The project begins

25 practical tools to get your organisation’s mojo back

I’m Stephen Bounds. I have been thinking and writing about knowledge management and complexity science issues for nearly 20 years.

Some of you may know me from RealKM, the site I founded in 2015 to write about and share the best scientific research, seeking to inform our understanding of what really works in knowledge management in an accessible way.

In 2020, I wrote in RealKM about the need for a more clinical approach to knowledge management, and the dearth of organisational diagnostic tools to unlock a systematic and professional capability for preserving and repairing organisational health.

Since that article, I have remained frustrated by the lack of management understanding of even basic elements of complexity science, and the entirely predictable failure of many business improvement initiatives as a result.

So in 2026, I’m challenging myself to put my money where my mouth is. I have an outline of topics that I intend to turn into a book: 25 practical tools to get your organisation’s mojo back.

The main text is intended to be ruthlessly practical. There won’t be hundred page discussions of complex concepts, just clearly described tools and techniques that anyone who is passionate about making their organisation better can use to diagnose their situation and put into action immediately.

Where discussions around the theory underpinning a tool are needed, these will be placed into an appendix — or possibly put into a separate companion book if there is sufficient breadth in the topics to warrant that once the main text is done.

The planned structure of the book is as follows:

• Introduction

• Part 1: Understanding your organisation’s purpose, intent, and structure

• Part 2: Understanding your operating environment

• Part 3: Understanding why your processes work (or don’t)

• Part 4: Understanding individual, interpersonal and group dynamics

• Part 5: Understanding why change fails

• Part 6: Understanding how it all comes together

• Appendixes

  • Theoretical discussions

  • Further reading

Each part will discuss 4 to 5 tools in the form of frameworks and diagnostic tools that can be used to determine and take steps to improve your organisation’s health and productivity. They should ideally be deployed as part of a broad consultation process involving multiple stakeholder groups to minimise bias, but even an individual assessment by a manager with these tools can help to unlock insights, foster essential discussion, and provide practical directions for improvement.

An important final point: While every one of these tools are grounded in robust theory and academic research, the diagnostics are not yet scientifically validated — that is, to have demonstrated experimentally that they measure attributes reproducibly, and that they can consistently guide organisations towards a better response to an issue they are facing.

So why create and release them at all? Because I believe that putting a label and purpose on specific diagnostics, and staking a claim about their effectiveness, is the only way that the discipline of complexity and organisational science moves beyond the ultimately unaccountable model of relying upon consulting expertise. It is too common for “experts” to over-emphasise their own role in success, and to use special pleading to avoid accountability for failure.

By not explaining why a particular initiative is sound before we start, we shield ourselves from criticism when it doesn’t. It is time to step out from behind that shield. While the non-linearity of complex systems outcomes makes predictive claims daunting, if the theory and measures are sound, the evidence will trend the way of the truth in aggregate over time.

I don’t intend to shy away from radical claims where I think they are justified. I hope people put every one of these tools to use in their own contexts, and fully expect I will receive harsh critiques if they are put to the test and the results are wanting. Good!

If over time these tools have to be adapted into “version 2.0” or “version 3.0”, I couldn’t be happier — that will just show we are learning together. While it is early days, I also hope to recruit readers and colleagues for some of the experiments needed to further expand our evidence base in coming months.

Over the next few posts, I’m going to provide a brief overview of the tools to be covered in each part. I am not intending to write these chapters in a linear order, so your interest in these tools is likely to influence where I start.

Since you’ve made it this far, I can only thank you most sincerely for your interest — and hope you’ll join me on the journey.