Upgrade: building your capacity for complexity

by Richard Boston, Karen Ellis

What if the ways you think about yourself, the world and everyone in it were the human equivalent of your own internal ‘operating system’?

What if you could upgrade that operating system, evolving it as radically now as you did as a child? You’d suddenly find it easier to:

- Achieve better outcomes with a lot less effort
- Find opportunities in fiendishly complex problems
- Juggle stakeholders’ diverse, evolving needs
- Take relationships to a whole new level
- Navigate dilemmas and polarising issues
- Adapt, evolve and progress in whatever ways you find most meaningful


Upgrade is a practical manual for revolutionising the way you look at yourself, your work and the people around you. Not only that, it’ll help you trigger the same kind of step-change in others.

Paperback

Published June 28, 2019

Reviews

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Upgrade” is very approachable, easy to digest and immediately applicable, offering new ways to overcome challenges that we encounter every day, both professionally and personally. I started developing my own ‘four capacities’ almost immediately. The new skills I’ve learned as a result have since become a natural part of my upgraded ‘Operating System’, increasing my potential and enabling me to focus on the next level of my development. Importantly for me, I’ve also been able to use what I’ve learned with my team. I’m already starting to see changes in their operating systems as I coach them through some of the concepts at the heart of the book. I’m aided in that by the examples the authors have offered, which really bring those concepts to life.

[Rebecca Stevens · Rating 5 out of 5]

A real game-changer. I’ve been fascinated with this particular field of leadership development for quite some time. However, like many people, I’ve found it hard to apply the existing theory to my work. This book is the key to changing that and I gained a tremendous amount from reading it. It weaves together this wide web of new, complex ideas, then presents them in a way that is simple, accessible, practical and highly insightful. I’ve been able to apply the various concepts, tools and practices immediately, both in my work developing others and to help develop myself. There’s something in the style of the book that struck me, too: in reading the book, you’re not just benefiting from the authors’ insights, you’re experiencing their humanity.

[Aimee Handsley · Rating 5 out of 5]

There’s a huge amount to be learned from this book. It soon becomes clear that people operating at different levels in these capacities approach the same situations very, very differently, and that ‘upgrading one’s operating system’ brings huge benefits. In helping us do so, Upgrade addresses some complex concepts, but it makes them easy to digest and use. That’s partly thanks to the tone in which it’s written, but also the various case studies, images, summaries and practices that are threaded throughout the book.