Leading Beyond Change: A Practical Guide to Evolving Business Agility

By Michael Sahota and Audree Tara Sahota

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.
• Release date: Aug 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9781523093489

Michael Sahota

Michael K. Sahota is an international speaker, trainer, and consultant on evolving people and organizations. He is the cofounder of SHIFT314 Inc., a boutique training and consulting organization that specializes in the organizational culture and leadership shifts needed to unlock success with agile, digital, lean, and other new ways of working.

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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 to Create Lasting Success with Others. It’s hard to escape the background radiation of conditioned behaviors and patterning to show up like an adult. It’s a moment-to-moment choice, and I can say it has been an extraordinary experience.

While my journey of self-evolution continues, I have seen markers of confirmation. We have given keynotes and trained thousands of leaders around the world. Early on these ideas were more controversial, yet people have a desire to create better working environments and lead successful organizational transformations—so for them these concepts make sense. We have seen the rapid spread of our approach. People we have just met tell us our own teachings without even knowing the source.

The most rewarding confirmations are the continued heartfelt stories of our students—of how every aspect of their lives has transformed. We hear about how application and impact of our work has given them peace, successful outcomes, and healthy relations. A marker of their shift in consciousness is that they are recognized as leaders and influencers, and this recognition results in promotions.

Audree

My education and career has been working with the psychology of disease as a professionally trained energetic healer. The approach was simple: heal yourself first to become a clear channel to heal others. It has been an intense personal growth journey since 1997. My passion for my own growth led me further into studying yoga, meditation, metaphysics, and professional coaching. My desire to heal others was foundationally set on a clear principle and truth—that it all began with me. The core belief of my work is that I am a transmission of what I want to see in the world.

During my career as a healer, I had the honor to be a member on a medical team. The five years I spent on this team was a crucial point in my career. It led me to further my studies of human consciousness, how pain and suffering creates psychological imbalance and physical disease. I studied in India to understand the truth of the egoic construct, its nature, and behavior. It was a deep personal journey of growth that changed the fabric of my life. My deep study and life integration led me to become initiated into advanced techniques to shift consciousness. The profound shift in my consciousness shaped my perceptions and greatly impacted the course of my reality.

Yet, how did it get me to this book? I had a hypothesis: Humanity is suffering, and the only way to change this is to change the consciousness of the society we live in. Simply put, when humanity shifts into a higher state of consciousness (i.e., inner peace, connection, abundance, and collaboration, etc.), thoughts will change and behaviors will change. The impact is a liberation of suffering that is the basis for a global cleanup of inequality, discrimination, poverty, pollution, and oppression. This seems impossible and overly optimistic, yet I had a plan.

The fastest way to help humanity is to go into the workplace. People work or they are in relationship with someone who works. Currently, the workplace is the most progressive mirror of truth in human behavior, perhaps even an accelerator of revelation. Humanity has not figured out how to get people to function without command-and-control behavior. This style of management creates severe damage to people. Not just physical health issues—deep psychological issues, which get perpetuated in their home environments.

What if we shifted the consciousness of the executives who govern the organizations? What if they created amazing workplaces and cared about people? Workers would be engaged, motivated, and high-performing. Products and services would be impacted by the high state of consciousness that people are in. The organizational purpose would be connected to society and the environment. The organizational focus would shift to humanity and the planet. People, planet, and profit—we can have it all. Most of all, there would be less suffering, poverty, conflict, and pollution.

So how do we get there? Read this book. Michael and I met in India, where we both were dedicated to our own personal evolutions. We both knew one thing: we are the problem, and we are the solution.

Why This Book Matters to Us

What most excites us about this work is that it is a framework—a step-by-step guide to evolving organizations to high performance, including yourself. We have combined our knowledge, our experience, and our purpose and have created the maps, models, tools, and the direction to create the extraordinary.

We are claiming the movement of Evolutionary Leadership to guide a shift in the world of work. Yet, more importantly, we have cracked the code on the how to do it and the path to get there. We can say this because we walk our talk. We created this body of work through our personal experience and developed techniques based on our personal success using them. This body of knowledge may seem simple, yet putting this into practice is not for the faint of heart or for those who want it easy.

We believe that what you are reading here will continue to evolve and spread into something bigger than anyone is able to conceive. We see this with our students and clients. What we do is difficult to explain, yet those who use this work experience a profound evolution in the way they show up to life. It impacts every aspect of your life—in your personal organization and your professional organization.

This work will evolve you as a leader. You will have the knowledge, tools, and skills for this new way of working. You will evolve into someone who is showing up in extraordinary ways. You will lead in a state of deep inner stillness. The leader you evolve into will make a great impact and deliver change.

Your Turn

• As you read each story (Traditional and Evolutionary), what were your reactions?

• What kind of leader do you aspire to be?

• How ready are you to let this book change your life?

2 ∎ Setup for Success

Preparation, I have often said, is rightly two-thirds of any venture.

—Amelia Earhart

Why This Book Is Needed

Organizations are facing far greater challenges in today’s rapidly changing world, and despite much investment in change, they are continuing to fail at providing engaging workplaces.

Most Organizations Suck

The truth is that most organizations on this planet, from corporations to nonprofits, have terrible performances. Employee engagement, culture, and leadership are the number one issues facing organizations (Solow 2015). Large organizations that have been around for decades or even centuries are going bankrupt as they fail to compete with the fast pace of a modern world that is volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous—the VUCA world.

Now more than ever, society is demanding change. Organizations are being asked to shift to more conscious business practices—to place an emphasis on taking care of customers and the environment—and to provide workplaces that support the needs of workers. People are demanding environmental responsibility and equality as they struggle with financial deprivation and untold suffering. This demand to change organizational structures is not enough. Even if the organizational desire to change is there, the understanding of how to make this change is elusive.

Change Is Hard

Attempts at organizational transformation, whether in the name of Agile, Digital, Lean, or culture, either fail outright or fall far short of lofty expectations. The whole mechanism of understanding organizational change is a broken paradigm. It’s time to hit the eject button on what no longer works.

Leadership Is Lost

The truth is that those with the power to effect change are truly lost. They do not have the understanding, skills, or stable presence needed to effect real change. And it’s not getting better: While there is a $366 billion investment globally in leadership development, most organizations are not getting results (Westfall 2019). Our view is that without a fundamental rethink of leadership, there is no hope of progress.

Humanity Is Dying

To pull out to an even wider perspective, the survival of the human species seems to be coming to an end with environmental overuse and collapse. Unless there is a global shift in how we function, adapt, and lead change, finding a way forward will likely be increasingly difficult and perhaps even impossible.

Leading Beyond Change

Leading Beyond Change has multiple overlapping meanings that clarify the purpose and contribution of this book.

Beyond = Business Agility and the Future of Work

It is possible to create high-performing organizations filled with energized people that are able to surf the waves of change. Whether you call this business agility, Teal (high performing), Evolutionary, or the future of work, it is possible for you and for your organization to evolve. Whether you care about the results, the people, or how to innovate, this book holds the keys to understanding where you are and where you want to go.

Leading Beyond

Are you interested in leading an organization beyond business as usual to the future of work? There is a clear set of capabilities and skills that anyone can acquire to learn this new way of leading. We show you step by step exactly what this looks like, so you can evolve your leadership.

Beyond Change

It may sound crazy, but the secret to change is to stop trying to change things. Out of this seeming paradox, a new paradigm arises for how to move beyond change to ongoing organizational evolution. With the guidance of very practical business patterns, a new future may emerge.

SHIFT314 Evolutionary Leadership Framework (SELF)™

We have created the SHIFT314 Evolutionary Leadership Framework (SELF) to create the understanding and application needed to evolve high performance. The SELF system includes the Laws of Organizational Dynamics™.

While the laws provide an understanding of the intrinsic cause-and-effect relationships, SELF provides a means and approach to apply the laws that evolve people and organizations.

While some concepts you may have heard before, many are novel to our work. For example, in the Integration of Culture, Leadership, and Org.Change model, you will discover how organizational culture, organizational leadership, and organizational change are not three separate subject areas. Instead, they are deeply intertwined, and lasting success comes from an integrated understanding that informs novel application.

SELF—an Introduction

In this book, we share one part of the SELF. It is a collection of maps, principles, models, patterns, and tools that you can use to unlock success.

SELF is a practical guide for leading beyond change to evolve business agility.

While it is about your self, it is equally about how you can make lasting change without power, budget, or authority.

The components of SELF that we will be highlighting in the book are shown in table 2.1. Each component is represented by an icon. These icons will be used throughout the book to highlight the SELF components and provide rapid access to key information. The elements of SELF that we will be highlighting in the book are as follows:

Table 2.1: SELF Components and Icons

The Laws of Organizational Dynamics™

The SELF is ultimately an encoding of what we call the Laws of Organizational Dynamics. As organizations are composed of people and structures, the laws provide an integrated understanding of the interplay between people and aspects of organizations.

It sounds fancy, yet it is really all about the law of connecting cause and effect. Things like A → B. For example, we might illustrate with the principle: when you treat people well, they perform better.

Like the law of gravity, the Laws of Organizational Dynamics are always in effect. Ignorance of a law does not excuse one from the consequences when they break it. The whole purpose of this book is to help you understand the laws so you can be at a place of choice for what you want to create. It’s up to you whether you want to follow the laws or not.

Expect Practical, Not Academic

The very first version of this book was written in an academic style, and it was boring. It has since been heavily modified, and the focus is on practical application and ease of understanding. We could easily double the number of citations—however, that’s not going to help you create impact. In the event that you recognize key messages that aren’t mentioned, just see that as confirmation that you are on the right path.

How to Get the Most Out of This Book

The book is divided into three parts:

• Part One: Starting the Journey gives you a bird’s-eye view for how to evolve high-performance organizations by starting with leaders.

• Part Two: Patterns for Leading Beyond Change. The core of this book is 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.

• Part Three: Integration and Application revisits key messages and guides you through steps for application and continued learning.

Your Turn = Your Success

Throughout the book there are Your Turn questions at the end of each chapter and pattern—this is your chance to actually improve in practice. Just reading the book without application will give you an academic understanding. However, it will not have the practical results that you may be hoping to achieve. It is scientifically proven that journaling exercises increase learning and retention.

Our advice for you as you set out on this journey is to play all in. We promise that you will get out what you put in. Why is this important?

Imagine you want to be a great soccer player. Reading books on soccer won’t directly translate to success on the field. What will lead to success is application and practice. Success requires muscle memory, where new ways of perceiving and acting are integrated into your being.

Download Workbook and Diagrams Now

We have created a free package to support your learning journey, which includes:

• Key diagrams: Easy reference to key diagrams to orient you while you read the book and support integration of concepts.

• Exercise workbook: Use journaling and reflection activities to deepen learning and evolve your consciousness.

• Tools: Tools to go beyond the book contents to accelerate your evolutionary journey.

Download at: https://shift314.com/leading-beyond-change.

Your Turn

• What does leading beyond change mean to you?

• How well is culture, leadership, and organizational change functioning in your workplace?

• What connections do you already see between the topics of culture, leadership, and organizational change?

3 ∎ LEADING

The Evolution of Leadership

The person who can reform themselves, can reform the world.

— Yogananda

In this chapter, we explain Evolutionary Leadership—the foundational model for the Shift314 Evolutionary Leadership Framework (SELF) and for the whole of the book. We contrast Servant Leadership with Evolutionary Leadership using the from/to pattern that forms the core of this book. While there is value in Servant Leadership, it is ultimately an interim pattern that has value. However, it is inadequate to unlock an evolutionary journey.

Servant Leadership

Servant Leadership represents a powerful concept and widespread movement of the last few decades toward a more evolved form of leadership. The main focus of the approach is a move away from traditional management to a more people-centric approach. We see Servant Leadership as an interim pattern— helpful elements in context—however, not what is needed to create evolutionary results.

While Servant Leadership is generally aligned to the concepts in this book, the specifics and details of what to focus on are quite different. An original essay from 1970 captures the essence of Servant Leadership:

The servant-leader is the servant first. … It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions. … The leader-first and the servant-first are two extreme types. Between them there are shadings and blends that are part of the infinite variety of human nature.

The difference manifests itself in the care taken by the servant-first to make sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served. The best test, and difficult to administer, is: Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And, what is the effect on the least privileged in society? Will they benefit or at least not be further deprived? (Greenleaf 1991)

From this passage it can be seen that many of the aspirations and goals of Servant Leadership, such as caring for people and supporting their development, are fully integrated in the models proposed in this book. At the same time, key principles such as foresight and conceptualization, while helpful qualities, are not proven out as essential attributes of high-performance leaders. Other key principles and qualities of a servant leader, such as the desire to serve, require a shift in consciousness.

Retiring Servant Leadership

One challenge with the term Servant Leadership is the name. High-performance leaders are not servants—they hold power and use it as needed for the benefit of the people and the organizational system. The abdication of power is not helpful. While they do serve people, their more important role is to model the responsible use of power. The principle of persuasion, a pattern of Servant Leadership, is an antipattern that derives from a limited understanding of the paradox of power. In contrast, influence is a far more helpful conceptualization.

The other key challenge with Servant Leadership is the outward focus on people and the organization. The inward focus on oneself and one’s own development is a secondary or tertiary concern. For example, while growth is mentioned in the principles, it’s about growing others. The only way to fully realize the desired behaviors of a servant leader is through an evolution of behaviors and ways of thinking, or a shift in consciousness to a different state of being. As such, it’s time to retire Servant Leadership in favor of principles that will more directly lead to its goals.

We see Evolutionary Leadership as a natural evolution of Servant Leadership and other more conscious leadership models: keep the parts that work and reformulate the rest. It is essential that leaders focus on what is most important—themselves.

There