Smart Work

PREFACE

In July 2001 I excitedly (and nervously) started my own business, Adapt Training Solutions. I had a vision and was confident that I could make it come alive. Fourteen years later and I am still bringing that vision to life.

My vision was to help corporate executives to harness the power of their technology and to work more productively in a rapidly changing workplace. A workplace that was becoming busier, increasingly pressured and more and more urgently driven. The email workplace.

My business name, Adapt, had been suggested by a friend. It was short and snappy and seemed a perfect fit. I did not think too much about any deeper meaning. Adapt it was. Over the years I have thought hard about what I do, about the true value of what I bring to my clients. During that time I have come to realise that I could not have picked a more apt business name. Most people would place my brand of training, coaching and speaking in the categories of productivity, time management and email management, as I did for many years. I have now come to realise that my passion sits at a level above these labels. I believe that my calling is to help people to adapt. And we need to adapt now more than ever.

We are now at one of those critical turning points in the evolution of the workplace. We are working in what some have labelled the Third Industrial Revolution. The first was launched by the mechanisation of the textile industry in Britain. The second saw manufacturing techniques vastly accelerate ...