Much of this book has described not only what to do but has also given practical material and guidance as to how to do it. In our experience this is a fairly unusual in books of this kind. Most are much stronger as to the What rather than the How.

This section concentrates even more specifically on how to make change happen and how to embed that change. It deals with the realities of organisational life and under what conditions real positive change and social cohesion can occur. There is a lot written about managing change and the change process as if there is a stable state that is from time to time interrupted by change. Our view, although not unique, is that change is occurring all the time and indeed the work of the leader is to change behaviour. We have worked with very many organisations around the world and have found that whatever the organisation: public, private or not for profit very similar conditions apply if the organisation is to achieve its purpose and build socially cohesive culture. We outline how successful change is achieved, how we carry out organisational health checks and how to create high-performance teams.

We then examine actual case studies from very different organisations in different parts of the world where these ideas have been put into practice. We do not have space in this book to include all of the examples and so we refer to the related website which contains many more examples. Finally we acknowledge that there are other approaches that are in use and we look at some of those. Many people in organisations complain about the jargon, fads and trends in this area. Some approaches are lightweight, have no theory base and are thus short lived but in the meantime can cause significant distress and wasted effort which detract from the real work and purpose of the organisation. Systems Leadership is designed to be the opposite of that, so we examine some of these approaches in terms of basic criteria that we apply equally to our own work.

Then we consider overall what is required to create an organisation that encourages Productive Social Cohesion. We propose a Charter of Employment that if implemented provides checks and balances to arbitrary decisions, the exercise of power and exploitation. This can then create the environment where people willingly give of their best and are able to use their capabilities productively and creatively.