12 ∎ Organizational Evolution

Congratulations! You are now ready to move on from the outdated paradigm of organizational change to organizational evolution. In the pages that follow, we offer a fundamental rethink of everything you may have learned or practiced around organizational change. The evolution of high performance is open and accessible. It does, however, demand abandoning the usual tools of change and embracing something very different.

The preceding patterns have provided the necessary preparation so that the concepts contained in this chapter cannot be easily dismissed. It may be challenging to acknowledge the limitations and challenges of one’s existing tools. If you encounter any frustration or resistance to the ideas shared, we invite you to reread chapter 7, “Unlearning Reality: Can You Handle the Truth?”

Organizational evolution is where the rubber hits the road, so to speak. It is only through changes to the organization that the results can materially change.

PATTERN 12.1: FROM BIG BANG TRANSFORMATION TO NAVIGATING COMPLEXITY

BIG BANG TRANSFORMATION

Big bang transformations appear to be the current norm for introducing widespread change to organizations. From a Traditional worldview, the organization is seen as a complicated machine that can be analyzed, predicted, and directly manipulated. The organization is in one state or way of function, and a transformation program is introduced to make the changes needed for it to conform to a new structure and way of functioning.

Believing in large-scale transformation programs is like believing that there is a silver bullet that will magically solve all the organizational challenges. While it is widely acknowledged that transformation programs generally fail to achieve their objectives, no alternate approach has taken hold. Our own estimates are that there is a 90 percent or higher failure rate for big bang transformations.

THE DANGER OF TRANSFORMATION PROGRAMS

Creating a transformation program will actually impede the development of high performance. Transformation programs are set up for failure before they start. When most people are told they have to transform, there is a threat response, and people experience fear about their roles, their jobs, and about change. As such, there is a drop in their levels of psychological safety and a reduction in the blood supply to their frontal cortex, impairing their ability to function at a high level of performance. Of course, there are a select few who enjoy transformation and are excited about it, yet this is not the norm.

FAILURE TO NAVIGATE COMPLEXITY

Another key challenge is that big bang transformation programs are by design ignoring the underlying complexity of the organization. There has not been a detailed “listen to the voice of the system” to discover and surface the real issues. As such, organizations are completely unable to navigate the actual on-the-ground realities of organizational change. A fundamental rethink in approach is required to navigate the complexity of an organizational system.

Before we embark on our journey of organizational evolution, it is helpful to pause and consider what we are really undertaking here. In particular, how complex is the task of undertaking the evolution of an organization and its culture? Organizations are complex systems. It is impossible to model the whole system at one time—there are too many parts and interconnections. The usual approach of copying another organization’s solution or blueprint is a guaranteed recipe for disaster, or at best, mediocrity.

When we look even deeper, we see that each person in the organization is a complex system on their own—there is no way we can predict what will work with people. Reality is complex and messy. How can we approach organizational evolution effectively?

NAVIGATING COMPLEXITY

In a complex system, it is unlikely that there is a correct answer for how to shift the organizational system toward higher performance. Success comes when there is a shift from “We’ve got this” to “Let’s discover how to move forward.” We may replace the transformation program with a journey of organizational evolution.

OF SOCCER-PLAYING ROBOTS

What does Michael’s academic career in artificial intelligence (AI) investigating soccer-playing robots have to do with navigating complexity? Soccer is a complex, dynamic domain with multiple competing and cooperating players, uncertain information, and unpredictable outcomes. Michael’s published research advocates a novel path forward for robot architecture called Reactive Deliberation that combines responsiveness to the environment with intelligent decision making (Sahota 1993). A key contribution was integration of analysis and planning together with sensing and responding to the environment. This essential piece of understanding needed to navigate complex domains was presented in 1994 in front of thousands of leading AI researchers (Sahota 1994).

BEYOND CYNEFIN

Many years later, Michael encountered the Cynefin model and was fortunate to share time with David Snowden at a retreat sponsored by the Agile Alliance. The Cynefin model is widely understood as an effective framework to assess complexity and inform decision making (Snowden 2020). While it provides a key understanding of thinking around complexity, the Cynefin model is challenging to understand, explain, and apply.

What started out as a simplified way to explain the Cynefin model evolved into an alternative understanding of complexity that is easy to understand. It also reconnects to our foundational AI research for integrating planning with sensing to transcend the apparent paradox of competing needs. Most importantly, we provide an understanding that integrates with levels of culture and a shift in consciousness. As we explain our model, we will reference the related element of Cynefin for those familiar with it before sharing our unique contributions.

MODEL: COMPLEXITY SPECTRUM

Let’s take a pause on understanding effective organizational evolution and instead focus on the question, How can we make effective decisions at a given level of complexity?

The way we make effective decisions in simple situations will be different from what we use in complex situations. It serves us to be adaptive and pick the right level of solution making for the level of complexity we are facing. We will be more effective when we pick the simplest tool for the job at hand and use more complex approaches when that is what the situation calls for.

Figure 12.1 introduces a model called the Complexity Spectrum. At the outset, we identify complexity as a continuous spectrum. Our model is about understanding how we perceive and interact with a situation. It’s about the complexity “for us” rather than some external definition of absolute complexity. What might seem impossible for one person may have best practices or patterns for another person who has more domain knowledge.

Let’s walk through the diagram from left (low complexity) to right (high complexity). We will visit four regions that help us understand effective decision making at different levels of complexity. Since it’s a spectrum, these regions only form an abstraction to help wrap our minds around what is a continuous spectrum.

Low Complexity— Standards

At the lowest levels of complexity, we can make quick, efficient decisions. We create standards and best practices to guide our decision making. In simple situations, this leads to effective decision making. In our homes, an example of a standard would be the location of light switches on walls near doorways. In Cynefin terms, this would be similar to an obvious or clear domain where cause and effect are directly connected.

Moderate Complexity—Analysis

Once the complexity increases so that there is no longer a best practice or standard solution that will work reliably well in all situations, we now need to use our brains or frontal cortex to reason about what decision to make. We might hire an expert to collect the data, do the analysis, come up with options, and make a recommendation. In this context, we believe we are finding the right answer to solve our challenge. This is a very effective way of making decisions when we can discern the relationship between cause and effect so that we can understand the impact of our decisions. In the Cynefin model, this is parallel to the “complicated” domain.

High Complexity—Learning

As complexity increases further, and we can no longer accurately predict the impact and outcome of decisions and actions, a more evolved system of decision making is called for. When there is no defined answer, effective decision making requires that we explore possible solutions to see what will actually work in our context. With high complexity, we have entered the world of learning and discovery. We create hypotheses, run experiments, and test how well they work. We may do this through prototypes, proof-of-concepts, or iterating on a product or solution. This is the world of “inspect and adapt.” We begin to see a shift from the belief that the world is controllable to the belief that solutions are emergent. In the Cynefin model, this is called a complex domain.

Very High Complexity—Surrender

What do you do when the complexity gets so high you don’t even know what experiment to run? Imagine you have no idea how to tell if a particular idea or action might be useful. The usual trap is to pretend you know what you are doing and create a disaster. There are some more effective options. The first is to do something random and see if you can learn something. Another is to wait to see if new information emerges that might inform an experiment. The final one is to surrender to the situation. This is an act of honesty and humility—to accept that you do not know what to do. It is only when we surrender, to completely let go, that the spark of cosmic intelligence or intuition can inspire insight and action.

In contrast, the Cynefin model uses the terms chaos and disorder to characterize high levels of complexity. Here, we depart from alignment with the Cynefin model, since no intelligent action is possible in a truly chaotic system. Our view is that we have the capacity to use the full capabilities of a human being to guide decision-making choices at all times.

COMPLEXITY AND ORGANIZATIONAL EVOLUTION

Take a moment to consider: What parts of the Complexity Spectrum are useful? On the evolutionary journey of an organization, will it be valuable to use:

• Best practices and standards?

• Models and analysis?

• Learning and experiments?

• Surrender and/or taking random actions?

Our answer is: all of the above.

Best practices—It is helpful to use best practices such as leaders to model behavior and listen before talking. The patterns in this book identify many best practices in the form of principles.

Analysis—Models that may be used to guide analysis and understanding of the organizational context. We offer both models and maps.

Learning—Most of the time in organizational evolution, one will be learning what works and what doesn’t by running experiments to shift our system. By using best practices and performing analysis, we will be able to identify more successful experiments.

Surrender—Some of the time, we will not know what to do. Having the humility to admit it is the first step toward making effective progress. A shift in consciousness is important, as surrender is a comfortable and productive known state.

The greatest levels of success will come from experiments that are guided by best practices and analysis. And when it is no longer possible to identify a feasible experiment, then surrender is the only and most effective option. Like our original artificial intelligence, we need planning and responding to the environment. It’s not “either or”— it’s “yes, and …”

GET COMFORTABLE WITH THE UNKNOWN

In traditional organizations we live in the myth of control and predictability. Even when making decisions where there is no clear answer, we pretend as if things are certain and create an unending series of poor decisions. Here we live under the illusion that there is a right answer. As there is a shift in consciousness, we open up to a broader worldview where there are many possible answers and we cannot know for sure what will work best.

There are two traps that block our evolution—one inside ourselves and one in our organization systems.

The block inside each of us is that we crave predictability and certainty. The Buddhist view is that uncertainty is the root of human suffering. To avoid this fear we will sabotage ourselves by operating in the lower parts of the Complexity Spectrum under the illusion of control. To operate at higher levels of complexity, we need to shift our consciousness so we are comfortable with the uncomfortable.

The external challenge is that our organizational systems will ask us for predictability. We will be asked for the cost, budget, timelines, and detailed plan. This is a trap for most organizational change undertakings. Forget about organizational evolution—most projects or product deliveries operate at the high-complexity part of the spectrum.

COMPLEXITY IS IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER

Effective organizational evolution depends on the moment-by-moment decisions as to what parts of the spectrum can guide effective action. It is essential to keep in mind that we are speaking of a level of complexity as it appears to us with our current consciousness and understanding. As we grow in our levels of consciousness, we gain a deeper understanding of both organizational evolution and the organizational state. As a result, the apparent complexity of the situation will reduce, and we will be able to unlock more effective solutions.

For example, many people may see shifting culture as very high complexity with no idea how to effect change. After attending our courses or reading this book, people discover principles and maps to guide them, use models to collect data, and analyze situations to create reasonable experiments.

TOOL: SAFE-TO-RUN EXPERIMENTS

We shift from the Snowden term of safe-to-fail to safe-to-run experiments. When people have enough psychological safety to acknowledge that they don’t have all the answers, this kind of awareness provides access and an opening for their intelligence to choose an experiment that will be successful. This requires a radical shift in honesty and transparency from most organizations today.

As we are in a learning or exploration mode for discovering our evolutionary path, we will be running experiments to navigate the road forward. An essential concept to support successful execution of this approach is to only use safe experiments wherever possible to reduce the cost of learning. The net result will be an increase in the rate of learning. We also like the S3 formulation: “Good enough, and safe to try” (Cumps 2019).

Of course, a prerequisite for running experiments is that we can tell good from bad. A goal or star on the horizon guides the creation and evaluation of experiments.

The field of Lean start-up is about how to run experiments to find a product that fits the market (Ries 2011). In a similar vein, we are speaking of running experiments to find an evolutionary path that fits the organizational system. As shown in figure 12.2, we may test assumptions or hypotheses by running experiments, and the whole exercise is then about discovering what to do. There is no cookbook solution for your organization—it’s up to you to discover and learn a path that will work.

PRINCIPLE: ABILITY TO NAVIGATE COMPLEXITY DEPENDS ON CONSCIOUSNESS

A cognitive understanding of the Complexity Spectrum is of no particular use by itself. What is needed to unlock this model is a shift in consciousness (worldview and related behaviors—in particular, an evolution to higher states of consciousness) to internalize the meaning of it. Knowledge that one needs to run experiments does not create change. What creates change is the actual running of experiments in one’s environment. A shift in consciousness is needed for people to change their behavior and have the inner psychological safety to actually run experiments.

The culture of your organization determines its ability to navigate complexity. Please refer to the Complexity Spectrum model as we link it to the SELF Evolutionary Culture Model from pattern 8.3, “From Business as Usual to High-Performance Organizations.”

1. Red organizations (power and hierarchy) can use the Red part of the Complexity Spectrum to operate best practices and standards.

2. Orange organizations (achievement) are more evolved and can access the Red and Orange parts of the Complexity Spectrum to use best practices as well as to conduct analysis to determine action. In Orange organizations, people can run any experiment that they want as long as it is guaranteed to succeed. At this point, of course, it is really a plan and not an experiment at all.

3. Green organizations (people and empowerment) can access Red, Orange, and Green parts of the Complexity Spectrum. In Green organizations there is enough support for learning and psychological safety so that people are actually able to run experiments. Here, failures are seen as a way to learn. This is a perception where there is really no such thing as a failure. Learning equals success.

4. Teal organizations (adult and emergence) can access all parts of the Complexity Spectrum. The organizational environment and the operating characteristics create a level of psychological safety that cultivates a powerful level of inner stillness and peace within each individual. There is an understanding that the consciousness/mindset and perceptions of people are very different in a Teal organization. Therefore, they function in a high-performing way regardless of the level of complexity.

Organizations that operate from a more evolved consciousness can use innovations and approaches of less evolved organizations. Evolutionary organizations may use the same structures and approaches as traditional organizations. However, they will adapt their approaches from their level of consciousness to enable more effective results.

PRINCIPLE: THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE CHANGE APPROACH LIMITS THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE OUTCOME

We return to the opening quote from Albert Einstein: “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” To shift the culture of an organization to a higher level of evolution, the solution has to come from that higher level. The consequence is that:

The use of the Traditional paradigm of predictable big bang transformation based on design templates of “industry best practices” cannot possibly lead to a shift in the culture or consciousness of an organization. A new approach reflecting a different consciousness is required.

Only a high-complexity approach compatible with an Evolutionary paradigm can lead to the shift to a more evolved culture. How can an organization operate a change approach from a different consciousness from that which it currently functions from?

The answer is that there must be some individuals that function in a higher level of consciousness and are capable enough to guide the evolutionary journey of an organization. The corollary is that lasting change will only be possible to the extent that this new awareness and understanding spreads through the organization. Ultimately, the only possible path for evolution is a person-by-person shift in consciousness.

PATTERN 12.2: FROM STRATEGIC PLANS TO EVOLVING CULTURE

STRATEGIC PLANS

In most traditional organizations, strategic plans form the backbone for making progress. Wikipedia defines strategic planning as “an organization’s process of defining its strategy, or direction, and making decisions on allocating its resources to pursue this strategy. It is here that priorities are set” (Wikipedia 2020c).

The overall metaphor is that of perceiving the organization as a predictable machine. Goals are defined and plans are drawn up that will allow it to be achieved in a step-by-step fashion. The mechanism allows those at the top to direct those at the bottom.

While the act of planning and the creation of plans is valuable for certain activities, there is a very strong limit to what can be achieved through this level of thinking or consciousness. Organizational systems are complex, and people even more so. Creating a shift in the people and ways of behaving in an organization requires a level of thinking far greater than treating the organization and people like a machine. Even more importantly, the focus on strategic elements misses out on a key dimension: the people and the culture.

EVOLVING CULTURE

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast” is a well-known business maxim by Peter Drucker. Although the phrase is widely believed to be true by almost all organizational leaders, the main challenge is that no one has really known what to do about it. As a result, culture gets ignored or there are misguided culture initiatives that fail to achieve results.

Our assertion is that prior to this book, culture change has been an unsolved or at best a partially solved problem. Our extended version of the quote is:

Breakthrough results only come from culture—not tactical or strategic approaches. There is no strategy or tactic that can shift your organization toward ongoing sustainable shifts in performance. There is no strategic plan to shift culture—this is a contradiction in terms.

Before diving into evolving culture, it’s important to understand why it’s so essential to organizations.

PRINCIPLE: PRODUCTION CAPABILITY = YOUR FUTURE

In an organizational system, time, money, attention, and energy is divided between two competing interests: Production and Production Capability (Covey 2004).

Figure 12.3 illustrates the tension between Production and Production Capability.

1. Production (now)—The focus here is on serving the organizational purpose: delivering products, serving customers, earning revenue, etc.

2. Production capability (future)—The focus here is on growing the ability of the organization to deliver in the future: developing people, capabilities, research, improvements to how the organization functions, etc.

In any particular day, week, month, or quarter, managers divide attention between these competing interests.

In business as usual, production gets most of the attention even though the job of a manager is to improve operational efficiency. Without an investment in production capability, organizations will not improve. In fact, due to organizational entropy, capability tends to degrade naturally over time.

High-performance organizations are those that find a way to deliver production and develop production capability. An evolutionary organization understands the importance of production capability. The capability of organizational functioning is just as or even more important than the current state of production. Production capability increases the rate of navigating complexity and rapid response to change, which enables an organization to deliver under any circumstance.

MODEL: TACTICS, STRATEGY, CULTURE

A key question to explore is where an organizational system is investing to increase production capability. We use the SELF model, Tactics, Strategy, Culture, for understanding and clarifying various investment options. Any particular effort to improve an organization may fall into one of three theme areas: tactics, strategy, or culture. This model may be used to explore these themes.

Figures 12.4 and 12.5 illustrate theme areas for investment in production capability:

• Tactics—“How do we work?” is about day-to-day practices and process elements. These are processes a team or organization can adopt.

• Strategy—“What do we want to achieve?” is about aligning the company around key goals and initiatives.

• Culture—“Who do we want to be?” is about clarifying the organization’s reason for existing as well as its values and vision—how we want to function internally and relate as human beings.

MAP: CULTURE IS THE FOUNDATION

Most organizations want to be able to rapidly evolve products to meet changing market needs. The confusion is on how to get there.

What is needed to create a fundamental shift in results?

• Results depend on tactics.

• Tactics depend on strategy.

• Strategy depends on culture.

PRINCIPLE: STRATEGY FOLLOWS CULTURE

The only possible way to evolve a high-performance organization is through culture. In Silicon Valley, it is well understood that hiring people for culture is one of the most important of all organizational activities. At Netflix, hiring meetings were given precedence over meeting with the board of directors.

When Lou Gerstner as chairman of IBM was reinventing the organization, he primarily focused on developing the culture: “Culture isn’t just one aspect of the game, it is the game” (Gerstner 2002). Gerstner was a hard-nosed businessman playing to win the game and was very successful through his focus on culture.

Strategy depends on culture. The success of any strategic change or plan is entirely dependent on the culture of your organizational system. The way to get a good strategic plan is to upgrade your culture so new possibilities can emerge.

PRINCIPLE: CULTURE IS A DYNAMIC, EMERGENT PHENOMENON

As described in the pattern “Understanding Culture,” culture is the dynamic emergent cocreation of the unifying fabric of organizational reality.

Each individual is a complex system. We have conflicting identity, values, and beliefs with others and within our own self-identities. Actions and behaviors are governed by many variables and are inherently unpredictable at an individual level. People’s behaviors are governed by the subconscious mind, family patterning, and perceptions based on an individual’s view of reality. As an organization is a collection of individuals, it is also (an even more) complex system (Pflaeging 2014). In any complex system, outcomes can be influenced, not directly controlled.

Schein explains it as: “Culture is both a ‘here and now’ dynamic phenomenon and a coercive background structure that influences us in multiple ways. Culture is constantly reenacted and created by our interactions with others and shaped by our own behavior” (Schein 2010, 3).

The evolution in thinking that we offer is to understand that people’s behaviors collectively define the culture and that it is a process of constant cocreation.

CULTURE SHIFT IS A MOMENT-TO-MOMENT CHOICE

Jack Welch, former Chairman and CEO of General Electric, differentiates vision from culture. He holds that vision is where we want to go and culture is how we get there.

Our view is that there is a paradox in culture change. We may hold a shared vision of how we would like our organization to function in the future—however, the approach we take to get there is based on our existing culture.

Paradoxically, the change in approach taken moment by moment by moment is setting the pattern for the vision of the future. When we as leaders exhibit the behaviors of the future vision, we immediately begin to manifest it here and now. As such, there is no journey to go on. It is always now, and the culture is a moment-by-moment cocreation of all of the people.

Culture shifts person by person. The only way to shift culture is to shift behaviors. This is the definition of shifting consciousness, an awareness of how thought, behavior, and conditioning is impacting our actions.

As such, our approach to culture change is less of a journey and more of a choice in the here and now, a conscious awareness of impact. Out of each individual’s choice to grow and evolve, there will be an evolution of culture. It’s a daily ebb and flow between Traditional ways and Evolutionary ones. Each choice, each moment, counts.

PATTERN 12.3: FROM URGENCY TO DESIRE

URGENCY—IT’S A TRAP!

One of the most famous and popular approaches to organizational change is promoted by John Kotter. In his study of successful transformation programs, he discovered that people operate with a high level of urgency (Kotter 1996). This, unfortunately, got translated into a disastrous formula with step #1: Create a sense of urgency.

The usual way of creating urgency is to tell people that business as usual is unacceptable and that change is required for survival. Leaders extol the necessity for change to survive in the new business landscape. These actions increase the level of fear and reduce the level of psychological safety. As a result, the blood supply to their frontal cortex is reduced, leading to an impairment of one’s abilities to reason and perform. Key symptoms include stress and mixed sentiments about change.

In the ensuing organizational chaos, large change programs that typically do not have the willing support of management and staff are foisted upon the organization in the name of survival. People comply out of obligation, and another failing transformation unfolds.

DESIRE

The key, then, for effective organizational growth is to spark the desire of people to create a shift in the organization. When people desire change, they will be passionate and put in the energy required to unlock progress. It takes a unique leader who can lead an organization and create desire to influence high performance through inspired leadership or Evolutionary Leadership.

CHANGING URGENCY TO DESIRE

When an organization has evolutionary leaders who are capable of functioning in higher states of consciousness, their mindsets, perceptions, and behaviors are aligned in a deep state of inner psychological safety, and they are committed to the organizational purpose through growth and evolution. There would never be a sense of urgency. The behavior and actions modeled from Evolutionary Leadership is through inspiration, a natural ability to motivate and influence the organizational purpose that creates desire for the organization to perform and deliver.

STOP DEMOTIVATING PEOPLE

The single biggest challenge to fostering desire is the myriad ways that leaders and organizations unwittingly kill desire. Before seeking to spark desire, the first step is to diagnose and remove the ways that people’s motivation is being harmed. The antipatterns in this book are the fast path to identifying the ways your organization may be killing motivation. You’ve got to take your foot of the brake before hitting the gas.

Operating like a traditional organization is a very powerful brake on people’s natural desire to contribute. A holistic shift in all aspects of organizational functioning is needed to remove the organizational constructs that keep people from pulling other people toward a lower state of functioning. Removing the blocks is 90 percent of the work. What follows is the positive 10 percent of new activities to undertake. This will create an immediate shift in functioning that you can begin immediately, yet there is more needed to solve the full challenge.

PRINCIPLE: ALIGN ON THE GOAL

For several years, we have witnessed our students gain the biggest breakthrough results and success by working on organizational alignment. Alignment is often overlooked when there is no technique to effectively address it. The “Why Workshop” below is one tool to quickly bring any organization into alignment.

Most change programs are conflicted and confused. The actions taken often do not align with the high-level goals. Another common problem is that there are no clear high-level goals that everyone agrees with. One key challenge is that the ends and means are confused.

Often people believe that Agile, Digital, Lean, innovation, and so on are the goals because that is what they are being asked to do. They are not the goals—they are the means used to achieve organizational goals, but they are not in themselves the goal. Ultimately, organizational goals are around high performance or whatever the definition of organizational success is. Once an organization (or your part of the organization) has a shared understanding of success, forward movement is much more likely.

The solution is to ask, “Why?” This is the insight referenced earlier from Simon Sinek’s book Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action (2009).

Our insight to ask why is to break through the veneer of false alignment. By asking why, we may increase organizational alignment and focus. The question provides a pause for those to reflect on the actual goals of the organization. The question brings the organization back into alignment of the shared goal, creating a sense of organizational purpose.

In the SELF approach to high performance, we use the question to transcend tactical and strategic approaches and get to the real ambitions of leadership. We use Why as a tool to reveal the misalignment in the system and to surface important conversations that foster alignment. If you are just starting or are already in a transformation program, the questions are: Why are we doing this? Why do we want Agile/Digital/innovation/ etc.?

TOOL: WHY WORKSHOP

We created the Why Workshop as a tool within the framework of SELF. The workshop is a facilitated meeting to increase organizational alignment. It is held when there appears to be misunderstanding or conflicting ideas of what is important and how to proceed. The workshop is primarily intended to create alignment for a leadership team. The facilitation steps will work for groups of eight or less.

Why Workshop facilitation steps:

1. Give each participant a sticky notepad and a marker. Have them write down their reasons for the initiative.

2. Have participants share their sticky notes in reverse seniority order.

3. Have the group cluster the sticky notes on the wall to see what patterns emerge.

4. Label the clusters.

5. Identify the most important clusters, using dot voting or an alternate approach. (Gibbons 2019)

Detailed instructions are provided in “‘WHY Agile?’ Workshop” (Sahota 2014): This workshop will likely increase the alignment among the participants. As can be seen, the workshop structure itself leverages key practices such as listening, equal voice, and elevating the status of juniors.

PATTERN 12.4: FROM ROLLOUT PLANS TO LOCAL EVOLUTION

ROLLOUT PLANS

There are two significant problems that arise when there is a rollout plan for any nontrivial effort to improve an organization. The first is the word rollout, and the second is the word plan.

Using the term rollout plan reveals an underlying belief that leaders can manipulate and control the organizational system and the people in it like a piece of machinery. This traditional and simplistic approach assumes that all parts of the organization operate the same and that the exact same prescription is needed for all parts. That’s like a doctor visiting a remote community and prescribing the same medication to everyone without taking the time to understand their state of health.

Using a rollout plan is a traditional business model and a mindset contrary to more evolved cultures. You can’t use business as usual to go beyond business as usual. When we do new things, we always learn more about how and what we should do as we go along. While planning is helpful, believing that there is a plan that can be followed is disastrous.

“Responding to change over following a plan” is a guiding principle of the Agile movement (Cunningham 2001).

LOCAL EVOLUTION

Evolutionary organizations understand that globally coherent change emerges from many independent local shifts in a coherent direction. The additional principle needed to effectively navigate complexity is to focus on local change. Successful organizational evolution utilizes the principle that people in different parts of the organization will evolve at their own rates.

Consequently, almost all changes to organizational functioning— tactical, strategic, and cultural—are best approached from the integration of local perspectives.

In this pattern, we explore the specific understanding needed for cultural evolution as this underpins strategic and tactical efforts. It is important to note that the principle of local change also applies to tactical and strategic changes that are independent of culture change.

DIFFERENT PARTS OF THE ORGANIZATION EVOLVE AT DIFFERENT RATES

Culture change can be made by anyone at any level of an organization. We will explain in detail the SELF technology called Culture Bubbles that supports this phenomenon. The purpose of this pattern is to explain the mechanics of creating healthy Culture Bubbles to support local shifts in culture. This is the most rapid and effective means to scale an organizational transformation.

CULTURE COHERENCE VARIES

Consider the level uniformity of a culture within an organization. The level of culture coherence is a spectrum from high to low:

• High—High level of uniformity in the organizational culture between groups, levels, and locations

• Medium—Local variations within a more homogenous overall culture

• Low—Very little coherence with different ways of operating across the organization

High-performance organizations have a high level of coherence around a more evolved culture. For a detailed exploration of the above phenomena, we refer you to Cultures in Organizations: Three Perspectives (1992) by Joanne Martin.

PRINCIPLE: CULTURE IS A LOCAL PHENOMENON

Culture is ultimately a local phenomenon, since it is a reflection of the consciousness and behaviors of the people. Some organizations have a more coherent culture with small local variations, while others are more diverse with very different ways of functioning throughout the organization.

Traditional organizations have diverse cultures or ways of working in different parts of the organization. A simple example to illustrate this is that a product development department typically may have a culture focused on innovation and creating change, while operations may have a culture focused on stability, limiting change, and risk avoidance. This particular tension has birthed the field of DevOps to increase alignment and create a shared alliance between development and operations. It’s normal in organizations to have these differences in culture, and resolving them can only be undertaken through overall culture change.

Culture Is a Reflection of the Leader

Culture is a reflection of the consciousness and the structures organization. The culture will vary locally as the consciousness varies from person to person and from group to group. When there is a global set of procedures and policies, this may act as an attractor for a uniform way of working. However, consciousness dominates structures, so ultimately what we experience as organizational culture is a reflection of the people—their identity, values, beliefs, and behaviors.

The leader of a group, due to the power they hold, is the one who has by far the greatest influence on the culture. A key lesson from the research from Gallup is that the biggest determiner of performance is the behavior of the immediate manager (Buckingham and Cofman 1999).

PRINCIPLE: FOCUS ON LOCAL EVOLUTION

Culture shift is by its nature a local phenomenon. As a shift in culture depends on a shift in the consciousness and behaviors of people and ultimately the leaders, it cannot be otherwise. The fact that culture is a local phenomenon is very good news for creating high performance within an organization. It is possible to create local shifts in culture to create higher levels of performance. It is possible for everyone in the organization to influence culture.

Think Global, Act Local

For those interested in a broad program of evolution across an organization, the path becomes very clear. Provide broad support and encouragement for those who are ready to evolve, and provide patience to increase psychological safety for the rest. We say, “Go where the interest is.” Then there will be many local acts of evolution that will contribute to a rising tide of global change across the organization.

MODEL: CULTURE BUBBLE

Let’s explore the SELF technology to support Culture Bubbles. A Culture Bubble is a part of an organization that operates with different cultural norms than the rest of the organizational system. The most common way that Culture Bubbles form is due to a more evolved leadership on the part of a manager or executive that supports a very different culture. The other way it may form is through progressive ways of working such as Agile, Digital, innovation, Lean, and so on. Most of the time, the formation of a Culture Bubble happens without people even realizing it. It starts with a leader who has a progressive consciousness that introduces a new way of working. What happens is that a new culture is introduced or evolves within this part of the organization. Inside the bubble there are new ways of working that are often quite different from the rest of the organization. This pattern applies at multiple levels of the organization: teams, groups, departments, and so on.

Unhealthy Culture Bubbles

There are common actions people take that inadvertently reduce the health of a Culture Bubble. Here are the common traps to avoid:

• Refusing to follow processes or refusing to create artifacts needed by the rest of the organization.

• Failure to respect other groups’ and managers’ decisions to use their own ways of working.

• Expecting, demanding, or encouraging other parts of the organization to change.

• Thinking that our group is cool or progressive and other people are not.

• Announcing to the rest of the organization how great your group is (and indirectly how poor everyone else is).

• Evangelizing or promoting the group’s new way of working.

All these activities harm the relationship this group has with the rest of the organization. The harm to relationships makes change outside the group much less likely. Also, it usually creates challenges for the cooperation needed for the bubble to be successful.

Healthy Culture Bubbles

Culture Bubbles are the most rapid and effective means to scale organizational transformation.

Over time, we have collected a set of tactics that support a healthy sustainable Culture Bubble, as illustrated in figure 12.6. They are as follows:

1. Create healthy relations with the rest of the organization. A sign that we are in a healthy place is that we act from this place: “We’re ok, you’re ok.” Another word to describe this is respect.

2. Build adapters around your bubble so you provide the artifacts that are needed to support the rest of the organization. This let’s your group fit in, so there are no ripples or problems with external groups.

3. Focus on growth inside the bubble. Develop people and their abilities to deliver on organizational results.

4. Celebrate success in a quiet way that is inclusive of all the people and groups you collaborate with.

The real secret here is to focus only on what you control within your bubble and have a healthy relationship with the rest of the organization. Yes, there will be constraints from outside that slow things down and limit success. The reality is that you don’t have control over it.

TOOL: CULTURE ADAPTERS

SELF Culture Adapters are a mechanism, process, or person that adapts from the way of working inside the bubble to the way of working outside the bubble. It’s a way to bridge the difference in cultures and the worldviews of what success looks like and how to get there.

For example, inside an Agile Culture Bubble, people may use very lightweight planning and forecasting. In contrast, the rest of the organization may require the creation of very detailed plans based on the assumption that this will support success. The adapter in this situation would be the bubble (or group) and would do the work and produce the required plans at the required level of detail to support the needs of the rest of the organization.

An adapter bridges the two worlds and is there purely to support the integration of the Culture Bubble with the rest of the organization.

Pay Taxes to Keep Good Relations with Other Groups

A helpful metaphor is to think of all the nonvalue-added work for the rest of the organization as taxes. We all pay taxes. It’s just part of life. In organizations, we need to pay organizational taxes for the privilege of working in the organization.

What happens when you do not pay taxes? What happens if you do not have good relations with the rest of the organization?

The organizational antibodies will attack and collapse the Culture Bubble. The attack may come in the form of extra taxes or bureaucratic red tape created to punish this group. Alternatively, a common pattern is for the leader of this group to be replaced with a new leader that matches the host organizational culture, thus collapsing the bubble. If there is a transformation program in place, then the group may be excused for a time, but the taxes still keep piling up, so there is an enormous bill or backlash when the transformation program ends or loses steam. This usually takes about 18 months to three years.

Expanding Culture Bubbles

Of course people are often very interested in changing things outside of their bubble. There are common reasons for this:

1. They are so excited about their way of working, they want others to follow suit.

2. The culture of the rest of the organization is so different that it is a burden to operate all the adapters.

3. The bubbles are so successful that the organization has asked to scale this way of working throughout the entire organization (this is the most common ask of our graduates and the most common trap).

Let’s look at what you have influence over:

• People outside the bubble: No.

• People inside the bubble: Yes!

Focus on Creating a Thriving Bubble

The secret is to focus on being successful within your bubble. Build passion. Ship products. Delight customers. Be amazing. This is 100 percent within your control. Here’s what will happen over time:

1. Other parts of the organization may want to emulate you. Wait for people to come to you and ask for help. Then help them.

2. The leader of the bubble will get promoted. Then the bubble can grow since this leader now has the power to influence a larger group.

Focus on quiet success and good relations. Any attempts to showcase or celebrate this group will typically backfire and revert your group back to the unhealthy bubble situation.

Woody’s Trick to Expand Faster

Woody Zuill—the thought leader introducing mob programming and #NoEstimates—shared a trick to make the culture within a bubble spread faster: help other people. Here is how it works. The usual thing we do is to focus on our own success even while others around us are having challenges (that’s actually the default Scrum process). Zuill’s idea is this: Hey, other people and departments are struggling. Why don’t we help them? Instead of asking others to change their ways of working, you just help them be successful. Well, guess what usually happens? The relationships with other groups improve. They notice that people in the bubble are happy and engaged. They become curious about what’s happening in the bubble. Then they want it, too.

PATTERN 12.5: FROM CHANGING STRUCTURES TO EVOLVING PEOPLE

CHANGING STRUCTURES

Changing structures is the principal means through which traditional organizational transformation is undertaken. And it’s a horrible trap. Within the Traditional worldview, the organization is seen as a machine that can be understood and manipulated by making structural changes. How else can one change an organization except through structures? There isn’t even space to consider other alternatives.

All too often, organizations fall into a prescription or copycat mentality. The prescription is to introduce Agile, Lean, Digital, open offices, and so on. You can fill in the blank with the latest buzzword that will solve your organization’s challenges. Or even worse, there is copycat thinking where one believes it is possible to replicate another organization’s way of working. The thinking is that organization ABC (e.g., Google or Spotify) applied the XYX model (e.g., OKRs), and all we need to do is copy their solution. Even though the organizations differ in many important ways, there is still a belief in a universal solution.

There is a hope that somehow changing structures will lead to a shift in the mindset and consciousness needed to shift culture. Despite decades of pervasive industry experience that changing structures does not change culture, it has persisted for lack of a better alternative. The main challenge with changing structures is that we can only interpret and make changes from our current level of consciousness or the current way of operating.

When the operating behaviors (consciousness) of the organization has not shifted, we will attempt to copy other people’s solutions and changes in a way that matches our consciousness. It’s not possible to effectively introduce an Evolutionary pattern with a Traditional mindset. As a result, while there might be minor benefits, the main part of the value will be missed.

THE CENTRALIZATION— DECENTRALIZATION DANCE

One symptom of the failure of intelligence associated with low-consciousness organizations is the incessant number of reorganizations that occur. Each may on the surface seem to address some challenges; however, nothing of any real consequence changes. Noticing a challenge with lack of alignment and incoherence between groups, the assessment is made that decisions are too decentralized and the fix is to centralize decisions. Several years later, people notice that the organization is too slow to respond, and the assessment is made that decisions are too centralized and the fix is to decentralize. Of course, the underlying problem is how the organization is sensing and responding to challenges.

EVOLVING PEOPLE

Instead of changing all the structures and creating chaos, evolving people is a more effective strategy to maximize ROI of change efforts. Organizational results are a reflection of the people. The secret to creating lasting change is to focus on the evolution of the people before the structures.

PRINCIPLE: STRUCTURES FOLLOW CONSCIOUSNESS

In the pattern “Understanding Culture,” we explored how culture consists of the interplay of consciousness and structure through the SHIFT314 Culture Model (see figure 12.7). The consciousness or mindset represents the people and energetic properties of a system—behavior. The structures represent the 3D world material tangible constructs that ground the culture into our world— structure.

To create a permanent and lasting shift would require us to coevolve all the elements of culture. Yet, where to start? Are all elements of equal suitability and value? Or are some starting places more effective?

Ultimately, we can think of the culture as a reflection of the collective behaviors of all the people in the organization. Once a group of people have evolved their consciousness—their mindset, worldviews, and behaviors, then it is possible for them to introduce structural changes or ways of working that support their new ways of being.

There are multiple patterns in this book that illustrate how the intention of a specific change in structure can only be realized by evolving people and a shift in consciousness. For example, this theme is explored in pattern 11.4, “From Eliminating Hierarchy to Increasing Freedom,” where the shift in consciousness required to increase freedom is the key success factor rather than making a structural change, such as removing the hierarchy.

PRINCIPLE: A NEW WAY OF BEING ENABLES A NEW WAY OF WORKING

The most effective starting place for organizational evolution of culture is with the consciousness of the people. As people evolve, they can undertake changes to the organizational system in more conscious ways to fully realize the possible benefits of Evolutionary ways of working.

Ninety percent of what happens with people is a function of the system. However, it is important to note that the system is not just the structures—it’s the culture too! In fact, the organizational culture will dominate what happens with people. And culture is a dynamic, moment-to-moment creation of everyone— especially influenced by leadership.

PRINCIPLE: ORGA NIZATIONAL EVOLUTION FOLLOWS PERSONAL EVOLUTION

The rate of evolution of an organization is limited by the rate of evolution of the people in the organization. We will have an adaptable, learning organization to the extent that the people in the organization are adaptable and learning.

Consider figure 12.8. The operating characteristics of our current organizational system are shown as a straight triangle. The way our organization functions is a reflection of all the behaviors of the people, which is shown as smaller triangle people.

We are exploring the notion of evolving to an organizational system that has fundamentally different operating characteristics, which is shown as a wavy line triangle. For our organization to function in a completely new way, we will need to have new behaviors from people at all levels of the organization, which is shown as wavy triangle people (Sahota 2016).

Your people are your most important assets. Leaders need to grow. Managers need to grow. Staff need to grow. A similar observation linking the evolution of people to organizational evolution is reported in Peak: “Corporate transformation follows personal transformation” (Conley 2007, 85). Schein also identifies the necessity of personal evolution as a key element of organizational evolution: “Culture change inevitably involves unlearning as well as relearning and is, therefore, by definition, transformative” (Schein 2010, 315).

EVOLVE PEOPLE TO EVOLVE THE ORGANIZATION

What is the shift that people need to undertake for there to be an evolution in the culture of the organization? It’s a shift in consciousness and practices touching on the mindset, identity, values, beliefs, and behaviors of each person. As people evolve, so will the organization.

What determines how a person shows up? Is it the environment that rules over them, or is it their individual nature? Is it nature or nurture? This is an age-old philosophical debate that has led to generations of debate. Some understanding of the answer to this conundrum is needed to enact evolution of our organizational system.

Here we share our practical resolution in two parts:

1. The impact of the environment on the individual

2. The ability of the individual’s intrinsic behaviors to overcome the environment

IMPACT OF THE ENVIRONMENT ON PEOPLE

Take a moment to consider the impact of the cultural environment on how people act. As a reminder, we include the model showing the various stages of evolution. A Traditional environment will encourage Traditional behaviors. In contrast, an Evolutionary environment will foster Evolutionary behaviors.

Here we can see the following relationships:

• Traditional cultures foster and encourage Theory X behavior.

• Evolutionary cultures foster and encourage Theory Y behavior.

So the way to foster and encourage people to show up more as Theory Y is to shift the organization toward a healthier organizational culture. As the whole environment improves, it will support and foster the evolution of the people in the organization.

Most people want to be successful. Most people want to achieve and create. Most people want to grow. The challenge is that most people have been deeply conditioned since birth to show up with aspects of Theory X—unmotivated, unambitious, and avoiding responsibility. The work for leaders is to reduce environmental elements that suppress people and model healthier behaviors.

LEADERS OR BYSTANDERS?

As we have seen above, the environment may foster and support the development of a certain behavior. What about the individual? May their intrinsic characteristics dominate and enable them to overcome the environment? We will examine this in two ways.

First, have you ever seen someone who was able to show up as Theory Y (motivated, ambitious, etc.) even in a Traditional culture system? Many people reading the book will say, “Yes, me!” We all know someone who was able to act in inspiring ways despite the overall challenge of business-as-usual environments. This is what we call leadership.

Now consider the converse: Have you ever seen someone show up as Theory X (unmotivated, unambitious, etc.) even in a very healthy supportive environment? Perhaps an Evolutionary environment? Perhaps where they were given the freedom to be on a self-organizing team?

Consider the challenge faced by long-term prisoners in jail. When they are finally released, they do not know how to function in the world. They have been so deeply conditioned that they are unable to handle freedom and responsibility.

In our organizational systems, we face the same challenge: people who have been so deeply conditioned that they continue to show up as Theory X even when the environmental context becomes more supportive of a new way of functioning. The work of evolving culture is to evolve the people.

The core of the work of evolving the culture and ultimately the performance of an organization entirely rests with the development of people.

Evolution can and must follow those who have evolved first. Those who can rise above the downward pull of the organizational culture. As they evolve, they can then guide others on the journey. This is Evolutionary Leadership.

PATTERN 12.6: FROM LEADERSHIP SUPPORT TO LEADERSHIP LEADERSHIP

LEADERSHIP SUPPORT

In traditional organizations, a key factor for a successful change program is leadership support or leadership buy-in. It’s true: leadership support is necessary and sufficient for making tactical and strategic changes to an organizational system.

Support is, however, completely insufficient for shifting the culture of an organizational system. Shifting culture involves the evolution of the people in the organization, including the leaders themselves. This kind of shift requires much more than support: it requires an internal choice to evolve.

In the pattern “Culture Follows Leadership,” the connection between the leader’s behavior and the culture of an organization was clearly established. The consequence is that a change in culture can only come through a change in leadership behaviors.

At the same time, culture is a local phenomenon, so there is an important exception to this rule. When a leader grants part of an organization full or high autonomy, then support may be sufficient for local evolution.

LEADERS LEFT BEHIND

One of the great tragedies of the modern business age is that leaders are either neglected or they receive inadequate support for their evolution. Most organizational transformation programs often target the work and workers. For example, Digital, Agile, and Lean are all very much focused on the value stream of creating working products. Leaders are at best a secondary consideration and do not usually get the support they need to evolve their consciousness and model new behaviors.

The 2019 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends Survey reports that 80 percent of organizations see leadership as a top issue. Even more interesting is the report that “research shows that while organizations expect new leadership capabilities, they are still largely promoting traditional models and mindsets” (Deloitte 2019).

LEADERSHIP LEADERSHIP

To create the culture shift required for high performance, what is required is leadership leadership— leaders who model and lead to a new way of being and working. As leaders grow to model the characteristics of high-performance leaders, then they will be better able to support the evolution of people around them and the organizational environment. Thus, a shift in organizational culture requires a shift in leadership behaviors that require much more effort than just “support” or “buy-in.”

CULTURE CHANGE INVOLVES EVERY ONE

The pattern “Evolving People” introduced the principle: organizational evolution follows personal evolution. What does this mean in practice?

Imagine your organization is in some initial state where performance is not as desirable as one might prefer. The operational performance is not desirable: too slow, not responsive, disengaged workers, and so on. The operational characteristics are a reflection of all the people in the organization—including the leadership. This is shown in the diagram as a triangle with dark straight lines.

Imagine for a moment that the leadership wishes to move to a higher-performing culture where the organization has very different operating characteristics: more responsive, effective, faster, and so on. In this case, there are new behaviors throughout the organization— including the leadership. This is illustrated by the triangle on the right with wavy lines. The lines are wavy to show the movement from a rigid organization to an adaptable and fluid one.

MODEL: THE LEADERSHIP CHOICE

It is helpful to use scenario analysis to see what is possible for a given organizational system. Because change is local in nature, the example could be for a team, a group, a division, or the entire organization.

There are only three possible scenarios when considering the role of leaders in culture change in an organization. These are depicted in figure 12.10.

• Scenario 1: The leaders evolve—The leaders evolve to model an evolved organization (grow).

• Scenario 2: The leaders exit—The leaders leave the organization, and new leaders come in who have the desired consciousness to model the future organization (go).

• Scenario 3: The leaders say “no”—The leaders realize that culture change requires significant effort on their part and say no to cultural evolution and thereby decide that the status quo is acceptable (no).

It is 100 percent up to the leadership of an organization to decide what path they choose for themselves and the organization.

A famous case study from Lean for replacing leadership is that of NUMMI, where Toyota helped GM turn around the worst GM plant in the world. The Fremont, California, plant had alcoholism, wildcat strikes, absenteeism, and drug abuse. In the change program, they kept all the workers but brought in management who had the right mindset from GM, Toyota, and general industry. It took less than one year to become the best GM plant in the world. This illustrates the profound impact leadership has on organizational culture and performance.

PRINCIPLE: ORGA NIZATIONAL EVOLUTION FOLLOWS LEADERSHIP EVOLUTION

As can be understood by the Leadership Choice model, a shift in the culture of the organization depends entirely on a shift in the leadership. The only way for all the people in an organization to evolve is for leaders to evolve first. Leadership evolution is not only necessary, it is the key to the evolution of the people and hence the whole system. To map it out:

Leaders who evolve themselves can in turn evolve the organization. Organizational culture is a reflection of leadership. As such, we can now see the essential role played by leadership in organizational evolution: organizational evolution follows leadership evolution.

Leadership Leadership

Success comes from leaders who lead. Organizations are best served by leadership teams that demonstrate leadership: leadership leadership. It seems a bit silly to have to use a term like leadership leadership. However, the norm in business is leadership teams that do not exhibit leadership.

Leaders Act as Attractors

Our insight is that a leader’s behavior can act as an attractor or detractor.

When a leader goes first to model the desired behavior, they act as an attractor for everyone they are in contact with. The default conditioning we have as human beings is to conform to the behavior of others.

When people see leaders modeling new behaviors, automatic conditioning kicks in, and people unconsciously start copying the behavior. This is how to use a hierarchy to safely accelerate culture change—through the indirect use of power.

From a complex system dynamics view, it is helpful to create attractors that invite the future shape of an organization (Snowden 2020).

Evolving Leadership Teams

The fastest way to evolve an organizational system is when an entire leadership team goes on the journey of evolution together. In this situation, they are able to uplift and support one another as they grow. Peer support and peer pressure are accelerators for growth.

When an entire leadership team goes together on a journey to shift their consciousness to model a new way of being and working, there is a massive impact on the evolution rate of the organization.

MODEL: LEADERS GO FIRST

Imagine for a moment the scenario where a leadership team chooses to evolve themselves so they can model the future culture of the organization. This evolution of leaders and the organization is illustrated in figure 12.11. Such leaders show people very directly that they are committed to their own personal growth and evolution. They not only show that change is possible, they also inspire people to evolve themselves. Further, when the leaders evolve, they create an environment that supports the evolution of the rest of the people in the organization so that over time the whole organization moves to a new way of being and working.

Culture Change Is Not Delegatable

It is quite common in a traditional organization or from a business-as-usual strategy that culture change is delegated by leadership to a transformation team or to human resources. This of course does not work, since the culture is a reflection of the behaviors of leadership, and they are the only ones capable of regulating their own behavior. A similar observation is made by Connors and Smith in Change the Culture, Change the Game (2011): “Culture change must be led. It cannot be delegated to … anyone else” (155).

The insight that culture change requires leaders who lead stands in stark contrast with the billions of dollars spent each year by organizations on transformation programs where there is leadership support.

Our quote “leaders go first” has taken on a life of its own, and the term leadership leadership can be misinterpreted as advocating a top-down change in the organization. It is actually quite the opposite. Change is possible at all levels of the organization. Every manager and every individual has the capacity to influence their part of the organization. Leaders at all levels will evolve the culture quickly to create the high performance organizations seek and desire. There is no excuse or need to wait just for top leadership to change. Each of us may take action. Specific guidance on application of local culture evolution will be explored more in the Local Evolution pattern.

The Rate of Organizational Evolution Is Limited by the Rate of Leadership Evolution

Ultimately, the rate of organizational evolution is limited by the rate of leadership evolution. Faster growth of leaders means faster growth of the organization. The best way to accelerate the evolution of the organization is to accelerate the evolution of those who hold leadership positions.

Little or no growth of leadership means little or no growth of the culture. Of course, there may be tactical and strategic changes that yield benefit; however, this is not an evolution of the very fabric of the organization—its culture.

Train and Mentor Leaders First

Leaders need much more support than typical leadership programs or isolated executive coaching. While these are helpful, it is important for leaders to have a real shift in consciousness. Leaders require the capability to not only operate in line with high-performance culture, they require the capability to evolve an organizational system.

A small example of this is the need to have an evolved understanding of the integrated relationship of culture, leadership, and organizational evolution. Without a shift in their mindset and behaviors to align with healthy ways of working, a change in culture is simply not possible.

In our own work with organizations, leaders receive both evolutionary training and on-the-job integration support. Leadership development needs a new paradigm to support an evolution within an organization, a way of being to evolve self, others, and systems. An evolution at an organizational level is experienced through a powerful shift in consciousness that is applicable and grounded in a new worldview, practices, and behaviors. To overcome muscle memory and conditioned behavior, practical guidance, coaching, and mentoring is needed to fully integrate a shift in consciousness.

PATTERN 12.7: FROM RESISTANCE TO INVITATION

RESISTANCE

Have you ever experienced people who resisted change? Perhaps people who did not support making changes for the better? People who were not onboard with organizational decisions?

The challenge with traditional organizations is that they make decisions without consulting with the people impacted by those decisions. Then they create communication and rollout plans in hopes of convincing and making people do things that they may not see as valuable or are at odds with other goals. This is a guaranteed killer of the desire needed to create real change.

MODEL: RED LIST = HOW TO CREATE RE SIS TANCE

It turns out that most normal people are experts at creating resistance. The Red List, illustrated in figure 12.12, is a list of behaviors that leaders use to foster resistance. It is a key part of the business-as-usual lexicon.

• push

• make

• drive

• tell

• sell

• convince

• mandate

Take a moment to read through the list. Consider for a moment the impact on people when a leader uses a Red List word. What happens is that people start to shut down, feel unsafe, or feel like they are not valued. When people are made to do some-thing, their level of psychological safety falls, and along with it, their intelligence.

All use of the Red List develops resistance. Of course, the resistance is hidden—it wouldn’t be safe for people to show objection. However, the damage is visible after the fact through low delivery and performance results, low engagement scores, workers showing up as Theory X, and failed change programs.

The Red List is illustrative—there are many other words that describe coercive behavior. The Red List helps one easily spot the damaging behaviors or traditional organizational systems: command and control, oppression, or excessive use of power to drive performance.

RED LIST = NORMAL

If you think that using the Red List is a normal part of work or your personal life, you are likely correct. Traditional business of command and control is prevalent all around you, and it is usually unseen. Most people are totally unaware of the damage that is causing you to show up as less than your fullest potential or the damage you are causing to others around you. The behavior and intentions behind the Red List are subtle—we are so conditioned, we do not know any other way to get people to perform. The way we relate to others or situations on a moment-to-moment basis is steeped in Red List behavior.

Please remember, it’s not anyone’s fault. Most people have had the Red List modeled for them since birth. Think of the first moment the Red List is modeled in people’s lives. Most people have had the Red List modeled again and again by parents, by the education system, and by workplaces. People have been deeply conditioned to think the Red List is normal behavior or the normal way of management.

When leaders collectively act with normal Red List behavior, they create a traditional organizational culture. Leaders, collectively through behaviors, create the low levels of performance associated with business as usual. We attempt to change people and the organization and inadvertently create resistance.

THE OPPRESSED BECOME THE OPPRESSORS

Standard psychological responses and subconscious behavior patterns show us that those who have been oppressed are in turn oppressing others. Traditional business management structures, processes, and standard ways of conducting business are saturated in Red List behaviors. The challenge faced by leaders today is that they inadvertently use power in ways that suppress people.

As human beings, people are wounded through the environmental situations they have experienced since birth. There is a saying: “Hurt people, hurt people.” When people are hurting, they hurt others. It’s human nature. It’s the fundamental nature of the egoic consciousness to be hurt and consequently create more hurt and damage. It is usually not intentional but rather an automatic conditioned behavior driven by buried emotional wounds.

THE DEATH OF DESIRE

Through counterproductive leadership behaviors, people are oppressed and thus Theory X (unmotivated and unambitious) behaviors are cultivated. This is how leadership suppresses the desire for personal and organizational evolution. Disengagement in staff can ultimately be traced back to leadership behaviors.

We find that most people struggle with unconscious patterns of resistance to authority. Even experiencing a normal childhood can bring up damaging subconscious patterning within all of us, regardless of the amount of personal growth work or focus on shifting behaviors. You may say that resistance to authority and subtle oppression is an inherent virus within our human psyche. And the damage this creates within any organizational system can be profound.

The true nature of humanity is to perfect itself, to be successful, to feel good about self and others. We unintentionally create subtle forms of damage that strip the human condition of all the desire it has to create, to have joy, and to have meaning in life.

INVITATION

We use the word invitation to capture the spirit of a more evolved way of working that builds desire, motivation, and passion. With an evolved mindset, it’s not about eliminating resistance, it’s all about how to avoid creating any. When leaders stop pushing and creating resistance, there will not be any resistance, and changes will happen very quickly. This type of leadership is how to create an adaptable organization that can surf the waves of change. Let’s look at how to get there.

MODEL: GREEN LIST = LEADING THROUGH INFLUENCE

While the Red List words disengage people, the Green List words unlock people and foster motivation. The power of a leader to attract and inspire others through the Green List is illustrated in figure 12.13.

• pull

• inspire

• want to

• invite

• cocreate

• optional

• listen

When we use the Green List, we are operating from an evolved consciousness to lead through influence. We come from the understanding that people are sovereign beings with free will—not machine parts or chess pieces that are there to do our bidding.

As leaders truly begin to share power, the use of the Red List decreases. To lead through influence, it is important to treat people like volunteers. When leaders have this understanding integrated into their being, they automatically shift from the Red List to the Green List because it will create the outcome they desire. Leaders realize that power and authority expressed through the Red List has little or no effect on volunteers.

The good news is that with every step leaders take toward dropping the Red List words, they are on their way to creating a higher-performance culture. It is not, however, just about changing the words.

IT’S THE INTENTION, THE ENERGY, NOT JUST THE WORDS

A watermelon is a fruit that is green on the outside and red on the inside. You probably have heard someone use Green List words but in a Red List way. They may have said something was optional, yet you could tell it wasn’t really optional. Inauthentic leaders use Green List words, but they have the intention of Red List on the inside. This dissolves the levels of trust and creates damage in relationships.

It’s not about the words—it’s about the intention, the mindset, and the level of consciousness that it comes from. We all have built-in detectors for sensing threat in our environments that can tell us what kind of energy is coming at us.

The simple advice is to be honest and authentic about your inner state. Do not tell people something is optional if it really isn’t. It’s better to say it like it is. Then comes the real work of how to shift your inner state as a leader—a leader who is authentic, influential, and inspires others to show up high performing at their fullest potential. There is no way to candy-coat the way to more evolved leadership.

PRINCIPLE: ALL RE SIS TANCE IS CREATED BY YOU

Most readers at this point will realize that they are the problem and not someone else. We are the ones operating in a Red List way—pushing, killing motivation, and blocking the evolution of the organization. As this information can be challenging, now might be a good time to review the patterns in chapter 7, “Unlearning Reality,” and especially how to keep two opposed ideas in mind at the same time.

The bad news is that you are the problem. The good news is that you are the problem. And even better news is that once you realize you are the problem, you can be the solution.

You Are the Problem and You Are the Solution

If you hope to lead and evolve organizations toward high performance, an early and essential step is to reduce or eliminate the diet of Red List language. Every time a leader uses the Red List words or has the subtle intention of Red List behavior, they are fostering a traditional organization with limited performance.

Invitation is a code word for the set of words and behaviors that fully value and respect people. Here we explore the words and related behaviors that invite the emergence of Theory Y behaviors (motivated and ambitious) and other characteristics of high performance. Invitation is a key practice for leaders to learn to navigate the patterns shared in chapter 11, “The Paradox of Power.”

Focus on Eliminating Red List Behaviors

To be very clear, we are not inviting leaders to cultivate Green List words and start using them. This is a trap. Instead, we are inviting leaders to do the hard critical work of leadership: being aware of damaging behavior to accelerate their own personal evolution.

We are inviting leaders to reduce or eliminate their diet of Red List words. From psychology, we know that one negative activity requires five to ten positive activities to balance it out. So the greatest impact leaders can have right now on their performance is not to sprinkle in some Green List but to eliminate the Red List thinking, intentions, and behaviors from their way of being. This will greatly improve relationships and have an extraordinary impact on their ability to effect change with the people around them.

Experience Report

“My biggest disappointment, aha moment, was the Red List and Green List, where I saw these things and I said, ‘Why am I the red person? Why would I do all these red things? Why didn’t anyone tell me that these things are bad?’ And then I think the biggest aha moment in a good way was that I am the solution to the problems that I’m causing. I am causing the problems, but I can also solve them. And that’s helped me see things also from a different perspective. When a challenge comes, when a conflict comes, or when I start seeing that, why did that leader say that or why is he responding to me like that? Okay, let’s revisit. Why did this happen? What was my approach on that? Maybe I should go now and say, ‘Hey, sorry, Mr. X, can we please talk about that? I think we might have a different perception about what we just discussed. Can you please share again your thoughts and maybe I can share mine?’” (C. Tsonis, personal interview, December 2020).

PATTERN 12.8: FROM MANDATE TO INSPIRATION

MANDATE

The typical approach to change is to mandate a transformation program. Typically a small transformation team will create a program, and top leadership then mandates that everyone must follow it. It is not optional. People are not asked if they agree with the program. Nor are they asked how the program can be changed to make it more effective for their group or for the organization.

There is usually resistance to the change program before it is officially launched. Good managers do their best to comply while protecting their people so real work can be done. Everyone knows that the program will fail (like all the preceding programs) and that things will go more or less back to a new normal until the next change program is announced.

Mandating a change is usually very well intentioned. However, it falls into the trap of thinking of the organization as a machine. People’s best interests, and ultimately the best interests of the organization, are ignored. Mandate is the birthplace of disengagement when engagement and desire are the very things needed to create a successful change.

From a traditional organization mindset perspective, it seems baffling: How can any change be achieved without using power?

INSPIRATION

The alternative is to create an inspired change program through a deep understanding of the paradox of power. Can you imagine how effective and successful a change program would be if people were excited and interested? How might an inspired change program be created?

The purpose of this pattern is to explain step by step what it means to operate from a more evolved leadership perspective where we lead through influence. The starting place is to treat people in our organization as adults that can and will make up their own minds. By assuming an Evolutionary mindset, we can achieve Evolutionary results.

MODEL: ORGA NIZATIONAL READINESS MODEL

Imagine for a moment that you want to cocreate a high-performance organization with others who share a similar passion and desire. When you consider the readiness of other people in the organization, you will notice that they fall into roughly three distinct groups. These are illustrated in figure 12.14.

1. Early Adopters—Some percentage are interested in growing and making change now.

2. Wait and See—Some percentage will come on the journey once they are ready, have validated results, and the way is clear.

3. The Challenged—These are the resistors. Some percentage are really not sure if this is the right thing for them. Maybe not now and perhaps never.

We can understand this model as an analog of the technology adoption curve (Moore 2002). While this model is very well known for product adoption, it has not until now been fully defined and explained for organizational change. What we offer here is an evolved perspective—one that places human freedom and desire at the center of lasting change.

The main difference from a theoretical model is that what percentage of the people with the organization are at different stages will depend on your unique situation—it likely won’t follow nice statistical boundaries. In one context, the early adopters could number 50 percent, while in another context this might be as few as 10 percent. In either case, progress is possible since there are some who are willing.

A simple way to use this model is to consider the people involved: Where are they in terms of their readiness?

PRINCIPLE: GO WITH THE ENERGY

Invariably, change initiatives have limited staff, budget, attention of senior management, and so on. The results from investing in each of the different groups will have very different outcomes.

Table 12.1 is a simple way to help understand the outcome with each group. It is best to invest that capacity into those who want to make change now. The return on investment of the early adopters far exceeds the other groups. It’s a smart investment strategy to create the most rapid change possible.

Table 12.1: ROI for Investing in People

START WITH EARLY ADOPTERS

What will happen if we “go with the energy”? All of our effort and attention will be on helping the Early Adopters become successful. We will spend minimal time and energy on people who are not yet ready to change. Figure 12.15 depicts how we may listen for where the energy is and focus attention on evolving those parts of the organization.

Imagine this: The early adopters will become more successful. They will get better results. They will enjoy coming to work more. They will be happier.

The agents of change who are responsible for evolving the organization will also be more effective and happier. They will now only spend their time with people who want help instead of pushing and creating resistance.

WAIT FOR THE WAIT-AND-SEE GROUP

When people in the Wait-and-See group see that they have a voice in the change, they will feel respected. Their level of psychological safety will go up because no one is forcing them to change. Their openness and curiosity will grow little by little, and their resistance will become more quiet. They will notice the achievements and satisfaction of the early adopters and will likely start to have envy. They will ask, “What about us?” This is the pull signal indicating that they are ready to start the journey.

The secret is to wait for the pull signal that indicates the spark of their desire to grow.

Among the chief traps are making this group feel like they are less important than the early adopters. This is usually done by highlighting the “great work” done by the others. Anything that smells of a communication strategy or evangelism of the change will lead to increased resistance.

Give people time to choose, to have validation of real change happening. Spend this time with the upgrade to the environment so that saying yes to changes becomes easier. Below we explain in practical detail how to give people time to shift their perspectives and ways of working. We will also explain how to work on the environment and how to increase the rate of evolution to what people can handle.

MODEL: ORGA NIZATIONAL TEMPERATURE

Our job as organization evolution chefs is to get the system “cooking” (Pelrine 2009). This means applying the right amount of heat (power/direction). Too little heat and the soup will be cold. Too much heat and the soup will burn. It takes time in a cooking state to make good soup.

Here we highlight the tension within the paradox of power and provide guidance for sensing how to adjust power usage.

Principle: Get the System Cooking

Many change programs suffer from too much heat. There is too much change all at once. The result is burning, not cooking. In this situation, to get things cooking one will have to drop the temperature. For example, have people decide what changes are most important and focus on those. Drop the rest. It’s better to do three things well than ten things badly.

Some systems are in a solid state. Often people have been in their jobs for 10 or more years, and personal growth (evolving their behaviors) has never been a job requirement. It’s a delicate situation. People may genuinely believe that they can continue working as they are today and everything will be totally OK. For these people, they are not cooking—they are at the level of solid or gel. What is required to get to cooking is more heat. This might come in the form of new performance requirements, so people become aware that what was OK before is not OK any longer.

It’s important to turn up the heat slowly. If too much heat is applied too early, the system will start burning. Most traditional organizations have the worst of both worlds. On the one hand, they are solid and, at the same time, there is so much heat that they are burning, too! No wonder people are so disengaged.

Tool: Amplify Helpful Attractors

There is a powerful understanding of the new way of working to deal with a complex organization system that Michael learned firsthand from David Snowden at a private Agile Alliance retreat in 2014. As leaders in a system, our work is to shape the organizational environment so that it is supportive of people’s evolution.

As shown in figure 12.16, one way to energize people is to create helpful attractors that encourage people to shift toward our star on the horizon. As such, we may create intermediate goals to encourage the journey and foster helpful behaviors. This would be an example of how to add heat to a system to get it cooking.

An attractor can be anything. For example, the most powerful attractors that we have seen in our training and consulting work are through behaviors of the leaders. While leader behavior pretty much trumps everything else, it is helpful to have models and principles that remind people of what they have chosen to create. Keeping reminders of some SELF principles such as “employees first” or “listen first, speak last” visible or in mind during the day support the awareness needed to make different choices.

Tool: Dampen Unhelpful Attractors

The other key activity is to reduce, dampen, or eliminate unhelpful attractors—the organizational structures that keep people stuck in the status quo. These might be existing systems that demotivate people or encourage unhelpful behaviors. Attractors that create damage are very important to remove outright, or use the SELF adapter tool from Culture Bubbles to mitigate.

In most traditional organizations, employee performance management is a very damaging attractor that typically introduces all sorts of distortions to a system that limits healthy growth. Other unhelpful attractors include status reports that focus on outcome and timeline but do not include the health of the teams and people involved.

We advocate an approach to apply listening to the system to investigate what can be removed and modified to what is appropriate within the organization. A rule of thumb is that each organization is a complex system and has its own unique DNA. To create and remove attractors is done with care and respect to the people and the organization. We promote a conscious way of doing, where impact is taken into account and all points are considered.

PRINCIPLE: MAKE TIME FOR GROWTH

Most people are open to learning and growth—at their own pace. In evolutionary organizations, improving how things work is part of everyone’s job.

Create a work environment where people have space and time to improve how the organization is functioning. Long-term gains in performance come from many small improvements, not big dramatic changes. It’s not rocket science: making things better requires some investment of time. This was highlighted with the principle Invest in Production Capability from pattern 12.2, “From Strategic Plans to Evolving Culture.” For there to be learning and growth, there needs to be time for learning and growth.

On-site with a client, when talking about time for learning and connecting as a team, someone realized the organization did not have a timecode for learning. It was not recognized as a valid activity, nor was it valued or budgeted. Once they added in the timecode and people realized that learning was encouraged, the whole system started to shift.

COMPASSION FOR THE “CHALLENGED/RESISTORS”

Often those who are not ready or interested are labeled “resistors” or “laggards.” It is normal and natural that some people will not be interested in or will be hesitant to change. They are best treated with empathy, compassion, and patience. These individuals are either usually challenged for one of three reasons. They are:

1. Deeply conditioned so that they are only comfortable with a slow rate of growth.

2. Unable to see any personal gain out of growth or change.

3. Unable or less able to change—some might not know it’s possible or how to change.

It’s not that there’s anything wrong with the resistors, it’s just that they are experiencing organizational reality from their unique perspectives. They might just want to see results or validation that change will really happen.

The main focus early on is to make it safe for such people to reduce the chances they will block or undermine those who want to grow and evolve.

The best advice has already been shared—leave the challenged few until later on. Focus energy on those who want to create a shift, starting with the early adopters and then shifting to the wait-and-see group. Once a large group of people makes a shift, it will become increasingly easier for the remainder to do so. No one gets left behind. Also, as the majority begins to shift, it will be possible to make the environment much more supportive of those who are in this group to grow. This will address all three potential reasons keeping people stuck.

PRINCIPLE: EXIT STAFF TO SUPPORT A HEALTHY ENVIRONMENT

As an Evolutionary Leader, we understand both the human and financial costs of people who over time remain part of the challenged few. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. To create a healthy environment for everyone else, it is sometimes necessary to exit someone.

Where there is hope of change, we work through the first three karmas: Peace, Enrich, and Energize (from the tool the Four Karmas). Over time people will discover if they want to come on the journey or not. Out of kindness for them and for all others they work with, we may exit them outright or use a performance improvement program to give them a final chance to wake up to what they really want for themselves.

As indicated in our principle “organizational evolution follows personal evolution,” a choice must be made between the health and evolution of the organization or to exit an individual. In our experience, this is one of the hardest decisions faced by managers.

Effective leaders create a high level of clarity of where the organization is going. In the book Good to Great, a key characteristic for successful evolution is to “get the right people on the bus” (Collins 2001, 13). Another powerful quote from this book is, “The first clean kill awakens the herd.” Total clarity of what is happening supports people’s psychological safety.

It is essential to exit leaders who do not want to go on the journey. Richardo Semler shares his powerful experience, “Within days of taking over, I fired outright two-thirds of my father’s most senior managers. I then spent the next two decades questioning, challenging, and dismantling the traditional business practices at Semco” (Semler 2004, 9). Semler demonstrated a very high level of patience. He took action not out of impatience but out of the understanding that those leaders really did not want to change and that no amount of waiting would change the situation. In his case, exiting those leaders was the most caring and compassionate move for them as well as the people who reported to them.

For some, the move to exit people may come from a concern for helping people find an environment where they are happy. For others, it may be made purely on financial reasons.

Let’s look at some traditional organizations and get the perspective of a hard-nosed businessman, John Paul Getty. He explains a key element of his very successful strategy for turning around dozens of businesses: “In my own companies, we have instituted the policy of ‘early retirement’ to rid ourselves of personnel dead-wood that has accumulated over the years—and which, inevitably, collects in almost any business firm. … True, the cost of retiring these people and of paying them pensions years before they were due to receive them is very high. But we have found that the cost is significantly less than the cost of keeping them on our payrolls, where they not only draw full pay, but cause more harm than good, producing losses instead of profits” (Getty 1986).

The reasons to create a high-performing organization are unique to each individual and organizational purpose, yet the path is the same. In pattern 12.5, “From Changing Structures to Evolving People,” we follow the principle: organizational evolution follows personal evolution—the “grow,” “go,” or “no” scenario. We can guide and lead those who want to go on the journey of creating an incredible evolutionary organization, fulfill a desire to lead, impact change, and grow leaders around us, or we can say “no” and walk away from the dream of high performance and the evolutionary journey. Sometimes it is the difficult choices and experiences where we have the most growth.

PATIENCE ACCELERATES EVOLUTION

Success with this approach requires a shift in consciousness to see organizational evolution as a journey and find the desire that will pull you through difficult times. It is an ongoing daily activity— more like a marathon than a sprint. Success requires a key leadership characteristic: patience.

When leaders do not have patience, they will usually fall into the trap of using the Red List and exercising power that is not in the best interests of the people or the organization. This will create short-term compliance and only a thin veneer of success. The laws of organizational dynamics dictate that success and growth will only come through desire and willingness to change. Without these, there is no hope of creating a shift to high performance.

When we have patience and focus our attention on those who want to grow, what will happen over time is that team by team, leader by leader, group by group, we will see the evolution we hope for spread over the organization.

A clear and powerful example of patience is illustrated in this case study of the changes that took place with Favi—the only surviving auto parts manufacturer in Europe: “For a few months after taking over, Zobrist tried to engage his executive team in discussions to break down some of these mechanisms but met strong resistance. Nine months after he had taken on the full CEO role, on the last working day of the year, just before the Christmas break, he decided to change tactics. He assembled the entire workforce in a corner of the factory. Standing on top of a few boxes, he shared that the way people were controlled in the company felt disgraceful to him. After the holidays, there would be no more time clocks at the factory entrance. The variable pay system would be replaced with a fixed salary—no more pay deductions to try to control people. The supply room would be unlocked and everybody would be trusted to take out the supplies they needed and to log what they took out for reordering purposes. Finally, the managers’ canteen would be closed; everybody would have lunch together” (Laloux 2014, 273).

The case study points to how a dramatic change may be useful and feasible only when all other means are exhausted. This is an example of the conscious use of power to create an environment that will unlock growth. The greater the patience, the more rapidly a permanent, lasting shift will take place.