Indiana Jones and the Temple of Sustainable Change

Indiana Jones is a committed pioneering, flexible, multi-talented, adaptable, high energy risk taker at the cutting edge of his field.   I always believed he was just an archaeologist who liked adventure holidays – until I was approached by Chris Chapman.

Chapman visited me in June 2007 on the pretext of interviewing me for his Masters degree on “Change Agent Skills & Strategies”.  I remember that the sun was out and my guard was down as we sat in the garden chatting about ‘making  a difference’.  At the time I had no idea how I was being manipulated, but  soon came to see I’d been stripped like a bamboo in a Panda Pen.

Chris used his considerable charm to talk to 5 other unsuspecting Change Agents, before retiring to his Irish bolthole to hatch an audacious plan.   He used the information we gave him, studied, added his own experience, and set out to describe in detail the traits of exceptional Sustainable Change Agents. He later returned with a plan for world domination. It’s time to tell all…

The Agency is an undercover operation which recruits people who are resistant to labels.  Chapman is only interested in people with the capacity to switch between coaching, consulting, facilitating and training.  Selection is highly rigorous.  His elite Sustainable Change Agent squads are subtle workers, moving easily through the undergrowth of everyday business in their natural ‘flow’. Working equally well together or alone, they shepherd people towards belief in a different future with their magnetic sense of the possible.  In short, they are a force to be reckoned with.

I would never have appreciated the scale of Chapman’s plans if I hadn’t seen the temple. That’s when I realised that Indiana Jones was merely a front for a shady movement of revolutionary change.  Here was the secret of Sustainable Change Agency written in stone. It was breath-taking.    Close your eyes and read this…. OK, nearly close your eyes then.

There are Five ‘Foundational blocks’ of knowledge along the bottom on which the whole temple sits. These blocks are knowledge of: One’s core self; what one is best at; the ‘big issues’; the specific working context; and core working methods.

Evenly spaced on top of these blocks, are three supporting ‘pre-requisite’ columns, without which you’ll never get the roof on. They are:  High level of personal and spiritual development; deeply meaningful sense of personal mission that sits within a global context; and willingness to work very hard.

The lintel is a thing of real beauty. It’s made up of the seven competencies/abilities which set Chapman’s change agents apart from many others . These are the ability to: hold disturbance and possibility; be exceptionally imaginative in developing strategy and experimenting ‘in the moment’; move between big picture and detail; think in a systems way that deals with complexity and inter-relatedness; move flexibly between a diverse range of working methods; flexibly seek support from a diverse range of sources; and have a strong sense of ‘what might be’ and what’s emergent.

And to top it all off is a roof of Joy – the experience of pioneering at the cutting edge, connecting people and issues, achieving breakthroughs and doing work of great potential impact.

You can open your eyes again now.   Magnificent isn’t it?

Chapman has been quietly recruiting to The Agency for some time now, but I’m blowing his cover so that more people can get to see the Temple.   Only Chris knows the location of the real thing, but you can find him at The Change Exploratory (www.changeexploratory.ie ).  He hides his megalomania extremely well and is often found recruiting at events like the Authentic Leadership In Action Conference which he facilitated this January in Holland.

If you’ve been able to picture the temple from my description, I hope you’ll be able to spot the Elite Sustainable Change Agents around you more easily – it’s amazing how the numbers are swelling.

Dr Chris Johnstone, a fellow Agent who’s stepping out of the shadows with this to say.  “See your life as an adventure story; seek out the truth (beyond the media); allow yourself to feel disturbed; understand level shift (when parts act together as a whole); go beyond your limiting beliefs; let deeper purpose act through you.  When you’re serving something larger than yourself, you’re never acting alone. You get unexpected allies, help from unknown quarters and wider support and resources become available”.

If you’re an Agent who’s still under cover, I urge you to come out.  If you’re intrigued and would like to know more, have a look at one or some of these sacred sites…www.changeexploratory.ie, www.modoto.co.uk, www.asp-online.org, www.the-hub.net, www.wiserearth.org, www.aliainstitute.org, or www.burrenleadershipforum.ie

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