About Nick Anderson

Thirty years helping organisations get the human side of change right.

Founder of The Crispian Advantage. Lead author of Not Without the People. Practitioner across 19 sectors and 80 countries.

Nick Anderson
Nick Anderson
Founder, The Crispian Advantage
Author, Not Without the People (forthcoming 2027)
About Nick Anderson

Thirty years helping organisations get the human side of change right.

Nick Anderson is the founder of The Crispian Advantage and the lead author of Not Without the People: Change in the Age of AI, co-authored with Dr. Ken Trzaska, President of Lewis & Clark Community College in Illinois. The book addresses the central question of AI-era leadership: why do 70–80% of AI implementation projects fail, and what do organisations need to do — with their people — to change that pattern.

Nick’s current work is grounded in the live implementation of the Workforce Clarity Initiative at John A. Logan College, Illinois — a people-first AI process that inverts the conventional implementation sequence. Job holders articulate their work first, in their own words. AI translates and structures that articulation. People review every output before it stands. The result is documentation that is legally defensible, trusted by employees, and built to last.

That work is the proof-of-concept for the book’s central argument: the organisations that succeed with AI are not the ones with the most sophisticated technology. They are the ones that did the harder work first — the work of listening, alignment, and expectation clarity that most change programmes skip in the rush to deploy.

The foundation for that argument was laid in Focusing Change to Win (2014), co-authored with Kelly Nwosu. The book drew on a survey of 1,072 business leaders and change consultants across 80 countries and 19 industry sectors. Its central finding — that more than 70% of leader expectations are invisible to the people responsible for acting on them — has since been confirmed by Gartner, McKinsey, MIT Sloan, and RAND across AI and digital transformation implementations worldwide.

Before the book, thirty years of consulting work across financial services, construction, pharmaceuticals, higher education, and technology — including work for GlaxoSmithKline, Royal Bank of Canada, American Express, The London Stock Exchange, and APV — established the practitioner record on which both books rest.

Education
Masters of Human Resource Development, with Distinction
Professional Membership
Fellow, Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Practice Reach
30 years · 19 sectors · 80 countries
Based
Boise, Idaho
Professional Background

The practitioner record that the methodology is built on.

Current
AI-Era Change

The Crispian Advantage is currently engaged in community college workforce transformation, with the Workforce Clarity Initiative at John A. Logan College as the primary case study for Not Without the People. This work applies the four-discipline methodology — Listening, Clarity, Patience, Focus — to the specific challenge of AI implementation in unionised public institutions. The AlEx™ process, now operating with Claude AI and Google Forms integration, is the live implementation vehicle.

2014–Present
Higher Education & Alignment Practice

Following the publication of Focusing Change to Win, Nick deepened his focus on organisational alignment work in complex, multi-stakeholder environments — including community colleges, infrastructure organisations, and professional services firms navigating technology-driven change. This period produced the AlEx™ methodology in its current form, the Radical Gradualism framework, and the research base for Not Without the People.

1994–2014
Founding Consulting Practice

Nick led behavioural research, sales productivity, and change management projects across 30 years for a broad range of organisations including GlaxoSmithKline, Royal Bank of Canada, American Express EMEA, The London Stock Exchange, and APV / SPX. This period established the cross-sector evidence base that Focusing Change to Win drew upon.

Earlier Career
Research & Retail

Early career roles at The Boots Company (Senior Project Manager, Retail Research — design, management, and cost-effectiveness projects across 1,200 pharmacies and department stores) provided the grounding in large-scale operational change that characterises the methodology.

Education
Masters of Human Resource Development, with Distinction
Professional Fellowship
Fellow, Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Publications
Focusing Change to Win (2014)  ·  Not Without the People (forthcoming 2027)
Terry Merriman
Terrance L. (Terry) Merriman
Instrument Originator, AlEx™
Co-Developer, CAM™ & Deal Mover System™

The analytical foundation behind the instruments.

Terry Merriman brings a powerful analytical and personable approach to coaching and serving his clients, developed over a career in auditing and business consulting spanning more than thirty years. His diverse consulting work focuses on organisational performance improvement and practical approaches to governance and risk management.

Terry co-developed with Nick Anderson the AlEx™ Aligning Expectations process, the CAM™ Competency Assessment Matrix, and the Deal Mover System™ for complex sales environments. These instruments form the practitioner toolkit at the heart of The Crispian Advantage methodology.

Terry has consulted in the retail, food service, financial services, manufacturing, and non-profit industries. He has also organised and served as chair of two 501(c)(3) organisations and created and managed several businesses.

Terry’s original instrument work on the AlEx™ Aligning Expectations process is the direct precursor to the AI-era implementation now operating at John A. Logan College — the live case study at the centre of Not Without the People: Change in the Age of AI (forthcoming 2027). The Gold Standard Job Description methodology and the inverted people-first AI sequence both trace directly to the expectation alignment principles Terry developed over three decades of practitioner consulting.