The Story of Transformation Agency

It was against the backdrop of a rapidly evolving business environment and through a shared recognition of the expanding disconnect between the kinds of lives that we, as human beings, want to be living and the way our businesses (and therefore the very infrastructure of our lives) allow us to live in practice, that ultimately brought the members of Transformation Agency together.

Initially, the team members gravitated into relationship with each other through coaching or personal experiences with Paul Cooper.

As individuals, we had each traversed a variety of life’s trials and tribulations, and came across Paul somewhere on our Hero’s Journey. Paul’s unique gift of supporting people in releasing blocked emotional energy, reconditioning unhelpful behavioral patterns and catalysing conscious development had a remarkable, transformational and lasting impact on each individual member of the team.

As each of us spent increasing amounts of time together in Paul’s company, it became increasingly clear that we shared an uncommon worldview and perspective on life.

Each of our respective individual experiences had served to awaken and inspire us to a new level of consciousness; a new way of being in the world; a way that we’ve since discovered, honors and aligns with the way that humanity is rapidly evolving.

We had each been so profoundly moved by our experiences of this new level of consciousness that we were each, separately, in our own way, dedicating ourselves to raising human consciousness; individually coaching or consulting with people who were looking for support with their own personal transformation in the various areas of their lives, such as relationships, business, health, etc.

There we were, a bunch of highly-functioning corporate misfits, ex-professionals, solopreneurs and entrepreneurs, each dedicated to being of loving service to people and yet grappling with the disconnect in our lives because of how the prevailing business models weren’t designed to support our efforts.

It seemed crazy that such a smart, talented, group of 25–35 year old Cultural Creatives, with an impressive variety of skills — from writing, to marketing, to programming, to counseling, to licensing, to business structures, legal and financial management — were struggling so much individually to get momentum going.

We all experientially understood that “we need(ed) a values revolution in business.” 1[fn id=”1"] [fn id=”1"]and we all agreed that it needed to be a loving, elegant and noble one that made it easy for people to give their greatest gifts to the world.

Once it became clear to us that we shared an almost identical vision of the world we believed was possible, and how natural and obvious it felt to work together, we started crafting our shared values.

We collectively spent many weeks discussing, choosing and refining our values together.

Below is an overview of how we interpreted those values together:

Once our values and vision were clear, we knew we needed to create a legal business entity and set up a bank account. But before taking that step, (and in keeping with our value of being in service to the evolution of human consciousness) the team wanted to be clear about our options for establishing the most advanced and highly evolved business entity possible.

Transformation Agency wasn’t merely a business to make money, it was a vehicle for us to serve a higher collective purpose, so we wanted to ensure it could enjoy the requisite longevity to really make a sustainable difference.

Our intention became to learn everything we could from evolutionary development principles about the kind of consciousness and conditions being experienced out at the farthest reaches of evolutionary development. We felt that once we had compiled that information, we could then begin to explore how we could create a model for organizations and businesses to support, develop and further cultivate those conditions.

So we did our research.

We found that:

• The various “Y Business Model Innovation” solutions that have been devised in recent times in an effort to cultivate emotional connection, enhance creativity and create more freedom, simply aren’t taking us far enough into a new way of being;
• Whilst there are examples of innovative organizations like Gore, Morning Star, Bakke and Valve, they are still the rare exception rather than the rule; and
• Even though there are examples of innovative models, like Holacracy, this usually requires a hefty early investment to train up in and implement the model. And as Gary Hamel points to in his HBR article “Top-Down Solutions like Holacracy Won’t Fix Bureaucracy” using authoritarian measures to reorganize towards more self-determination is an inherent contradiction.

The sad fact is that there is very little that offers a refreshing and innovative business model for an early stage start-up. So since we couldn’t find anything that could neatly guide and support us to develop the kind of business we all collectively wanted to work in, we took everything we could learn from the latest innovations in business, added in some flex (to allow for the particularities of each company’s own unique culture) and, filled the gaps with what we believe are some breakthrough innovations of our own.

Specifically, we turned our attention to some of the most critical questions we now face in business. Questions such as:

• What kind of structure can offer the freedom to choose how we spend our time, create work/life integration and still be maximally productive?;
• How can we have a leader when we really need one, without creating hierarchy or disempowering ourselves?;
• How can we peg compensation to the kind of contribution and connection we uniquely value, rather than time, title or even necessarily prior experience?;
• How can we create a safe space for people to feel their emotions without getting too caught up in relational processes and impacting productivity or decision-making?;
• How can we create a space that encourages people to authentically self-express and allows them to feel connected to, deeply seen and appreciated by others for the contribution they’re making to the world?; and
• How can we make the things that people typically find difficult and lonely, into something fun and collaborative?

In coming to this process of enquiry through an evolutionary development lens, and putting our collective attention on these questions, we discovered the following:

1. A structure and operational model that facilitates exceptional creativity, freedom and growth, through which more work is produced, of a superior quality and at a faster pace;
2. A shared set of empowering practices that cut through all the usual sticking points, make space for decisive leadership when required and ensure we all can remain in a clear shared reality;
3. That we each experience more and exponentially greater levels of personal transformation which are consistently growing our individual and collective capability and capacity to produce and create;
4. That the space in between us (what we call “the Interbeing”) is an extraordinary accelerator for creativity; and
5. That our relationships with our other values and mission-driven colleagues have deepened and that the trust between us continues to grow.

Quite simply, the experience has transformed work into a safe place to be a genius at the highest level.

That said, please be under no illusions. The approach to business that we are about to embark upon together requires a tremendous amount of courage and trust, both in ourselves and in the people we choose to take the journey with.

It is certainly not for everyone.

But for the corporate misfits who feel that none of the current models are working for them, who are self-motivated and eager to be the best that they can be, who crave the freedom to give their most sacred and creative gifts in the world, we believe that the approach that we’re beginning to introduce you to will be a saving grace.