Mindful Change, which charts the origin of these leading change dimensions and the research underpinning them—including the author's own personal journey. There is also a Change Vitality Indicator questionnaire available—in both individual and organizational formats—that can measure your current level of leading change capability and pinpoint fruitful strategies for enhancing how you go about change. Completing the questionnaire and reading the book deepens and enriches what is a continuous journey for us all.
The reluctance of the Field Guide to hold expert opinion for the reader creates the biggest challenge of all. We are invited to extend our way of being into the unknown to generate and then to make choices for ourselves in relation to intention and purpose within a greater, more intimate and connected world for which we are all responsible. It is most definitely not a Self‐Assembly toolkit (in the words of the Field Guide) and hooray for that!
We learn many things, and the most important for me is to consider how yearning and striving can be replaced and enhanced by yielding and accepting. What will you discover?
Michael Thorley
Still Learning and Still Moving
Saturday, February 1, 2020
Acknowledgments
I have many people to thank who stand behind the writing of this book. First and foremost, I wish to thank my Still Moving colleagues.1 In particular, I thank Michael Thorley, who provided indefatigable and insightful input to the descriptions of each of the Still Moving change leadership elements contained in the book, and Katie Jones, who diligently labored over its production, format, and artistic look and feel. Other colleagues who I'd like to thank are Nicole Brauckmann, Sytske Casimir, Phil Hadridge, Anjet van Linge, Belden Menkus, Darius Norrell, and Paul Pivcevic—not only for their contributions to the book's content, but also for their close work with me over the last 3 years in bringing the “Still Moving way of leading change” into ever‐increasing circles of practical application.
And that's what this Field Guide is for—illuminating how to put into practice, and develop, the skills I wrote of in Still Moving: How to Lead Mindful Change. Thank you, it's been a blast! This book is written from the “we” perspective as its content stands on all of our shoulders.
Widening out, I make a deep bow to the support from Jackie Gittins, who has acted as a wise counsel and champion for us in this work. I am also indebted to Roger Bellis and Helen Bellis for early conceptual development of the “Change Vitality” concept embedded within this Field Guide, including its stunning visual, the “Change Vitality cone”; to Judith Hemming, from whom I have exquisitely learned about the systemic Ordering Forces within our Change Vitality framework—my skill to work at depth as a change practitioner is to a large extent down to her insight and generous mentoring; and to Julian Burton, who is the artist behind the graphics illustrating each of the 16 elements of leading change within this Field Guide.
The Field Guide was originally written to support a growing band of change practitioners who were drawn to the Still Moving philosophy, research, and set of frameworks, which they see as a holistic, fresh take on how to lead change well in today's world. I cannot recall how many approaches I received in the 3 years subsequent to the publication of Still Moving that went along the lines of “I have read your book Still Moving and absolutely loved it. How can I learn more about these capacities and how to deploy them in practice? I want to go further and deeper!”
One way in which we have responded to this pull is to run Still Moving Change Practitioner Programmes—an in‐depth, 4‐day immersion experience into the Still Moving way of “doing” change, followed by application coaching and supervision. The Field Guide developed as an essential reference manual to the content taught in this program, and I'd like to acknowledge here the now‐65 (and climbing) alumni practitioners whose take‐up of the content of the Field Guide gave me the inspiration to publish it for the wider world. Some of their names and messages appear within the book as “Tales From the Field.”
Thank you to all for helping me turn Still Moving from a book about change into a movement to lead change differently—including the practitioners and change leaders who are to come.
Finally, a massive thanks to perhaps my biggest fan, my dad, Ron Rowland. He is always asking me, “What's your next book going to be?”—well, here it is!
Note
1 1 I call them “Still Moving colleagues” as, subsequent to the publication of Still Moving: How to Lead Mindful Change, I discovered from readers and audiences the remarkably intriguing resonance of those two words. So, I renamed my change consultancy to Still Moving.
A Few Words About the Front Cover
We had just moved here. I was walking the dog in the afternoon of a cloudy day. I turned the corner and the movement caught me. The wind swayed the barley and chased the clouds. And I felt how real this was, this field, these clouds, this wind. Here. Now.
Anjet van Linge is an artist and a founding member of the Still Moving tribe of consultants. She is also the founder, with her husband Marc, of Working Silence, a retreat house in the North of the Netherlands where the land is empty, the skies are big, and the wind is always present.
The front cover picture of this Field Guide was created by Anjet van Linge
The images in this Field Guide have been created by Julian Burton, Creative Consultant www.delta7.com
About the Companion Website
The companion website for this book is at
www.wiley.com/go/stillmovingfieldguide
The website includes:
Website links
Figure PDFs
Introduction
Stillness is what creates love,
Movement is what creates life,
To be still,
Yet still moving—
That is everything!
Source: Do Hyun Choe, Japanese Master.
Welcome to the Still Moving Field Guide.
Leading change in today's world is a complex, ongoing, and demanding task—a core competence now of any leader. Congratulations for taking the time and attention to see how effective you are at this. Our goal at Still Moving is to enable leaders to lead change in more effortless ways. And, guess what: it takes effort to become more effortless!
We hope this Field Guide can accompany you in that task. Its purpose is to provide a detailed explanation of all the elements that we have found are highly related to leading big complex change well, elements that in combination we call “Change Vitality.” In addition to describing these elements, the Field Guide is designed to help you develop your practice in leading change well—a bit like a personal development manual.
It can be read alongside the book written by one of our team, Deborah Rowland, Still Moving: How to Lead Mindful Change