The ACE Manifesto

By Shea Heaver

A Different Kind of Business Book

Most business books diagnose the problem brilliantly and leave you to figure out the solution. The ACE Manifesto does something different: it hands you a complete, operational framework and then shows you exactly what it looks like when real people try to put it into practice.

Every instructional chapter is paired with a chapter of fiction set inside Dawgavron, a mid-sized company stalled on every metric that matters. As Dawgavron's leadership team discovers and implements the ACE framework in real time, you watch the strategies, tensions, breakthroughs, and setbacks play out in a workplace that probably feels familiar. The result is a book that reads like a workplace drama but functions like a playbook.

What You'll Learn

The ACE Manifesto is organized into seven parts that take you from understanding why conventional approaches fail, all the way through to a complete tactical toolkit for building a better workplace:

Part 1: The Case for Evolution: Why traditional culture and engagement strategies are too slow, too top-down, and too disconnected from daily reality, and why Agile principles offer a better path forward.

Part 2: The ACE Manifesto: The five core values at the heart of the framework: Trust and Connection, Diagnose and Solve Issues, Adapt and Transform Locally, Fast and Lasting Change, and Shared Ownership.

Part 3: Planning: How to launch your ACE initiative, charter your commitment, understand your organization's unique needs, measure what matters, and design surveys that actually drive action.

Part 4: The ACE Cycle: The iterative engine at the core of ACE: Diagnose, Prioritize, Act, Review. Short cycles, real improvements, continuous momentum.

Part 5: The ACE Toolkit: 26 Micro-Practices, communication and feedback strategies, goal-setting frameworks, and team workshop activities you can start using immediately.

Part 6: The Ecosystem of Engagement: How ACE scales and sustains, covering growth, workload management, and rewards and recognition.

Part 7: Sustainability and Evolution: How to weave collaborative habits so deeply into your organization's rhythm that they survive leadership transitions, seasonal pressures, and the passage of time, turning ACE from a project into a permanent way of operating.

Meet the Characters of Dawgavron

The Dawgavron narrative runs throughout the book as a realistic workplace mirror, giving you a front-row seat to how the ACE framework unfolds across leadership tiers, smaller teams, and everyday operations. Here are the key players you'll follow:

The Executive Steering Team: Pat (CEO), Dan (CFO), Dee (VP of Human Resources), Sydney (VP of Sales), Wylie (CIO), Lisa (CMO), and Garrett (COO).

The Frontline Pilot Teams: Jeff (AVP of Software Engineering), Marcus, Sarah, Elena, Tom, David, Maya, Kate, Tara, and Rory.

Each character brings a distinct perspective, from the financially rigorous CFO who needs convincing that culture is worth the investment, to the quietly capable developer whose growing voice becomes one of the team's most important assets.

Who This Book Is For

The ACE Manifesto is written for anyone who has a stake in building a better workplace:

HR Leaders and People Professionals: A practical system to move beyond annual surveys and top-down programs and into continuous, measurable improvement.

Managers and Team Leaders: The tools and language to build engagement at the team level, where culture is actually lived day to day.

Employees: A framework that puts culture-building in your hands, not just leadership's.

If you've read Drive, Radical Candor, or Reinventing Organizations and found yourself wishing for a more operational "what do we actually do on Monday morning" answer, this book was written for you.

What's Inside

26 Micro-Practices for quick, repeatable culture and engagement wins, survey question banks for designing better employee surveys, goal-setting worksheets and frameworks, team workshop activities and engagement exercises, and the complete ACE Charter template for launching your initiative.

Extended versions of many of these resources are available free on this website.