Deep Diving Into Business Transformation
It all began with surfing the Gaia Wave…
Theory U allows the organization to use Corporate Culture as the driver of Business Processes change, resulting in less time and cost invested, and facilitating the constitution of self-organizing teams. When I had that insight, the word Slow Agile began sounding in my ears. HB
This Is the Moment I Was Born For!
I am a Theory U change-maker and capacity builder who lives in Caracas, Venezuela, a country that had been suffering a Complex Humanitarian Emergency years before the COVID-19 crisis began. On 02/20/2020, the Venezuelan Theory U team, of which I am part, was attending the kick-off session of the Presencing Institute’s u.lab.2X, where Otto Scharmer opened the program with the words in the title, in addition, the date itself appeared to tell us something. Looking back on this experience, I now feel as if we were rehearsing for things that would be affecting the whole world very soon.
On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared the outbreak of COVID-19 a pandemic. Upon knowing that news, I became conscious that the world was going to have an out-of-the-ordinary year. What I did not know was how a series of serendipitous events that began to take place almost immediately, would make the year 2020 even more extraordinary to me personally.
“ein Lesetipp in komischen Zeiten”
On March 19, the day of my birthday, I received a mail from Otto Scharmer with the subject in German, “ein Lesetipp in komischen Zeiten” (a reading tip in strange times):
Hi Helio
thx for translating the blog into spanish. wonderful. notice that i updated the final paragraph re launch of GAIA next week. maybe you can integrate that?
many thanks!!
— otto
Otto had published an article on March 16, Eight Emerging Lessons: From Coronavirus to Climate Action, which, upon reading and perceiving the importance of its content, I felt the immediate need to translate to the Spanish language. I had unofficially translated Otto’s articles to my native language before, as a way of bringing new knowledge to the Spanish-speaking Theory U practitioners.
Nevertheless, this one was different because it captured in its totality the importance and transcendence of the current events. Consequently, I published my translation on the 17, but at once, I felt the need to ask for permission for the first time. Thus, I sent my published translation to Rachel Hentsch, Communications Lead of the Presencing Institute, who was surprised by my request and sent it to Otto, who answered me with the above-shown email.
Almost immediately, other Theory U practitioners from different countries became motivated to translate Otto’s article too, and by the end of the month, it had been translated to nine languages. I was surprised by the receptivity of the general public to Otto’s article, which became viral, and by domino effect, my own translation did too. The next week, Rachel was so kind as to invite me to be part of the Spanish language team of the GAIA Journey. I don’t know if she is aware that her invitation changed my life.
Riding the Giant Wave of the Gaia Journey
The Presencing Institute launched the GAIA Journey (Fig 1), Global Activation of Intention and Action, on Friday, March 27, 2020, and it was an instant success. That day, it convened over 5000 people in 5 zoom sessions — three in English, one in Spanish, and one in Portuguese, and it had behind it a global core team of 50 people from across the world who had risen to the occasion, sprung into action, co-designed it (in less than ten days), and helped to deliver the 14-week journey. The GAIA Journey stroke a cord on the collective consciousness of humanity because it was a platform on which everyday people from all over the world could do something meaningful and transcendent at a time when everything else appeared to be crumbling down around us.
Otto Scharmer resumed the 14 weeks GAIA Journey with these words:
The GAIA journey really is about deepening our connection to ourselves, to each other, and to the place we are living in — our mother Earth.
All of a sudden, all the planets had aligned so that I could be surfing these mammoth waves, not for a day or two, but for the whole season. So, if this was the moment I had been born for, what would be my role in this historic moment? Curiously enough, I remembered a Lego game, Bionicle, that I used to play with my youngest son, Ignacio when he was a child. My favorite character in the game was “The Chronicler”, whose main duty was to update the “Wall of History”. Accordingly, I decided that my role would be to chronic this historic event to the best of my ability.
So, I began writing…
I wrote about making sense of the chaos that we are living in, by tuning in to our perspective of the past, present, and future. Equally important, I wrote about saving GAIA (our mother Earth) with our Actions, with Systems Thinking, with Awareness Based Systems Change, with Collective Trauma Healing, with Love, and with a Deeper Knowledge of Violence and Racism. Furthermore, I wrote about my personal traumas, not only when I had to endure the death of my beloved mother while living far away from her, but also when my dreams of migrating to the USA evaporated when my newly issued Diversity Visa expired unused due to lockdown. Additionally, and more importantly, I wrote about how those events transformed me into the person I am today. By the time I wrote 2020 in Perspective, on January 3/2021, I had written 21 articles in English and 24 in Spanish. Without intending to, I had become the “Chronicler” of GAIA´s Wall of History.
The GAIA Journey and GAIA en Español had a telluric effect on my inner awareness. COVID-19 was a messenger that came abruptly to knock on the world´s consciousness bringing a single message, “Either you change the way that you are doing things or you will be left without a world to live in”. In every aspect of human endeavor, we as a species were and continue depleting GAIA, our mother Earth.
I was especially concerned about the business sector. If they continued doing business as usual, everyone else, aka we, the everyday people, would be left footing the bill of their collective irresponsibility. Furthermore, as we see with the COVID crisis, they are going to suffer the consequences too. The question that we need to ask at a collective level is, how can we bring Consciousness into Systems Change?
We bring consciousness to systems change with Awareness Based Systems Change
Deep Diving into Business Transformation
The Iceberg Model of Awareness Based Systems Change
The Iceberg Model of Awareness Based Systems Change (Fig 2) shows disruptions happening above the surface of the water, at the Symptoms level, which is our normal level of awareness. But we all know that 90% of the iceberg is below the surface. Thus, to change a system, you need to deep dive below the surface down to the Source level, where decisions originate, effecting change on the Thought level immediately above, where new Mental Models produce the modification of the Structures where most societal change takes place.
How Does Business Agility Change Systems?
It does not.
I had the opportunity to lead change in three different companies, hence, my supposition was that Agile had to do mostly with the optimization of business processes. As I said before, I was concerned about the business sector, so I began to enquire about how that sector is changing systems now.
It turns out that most businesses are pursuing “Business Agility”, using Agile Based Process Change methodologies to drive change, consequently, they are not changing systems. As we said before, the change of business processes happen at the level of Structures. But if we try to change the Structures without changing first the Mental Models, the change will generate “Cultural resistance”. Successful and long lasting Systems Change takes place at the Thought level or below.
How Does Business Agility Change Corporate Culture?
It does not. This is how Cultural Change happens: (See fig 3)
Source Conditions (Inner condition of individuals) give rise to the Quality of Relating (Patterns of thinking, conversing, and organizing), aka Corporate Culture, which produces Practical Results.
Accordingly,
Corporate Culture changes Business Processes, not the other way around.
Or, in Peter Drucker´s words, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”.
Agile methodologies are efficient to change business processes, but processes are managed by people, and Agile methodologies are not the right tool for changing people´s hearts and minds, otherwise known as Corporate Culture.
Not only the Iceberg Model of Systems Thinking and Peter Drucker state it clearly but also the Agile Alliance does it too, “company philosophy or culture at odds with core agile values was the leading cause of failed agile projects. In fact, it was interesting to note that two of the top five reasons that caused agile failures revolve around the organization’s culture.”
I rest my case.
How Do You Change Business Processes and Corporate Culture Simultaneously and Successfully?
The answer to that question is “With Awareness Based Systems Change.”
Otto Scharmer describes Awareness Based Systems Change in the following three sentences.
“You can not understand a system unless you change it. You cannot change a system unless you transform consciousness. You cannot transform consciousness unless you can make a system see and sense itself.”
Theory U Is an Awareness Based Systems Change Methodology.
Theory U is the ideal methodology to change large social systems, including businesses. Why? The Theory U methodology includes State of the Arts Systems Thinking, blending Systems Sensing and Systems Thinking, which will allow effecting change at the Source level of the Iceberg Model. How? Capacitating the organization to See through complexity to Sense and Actualize its highest future possibility, and enabling it to take immediate Action to Crystallize it.
Slow Agile, The New Normal in Business Transformation
It all began with an insight…
“Business Agility” is a buzzword for business transformation. Nevertheless, given that Agile cannot drive Culture Change, a pure Agile driven change will most probably generate cultural resistance, will take more time, will cost more, and will probably run the risk of failing, as the Agile Alliance sustains. On the other hand, Theory U allows the organization to use Corporate Culture as the driver of Business Processes change, resulting in less time and cost invested, and facilitating the constitution of self-organizing teams. When I had that insight, the word Slow Agile began sounding in my ears.
In reality, most businesses won’t change one methodology for the other because Theory U is not mainstream yet. For this reason, if any business wants to carry out a truly “Business Agility” transformation, they must complement the Agile Based Process Change methodologies that they are using, with Theory U. As a result, the change process will take less time and cost less, especially, they will have cultural collaboration instead of resistance, and finally, they will cross out “culture” from the list of leading causes of failed Agile projects. With this purpose in mind, the “Business Agility” change will take place in parallel, with Agile methodologies changing processes, while Awareness Based Systems Thinking are changing Organizational Culture. The great thing about Theory U is that it can integrate with whatever change process that the organization is using at the moment.
In December 2020, the Presencing Institute approved the participation of our project into the u.lab2X 2021, PI’s accelerator for systems transformation. As a result, Slow Agile, an out-of-the-way idea to integrate Theory U and Agile into a single methodology that allows true “Business Agility”, began to grow from prototype to ecosystem impact. Three months later, by the end of March 2021, we have become a team of 13 changemakers from six different countries who every day that passes by, are closer to completing the development of our project.
If your organization is experiencing issues with Agile Based Change, please contact us at helio.borges.consulting@gmail.com to have a generative conversation.
To witness the evolution of Slow Agile from idea to ecosystem impact, please read the article Agile U / Slow Agile. Adding Consciousness to Systems Change
