Can You STOP EATING TREE BARK?: When the Past Kept Alive, But No Longer Lead Forward: 1

There was a time when eating tree bark was survival. But when bread is already on the table, and you are still reaching for bark, that is no longer survival. That is habit. Can You Stop Eating Tree Bark? is a bold and reflective book about mindset, growth, leadership, and transformation. Written from the lived experience of Avan Ong, a Digital Transformation Director, this book challenges the old habits people and organisations continue to defend long after those habits have stopped serving them. Tree bark represents the outdated methods, survival instincts, excuses, fear, pride, and familiar routines we keep holding on to. Bread represents better thinking, better tools, better leadership, better systems, and the courage to grow beyond survival. This book is for the employee who feels trapped inside broken systems. It is for the manager who knows the old way no longer works but still struggles to let go. It is for the leader who talks about transformation but has not yet confronted the hardest system to change: the mindset. Through personal reflection, workplace observation, and the central metaphor of bark and bread, this book asks a direct question: Are you still defending what once helped you survive, even though it is now keeping you small? This is not a technical manual about digital transformation. It is a human book about why transformation fails, why people resist change, and why survival habits can quietly become prisons. The bark may have helped you survive. But it was never meant to be your future.