Designed to Work

Friction at Work is Expensive. It is also Fixable.

Every day, friction quietly drains time, energy, and talent, hiding in the systems, spaces, and processes that are rarely seen but always felt. Most leaders sense it. Few can point to where it lives, what it costs, or what to do about it.

Designed to Work closes that gap. Drawing on the EXD Framework, the method originated in this book, it turns Employee Experience Design from a general discipline into a structural, evidence-based practice, one that can be measured, not another engagement survey in new language.

This is a practical guide to finding friction, costing it, and redesigning it before it costs an organisation its best people. At its centre is the Friction Tax: the real price of doing nothing, expressed in numbers a CFO will trust.

What sets this book apart is not the idea of employee experience, it's the method. Built around the EXD Framework, seven phases and ten field-tested tools, each provided as a ready-to-use template for immediate use in any organisation, not just theory to read about.

Readers will learn to map the employee journey, name friction at its root, build a business case that gets funded, and turn a single win into a permanent, board-level practice.

This is the business case for Employee Experience Design that performance-minded leaders have been missing, backed by tools ready to use from day one.