reboot” is the same process used by life-coaches who charge thousands of dollars, but after completing the process, you will be your own greatest coach. What have people said about the Reboot process “I do Reboot religiously every year. I spring into January on fire and reconnected to my passion and dreams.” (Management Consultant, London) “I used to have big inspiring dreams in my twenties, but as I became more successful, I lost track of the big picture and felt as if I were going through the motions. After Reboot , life feels exactly as it did in my twenties.” (Senior partner, KPMG) “Since working through that process, my life has never been the same, and I’ve never looked back.” (Senior IT Director) “Just the vision- and goal-setting process was worth its weight in gold.” (Entrepreneur, Madison, Wisconsin) “The transitions of the last two years were really hard, especially coming one after another. I needed a fresh start, and working through the process gave me much more value than I expected.” (Director, Public Relations) “I had a lot of great things in my life, but I still woke up some days thinking ‘What’s the point?’ I needed to reconnect with the big picture: why I was on the planet, what I cared about, and what I was doing to do about that.” (CEO, Leadership Consultancy) Reboot Your Life’s author, Paul Gibbons, was named ‘CEO super coach’ by CEO magazine for his work with dozens of CEOs. He has been an entrepreneur, management consultant, investment banker and university lecturer over his 30 year career.

Java developers have adapted to a world in which everything is an object, resources are reclaimed by a garbage collector, and multiple inheritance is replaced by interfaces. All of these things have prepared developers to thrive in Microsoft’s new .Net environment using C#. Despite similarities between Java and C#, complex differences still lurk. This book will walk you through both language and library differences, to help you develop enterprise applications requiring mastery. You will then be able to build applications that communicate with databases and include network components, web pages, and many other features. Ordinarily, Java developers rely on Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2Ee) to provide these libraries, and C# developers rely on the .Net Framework. At first glance, there seems little similarity between the two, but author Paul Gibbons shows how a Java developer’s J2Ee skills transfer smoothly when tackling the .Net Framework. Early chapters highlight C#’s differences from Java, and discuss differences between the .Net Clr and Jvm. Subsequent chapters cover various technologies in which J2Ee development translates into .Net enterprise development. These middle chapters also explain .Net technologies that Java developers can begin using immediately. The final chapter examines migration of existing Java applications to C#, and the available tools and techniques. By the end of .Net Development for Java Programmers, a professional Java developer will be able to tackle a real software project in .Net, using C#.