Leaders of any ilk and department are struggling. Society is awash with social technologies; employees want to be included in the conversations and decisions; and management is stuck sorting out how teams should operate with dated leadership models against a new and technology-sophisticated social world order. There is no easy way to undo what years and even decades of command-and-control management practices have done to leaders–and to the disengaged employee. The process of change has to start with the leadership in any organization, and Flat Army is designed to prevent your organization’s ship from sinking.

Dan Pontefract knows and understands what happens to an organization when employees are unhappy and uncommitted. More importantly, he knows what it takes to create a leadership culture that drives engagement, empowerment and encouragement amongst continued execution. In any of the corporate leadership roles he has held, he demonstrates a steadfast belief that a collaborative, connected and participative leadership framework is the only way in which to operate.

Dan is currently the Head of Learning and Collaboration at TELUS – an international telecommunications organization of 40,000 team members based in Canada – where he and the TELUS team instituted concepts such as the TELUS Leadership Philosophy, a formal, informal and social learning model known as Learning 2.0 and a plethora of open, social and collaborative technologies that, in part, helped TELUS augment its approach to leadership and engagement.

Flat Army surfaces five key frameworks that can help you and your organization make the shift too. How can you become a visible and collaborative leader? How can you empower and energize all teams and units? How can you build a sense of common purpose and celebrate the wins?

The lessons of experience are at your fingertips, as well as the models, strategies and initiatives that Dan recommends to help you instill a true culture of collaboration.

Flat Army Reviews

(from people who have actually read the book)

• Bill Ives “Dan Pontefract’s Flat Army: A Review”

  • “Collaboration tools can turn Taylorism on its head so learning goes up and down the enterprise and the whole structure is flatted. I would certainly agree with Dan’s views here. However, precisely because of this transformative change in communication it takes a cultural change to work. This is much of the content in Dan’s very useful book.”

• Don Clark “Flat Army: 3-33 Learning Model Verses 70-20-10”

  • “Flat Army is a very good book that deserves a special spot in in anyone’s library who is interested in collaboration, leadership, and learning.”

• Robert Morris “How to strengthen engagement, empowerment, and execution, then leverage them for a decisive competitive advantage”

  • “Dan Pontefract suggests leaders must be transformational and transactional, collaborative and considerate, daring and decisive, inclusive and insistent, playful and formal, harmonious, and humble, encouraging and results-driven. In a word, Flat.”

• John Cousineau “Keys to Creating a Flat Army [of Front-Line Folks in Sales Execution]“

  • “Pontefract’s views on connected and engaged organizations are, in my view, a really valuable organizational development take on related sales performance challenges.”

• David Zinger “5 Zingers on Flat Army (Dan Pontefract)”

  • “I encourage you to read Flat Army to receive your “marching orders” to meaningfully advance leadership and engagement as we approach 2020.”

• Karin Wills “Top Ten Books: Understanding Humans and Organizations”

  • “Dan has deftly connected the wisdom of many other organizational behaviour and business research authors, added his own brand of organizational dynamics, and woven in his experience of employing these ideas in currently successful businesses.”

Flat Army Book – Video Overview

Read & Download Chapter One

Flat Army Wordle