Leading Beyond Change

A Practical Guide to Evolving Business Agility

Michael Sahota, Audree Tara Sahota

• Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781523093489
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Leadership
• Index: Business

This guide shows readers how to transform a traditional organization into an evolutionary one with a framework and mindset that offer a new way of leading and approaching change. Now more than ever, society is demanding change, and organizations are being asked to shift into more conscious and agile business practices. Yet, most of what people believe about leadership, effective workplaces, and how to create lasting change is either incomplete or outright incorrect. And even if the desire to change is there, understanding of how to achieve it is elusive. This book holds the key. It introduces the Shift Evolutionary Leadership Framework (SELF), which helps leaders create the understanding and application needed to evolve high performance. At the core of the book are dozens of business patterns that cut across seven dimensions of organizational functioning. The traps of traditional organizations are contrasted with the high-performance practices of evolutionary organizations. Authors Michael Sahota and Audree Tata Sahota explain the steps of leading beyond change—evolving beyond servant leadership to make the inner shift needed to unlock the practical skills and techniques. Whether readers call this shift business agility, Teal Agility, evolutionary, or the future of work, it is possible to create high-performing organizations filled with energized people who are able to surf the waves of change.

PART ONE

STARTING THE JOURNEY

1 ∎ An Invitation to the Extraordinary

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Let’s start with a question: Do you embody what it takes to lead the evolution of a high-performance organization? People are trapped within this underlying belief that “I’ve got this,” and it keeps them stuck.

We have discovered an alarming secret: most of what people believe about leadership, effective workplaces, and how to create lasting change is either incomplete or outright incorrect. Even worse, even when people know intellectually what to do, they are not actually doing it in practice. And furthermore, they fail to recognize the discrepancy.

We started out looking to create high-performance teams and organizations. We wound up finding peace with ourselves. This is the unexpected impact from a shift in leadership. It is also the key to unlocking what we all desire—successful outcomes.

We have cracked the code on high performance, and it’s not what you think. It’s who you are. This book can change your life.

A Tale of Two Organizations

We begin with a tale of two organizations. We share contrasting perspectives of the same situation to highlight very different understandings of leadership, change, and organizational performance.

Traditional

The room was filled with a sense of dread and gloom. There was a feeling of tension in the air. The project was late, and everyone knew it. It was a big room, and there were over 40 leadership representatives from various project teams. The meeting was supposed to start at 10:00 a.m. but Mary, the vice president, had not arrived, so people were huddled in quiet conversation.

When Mary walked in hurriedly at five minutes past the hour and sat at the head of the massive boardroom table, the room fell silent. Mary spoke clearly and confidently: “We are here to get this project back on track. We have a critical deliverable in two months and have board-level commitments. Failure is not an option. How do we get this back on track?”

The group was in various levels of fear and resigned to several hours of misery. They had been to this kind of meeting before and knew how to play the game of covering up problems and finger-pointing so that someone else would take the blame. Everyone knew it was impossible to deliver everything on time and that pointing this out was a career-limiting move.

As Mary took command on the investigation of how to get the project on track, the game of charades played out.

Evolutionary

Even though the meeting didn’t officially start until 10:00 a.m., Mary, the vice president, was there 15 minutes early to welcome people and connect with them on a personal level. This was going to be a big meeting with the whole project team of over 200 people, so Mary enjoyed the opportunity to meet with the new delivery team members. Some of them were surprised that Mary actually seemed to be interested and care about them as people.

At 10:00 a.m. there was an excited buzz in the room with people catching up and talking. As was typical in this organization, there was some time to connect as human beings. Between conversations, Mary noticed what the room felt like: Was it time to start yet? At around 11 minutes past the hour, Mary noticed that the sense of expectation was rising, and conversations were falling off, so she kicked of the meeting.

“Thank you so much for coming. I know there are some new people to our organization, so I want to make sure everyone understands how we do things around here.

“The purpose of this meeting is to use our collective intelligence and wisdom to create the best possible plan for this project. While the forecasts we have given to the board are important, as are our customer’s needs and expectations, what is most important is that we look after each other. And that starts with making ‘we’ statements. We are all in this together. There is no finger-pointing or blame in our organization.”

The room was crackling with excitement and energy—everyone knew this was what was needed, and they were looking forward to the challenge. Mary handed the meeting of to Kay, an expert in large group facilitation, who would guide the group though the hours ahead. Mary spent most of the day listening and learning—not only about the project but also about what she needed to do to develop the people and the organization system so that this kind of emergency meeting would not be needed again.

Patterns for Leading Beyond Change

We give you the business patterns needed to learn a new way of leading and approaching change to move from a traditional organization to an evolutionary organization. This book will not only explain the step by step of Leading Beyond Change, it will also, more importantly, help you create the inner shift needed to unlock practical skills and techniques.

We make the audacious claim that we have created a reliable path to solve business’s biggest challenges:

• How to address employee engagement, culture, and leadership challenges

• How to create business agility to support innovation and organizational survival

• How to evolve a Teal (high-performing) organization

• How to create change without creating conflict

• How to realize the promise of Servant Leadership through Evolutionary Leadership

• How to create a vibrant B Corporation or a conscious business

What to Expect on the Journey

Fully receiving this book will take you on a journey. We are talking about shifting from a static, cause-and-effect view of reality to a dynamic, emergent one. Every person, every organization, is on its journey of evolution. No matter where you or your organization is on the journey, we offer specific tools and techniques to help you on your way. Even more importantly, we offer you a space for self-reflection so that you can evolve your leadership capabilities.

Here are what some graduates of our training programs have said about the work:

And in three years, people say to me, “Oh, we cannot recognize you! You have grown so much.” It’s really true. I have a friend who was working with me five years ago and he said, “My God, what happened to you? You completely changed.”

—P. Bourgeon

You start connecting all the things. And you can say, “Okay, if I’m the problem, what can I do to also become the solution?” How can I start working with myself? How can I use all the techniques and the tools that you are happily setting with us? Yeah, that’s my biggest aha moment.

—C. Tsonis

Back then, I think it was a lot of confusion, because going from that state, from “You’re done” to “No, you’re not,” that took me a little bit.

It’s not easy, but it’s so worth it. Do it. Go through the stages. Trust the process, because it’s a process. It takes time, but everything will change for you. It will not only change how you show up at work. It will change how you show up as a partner, as a friend, as a family member. Everything, and I mean that … everything will be changed for you. It doesn’t matter what you do. You are a leader everywhere. As a family member, you are a leader. It will change you. Go on that ride. It’s worth it.

It turned out, it was not about the tools, and it was not about telling others to do that. It’s an Evolutionary Leadership journey, and that’s what it is in the end. Yes, you get tools, but you get tools to help you with that journey. You will eventually inspire people through your being.

You changed my life. One year ago, I didn’t know what I signed up for, but you changed my life.

—P. Zylka

Our Journey

The book in your hands represents our life’s work learning about how to evolve people and organizational systems. We have taught and consulted with thousands of leaders worldwide to help them get out of their own way to realize the extraordinary. We share something of our own unique stories to help you understand where this information is coming from and to begin to connect to the key themes of the book.

Michael

As a recovering perfectionist, I have had a lifelong passion for figuring out how to do things really, really well. Originally trained in an elite engineering program, I went on to complete a master’s degree and part of a PhD in artificial intelligence around how to build autonomous robots that can operate in complex environments. When I got involved with Agile software development approaches, I learned like crazy how to actually get them working in organizations. This quest took me on a journey of discovery into culture, change, and leadership.

I realized that the only way to create a high-performance organization was to help the leaders evolve. My wake-up moment came when I realized I was a well-intentioned asshole, and that there was no way I could help leaders evolve no matter how smart I was and how much I knew. I needed to grow first. This journey took me to India to study shifting consciousness and the rapid evolution of human beings.

Life didn’t deal me great leadership skills. For my own success, I have had to learn step by step how to stop making mistakes and start making better choices. That would be the alternate book title: How Michael Stopped Messing Up and Finally Learned How...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Part One. Starting the Journey
• Part Two. Patterns for Leading Beyond Change
• Part Three. Integration and Application
• Appendix: SHIFT314 Evolutionary Leadership Framework (SELF)
• References
• Acknowledgments
• Index
• About the Authors
• About the Illustrator