What Is the Official Title of Your New Book?
Churchill's Adaptive Enterprise: Lessons for Business Today is the second book in the Lessons from History series. Throughout this book, lessons from 1940s Britain are applied to today's competitive business environment. The book makes business recommendations that are backed up by its exhaustively detailed case study of multiple British organizations working to achieve a common goal.

History, Information Technology, Business Strategy, And Project Management. That Is Not A Typical Combination Of Interests. How Did You Develop Such Broad Expertise?
Yes it is unusual. I’ve always been passionate about history and interested in emerging technology. When James Burke created his “Connections series” in the late seventies it was just inspirational. He started in the past and weaved the connections together to create the eight inventions that ushered in the modern technological age: the computer, the production line, telecommunications, the airplane, the atomic bomb, plastics, the guided rocket, and television. Here was a fresh approach that brought these two subjects together and made them relevant. Not only did it highlight how we got here, but provided insight as to where we were going and how technology could shape the future. I always thought about how effective this was as an educational tool. Later in my career I realized that using historical analogies was a powerful and non-threatening way to get a point across.

Can You Give Us a Short Synopsis
Churchill's Adaptive Enterprise is about how Churchill, under tremendous pressure, inspired his nation to continue a fight already considered lost. Within a very short time, Churchill had to transform his organization to the modern-day equivalent of an Adaptive Enterprise. He did this using the emerging technologies of the day, with no room for error. Winston Churchill was swept into power in May 1940. He came in as a last cast of the dice, during a period of calamitous change. In the UK, you had Dunkirk--an absolute disaster, where they managed to save the army but lost most of the equipment. So Churchill comes into power and is facing this formidable enemy that has conquered most of Europe.

The UK was not prepared for war, and Churchill had to react to a calamitous situation and turn it around. Churchill's Adaptive Enterprise is about how he faced change and, as a leader, was able to grapple with his organization and literally, in a month, turn the UK from a civilian economy into a military economy.

He was able to create a sense and respond system, which culminated in the Battle of Britain. It was won through pilots, with a whole system behind them. The pilots were put into position through the clever use of intelligence and information. This is where the parallels come in. In today's world, companies may not be in a dire position but they need to be able to react to and to offset circumstances that impact them. They need to be able to use emerging technologies to do that.

What Made You Write This Book?
I was working in London, conducting a business discovery for a Business Intelligence project. I had some spare time so I visited Story's Gate, Churchill's underground bunker, where he ran the war from 1940 to 1945. It was re-opened as a museum, after having been closed down and preserved intact from the day the war ended. When I walked into Churchill's bunker I was shocked at how close the concepts of 1940 were to those today related to decision making.

Being there and seeing the bunker exactly as Churchill had left it sixty years ago brought home how little things had changed. Here's Winston Churchill in 1940, dealing with the same kind of problems organizations are dealing with today. He was trying to leverage information to better understand what was happening and managing resources to defeat the enemy. The more I looked into it, the more the parallels became very clear.

Who Should Read It?
The book is primarily targeted at people in the business world involved in decision making. It is also targeted at PMs.

What Makes It Different To Many PM Books Available On The Market?Couple of reasons. First, let’s be blunt here when was  the last time you read a book about IT or projects that held your attention for  more than 10 minutes.  The book weaves the two stories together to compare how Churchill set up his organization to defeat the invasion using information technology and the emerging technologies of his time, and how companies today need to be able to offset challenges by creating what we call an Adaptive Enterprise using information technologies.

Shall I Recommend It To My Customers?
Absolutely. If your customer is at the beginning of a tough project and is looking for inspiration to deliver success.