The Thinkers Behind the Method — Kotter, Sinek, Knaflic, Cairo
Further reading for anyone who wants to go deeper
The outside claims this piece leans on, and where they come from. Each note says what the source looked at, so you can judge how far it stretches.
Cairo is Knight Chair in Visual Journalism at the University of Miami; argues visualisations are tools for thinking that carry ethical responsibilities; key works The Functional Art, The Truthful Art, How Charts Lie
Alberto Cairo's faculty profile and his three books on information graphics, honesty in visualisation, and misleading charts.
Knaflic is founder and CEO of Storytelling with Data; her core message is that there is a story in your data but your tools do not know what it is
Knaflic's 2015 practitioner guide to presenting business data, and her company's team page.
Kotter (born 1947) is Professor Emeritus at Harvard Business School
Harvard Business School faculty profile, John P. Kotter
HBS faculty profile: Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership, Emeritus.
Kotter's core insight: change requires leadership, not just management, and emotional engagement matters as much as logical argument
Kotter and Cohen's case-study book arguing that organisational change is driven more by what people feel than by analysis.
Kotter's key works: Leading Change, The Heart of Change and A Sense of Urgency
Three books on organisational change: one of them, The Heart of Change, co-written with Dan S. Cohen.
Leading Change set out an eight-step model, beginning with creating a sense of urgency and ending with anchoring change in organisational culture; Kotter studied why change efforts fail
Kotter's HBR article on eight common errors in corporate transformation efforts, which became the eight-stage change model.
Sinek key works: Start With Why; Leaders Eat Last; The Infinite Game
Three books by Simon Sinek on purpose-led leadership.
Sinek's TED Talk on the Golden Circle is fifteen minutes long
Simon Sinek, 'How great leaders inspire action', TEDxPuget Sound, September 2009 (TED.com talk page)
Simon Sinek's 2009 TEDx talk introducing the Golden Circle (why, how, what).
Sinek: inspiring leaders communicate from the inside out (why, how, what); most organisations do the reverse
Sinek, 'How great leaders inspire action', TEDxPuget Sound (2009); Start With Why (Portfolio, 2009)
Sinek's Golden Circle model: organisations that communicate purpose first inspire more than those that lead with product.