Management Is Not Rocket Science …
It’s Just Physics

Leading teams through change can be the biggest challenge managers face. Those who embrace change as an opportunity for themselves and their colleagues to evolve create the environments companies need to weather the storms and push against the headwinds to reach their goals. Many books guide CEOs on how to manage change, but few give practical advice to mid-managers. Yet it is these people who are on the front lines of change – working shoulder to shoulder with their teams to be productive, especially during difficult times. Many new managers today come from technical fields and lack the training they need to lead teams. This book applies the engineering concepts most technical managers learned in school to change leadership. It’s not rocket science … it’s just physics.

Why is this important today?

Change management is not new and today’s technology managers face additional challenges with “quiet quitting”, virtual workplaces and uncertainty. These dynamics become a perfect storm in leading teams through change.

What do you get with this book?

Engineering students learn about Newton’s laws of motion, free body diagrams, calculation of integrals, and spring theory. In industry, these engineers begin as individual contributors and then grow into managerial positions but may be ill-equipped to manage teams in a world where change happens … constantly. Just when teams feel like they have figured it out, some new challenge comes their way. Their existing processes and practices need to change to react to what is happening around them – a pivot to a new product, integration of a new use case, creation of a new set of user stories. This constant change can be unsettling to an organization and team.

We bring a familiar framework to organizational change management for engineers. Using technical concepts learned in school, managers can be proactive in shifting their teams efficiently and effectively. Through a fictional case study of mother and son, Marlene and David, discussing the challenges faced at work and the application of physics principles, we illustrate the transference of these engineering concepts to real-life management issues.

By the end of this book, managers will have a framework and practical strategies for leading teams through change, optimizing their work, and producing results. Starting with the concepts of force, scalars, vectors, and friction, we’ll take Newton’s first and third principles to describe how an organization is inclined to be static and reacts to effects on it. We’ll apply these concepts with an activity for a free body diagram, aligned to the organization and the team. Next up, we’ll tackle how the integral paradox applies to groups and where small team agility can be very powerful in organizational change, how potential and kinetic energy help us get work done, and how spring theory can help managers make sustainable changes. Finally, we teach managers how to become comfortable with uncertainty and entropy, using tools like the free body diagram to manage work for themselves and their teams.

Start a book club with your team!

We are so excited to offer this book for sale through Amazon. With the playbook, your team can discuss what tools might help them best and you can build your own free body diagrams.

Schedule a seminar for your team!

We are happy to guide your journey with a seminar geared for your team.