Energy at Work

Every organisation runs on something that leaders sense but are never taught to shape: the collective energy of its people. This hidden factor separates teams which thrive from those that falter.

In Energy at Work, Phil Lewis draws on thirty years spent helping some of the world's best organisations transform how their people perform. The productivity and innovation that leaders chase, he argues, rest on what most business books overlook: the quality of relationships between people. Where those relationships are healthy, energy flows and performance follows. Where they are damaged, no amount of vision, strategy or optimisation will repair what is, underneath, a human problem. The book maps the energetic states teams move through and names what really drains them. It takes on the misconceptions that hold organisations back – from the grindset to the myth of work/life balance – to reveal the demanding but powerful human work that leads to sustained high performance.

Leaders at all levels and across every sector, HR and learning and development professionals, and students of organisational life will find in this book a rigorous but practical approach to leadership and culture change. Energy at Work challenges the easy answers of the business bookshelf – and offers a new account of what a workforce is, and what makes it come alive.