Unmanageable

In 2020, the way people worked was upended almost overnight. Billions of employees were sent home, often with no clear answer about what they would return to or when. Organizations that had planned change over years were forced to fit it into a few weeks, and leaders everywhere faced pressure to offer a certainty that did not exist.

Johnathan Nightingale and Melissa Nightingale, both management experts, use this upheaval as the backdrop for a record of leadership across the first year of the crisis. The book follows the story from the earliest lockdowns to the one-year mark, covering the initial disorder, the long stretch of exhaustion that followed, and the wave of staff departures that came after.

The authors show how the pandemic exposed the weaknesses in long-standing assumptions about work. They propose a replacement set of principles for how organizations should operate now.

The book offers practical guidance for what comes next, and it serves as a starting point for anyone trying to understand where work is heading.