Adaptive Excellence - How the best leaders and teams optimise for performance and profit
Melanie Marshall
October 31, 2025
The ultimate playbook for high value change!
Every year companies across the globe spend billions of dollars on transformation and change projects but every year around 75% settle for mediocre results, and around 13% fail completely.
The approaches in this book are a blend of complex systems thinking made simple, constraints theory, behavioural economics, human centred design, and organisational change. Leveraging global research and over 20 years of experience in Australian organisations, this book shows how to:
· Develop leadership at every level
· Enable efficient and effective decisions
· Increase delivery quality and ease
· Facilitate change in a way that works
· Optimise return on investment.
This book is for leaders wanting realistic, easy-to-share, and proven methods for exceptional results and adaptive excellence at scale.
Using the approaches in this book, leaders and teams can measurably improve performance by at least 33% and feel good about it at the same time.
See publication
Tags: Business Strategy, Culture, Transformation
Trust - The foundation for healthy organisations and teams
Melanie Marshall
May 31, 2021
Trust isn’t a soft skill — it’s a strategic capability.
In this book, Melanie Marshall reframes trust as the core driver of organisational performance, psychological safety, and high‑functioning teams.
Drawing on global research and decades of transformation work across complex environments, Melanie shows leaders how to shift from control and cynicism to clarity, connection, and behaviour that builds confidence.
As Melanie writes, “Trust is the foundation for authentic and meaningful relationships that allow us to be the best versions of ourselves” .
Through practical insights, real‑world stories, and the HEART+SOUL framework, she demonstrates how leaders can reduce friction, strengthen culture, and create workplaces people believe in.
This book positions trust as a measurable, behavioural practice — not an abstract ideal.
It’s for executives, transformation leaders, and culture architects who want commitment, not compliance.
The book reminds us, “When it comes to change, it's the behaviour, not the person that is the problem” .
Trust is essential reading for anyone responsible for shaping culture, leading change, or building organisations where people are purposeful, productive, and deliver meaningful results.
See publication
Tags: Culture, Leadership, Management
How to climb the engagement ladder
How to develop leadership maestros
