On Monday, Michele and I attended the Innovate Virginia conference. We reconnected with many old friends, met some new ones, and came away inspired. The final keynote was by Noah Scalin on the Art of Innovation. Noah told the story of his 365-day challenge to himself – make a piece of art every day and publish it (Skull-A-Day) to the world. The challenge had a number of great outcomes, including spirited collaboration, terrific community support, a honing of his craft, and de-constructing his own self-limiting beliefs. The challenge created a container that ‘forced’ Noah to publish something every day; the world was expecting it because he’d made a public commitment that went viral. Toward the end, Michele turned to me and said “maybe we should do that for the book.” Zoing!
So, here’s the backstory. I have been writing a book – originally entitled Coaching the Agile Enterprise – for the past 5 years. I went through periods of making a lot of progress, then ran into various roadblocks associated with running a business (Agile Coaching Institute); then I’d make a little more progress. During this time, I was able to release a 100-page version of the core Integral model, called the Integral Agile Transformation Framework™ (IATF). This helped me get lots of useful feedback, plus I started using it to teach leaders, as well as team & enterprise coaches around the world, how to see teams and organizations in an Integral way. The bottom line: I gained a lot of insight into using the Integral model in Agile settings, and a clarity in how to help others see how to use it. Still, the book languished.
In the past year and a half, Michele and I have been using the IATF at Trans4mation, LLC. It was the basis for Michele developing our Agile Transformation Leader workshop over a year ago; and as we have continued to refine and add to the course, we found ourselves needing to update the Framework in some substantive ways. The latest version I find truly inspiring, even thrilling. It’s the kind of thing only collaboration can get you. The book is now titled The Integral Agile Transformation Framework: Using Conscious Integral Leadership™ to Catalyze Breakthrough – Inside and Out. Michele has become my co-author, and we are determined to publish the book this year. Hence, the public commitment we are making here.
I know that many of you have been waiting for this book to come out — you tell me all the time, in gentle (and a few not so gentle) ways. I have had many people offer to help before — and they did — but I now realize that what I really needed was the right collaborator. Michele is that person — because of her research mania, her deep experience in transformations, her creative gifts, and our ability to get into an inspiring state of flow together that somehow produces material both of us are blown away by. What could be better?
I believe the reason so many of you have wanted this book to come out is because you sense that this Integral framework can truly do justice to the complexity inherent in organizational transformations; that it can provide deep insights into the ‘all too common’ challenges that Agile leaders and advocates face, including those inside themselves; and that it can offer a fair bit of guidance for what is really possible, and what could actually work, given the facts on the ground, not what we hope might be true; all of that is compelling.
So, here is our commitment to you. Every weekday (weekend days optional), we will publish a very brief journal entry describing what we each did on the book that day. Every two weeks (at a minimum), we will publish some snippet from the book, or in some cases a whole chapter or section of a chapter. Our goal is to be done this year. Your job — should you agree to accept it — is to hold us accountable for doing so (in friendly, encouraging ways whenever possible :-).
One way you can encourage us is with a Tweet, something like this:
- @T4_Agile @mspayd – #GetItWritten – [with a link to this blog:] http://https://https://www.trans4mation.coach/2018/03/07/the-book-youve-been-waiting-for/
And thank you for being patient with me for 5 years. It will get done!
- Make Integral Practical - January 18, 2023
- Stop. Just Stop. Be Still… Listen. - March 31, 2020
- Journey from Team to Enterprise Coach - February 5, 2020
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