From Mindset to Consciousness

This book is an invitation to a conversation. It is also an exhortation to agile coaches, consultants, and advocates to look first at themselves when they seek to transform others. It affirms that all agile transformations are first personal transformations. And, it provides pointers to support personal transformation on an ongoing basis.

This book was written as an advanced topic resource for agile coaches, consultants, and advocates. It is useful both to those working in the agile software development movement, where agile began, and in the many nonsoftware domains where it is now used. It looks carefully at the importance of individual development for the people most important to moving forward the social thinking that underlies the movement.

The time has come to double down on our commitment to ourselves, the organizations we value, and the world we live in. Jean Richardson shows through poetry, examples from her own experience, research on consciousness, and research on agile that there is sufficient power to make the world a better place using what we have learned as agilists. She points to powerful tools, such as triple loop learning and Collaborative Developmental Action Inquiry, for the experienced agilist to use in their work and lives.

And, most of all, she recognizes the hard work of agile advocacy, coaching, and leadership and seeks to encourage those doing that work through this book.

Advanced praise for The Preservation of the Agile Heart:

It is exciting to read such an insightful book on organizational excellence, written by a poet and expressing a graceful understanding of integral philosophy in action.
— Allan Combs
Author of Consciousness Explained Better and The Radiance of Being

Jean combines her love and talent for poetry with thoughtful questions and hard challenges. She encourages the reader to examine their own motivations and deeply explore the ideas behind the agile movement. She really gets to the heart and admonishes the reader to challenge themselves, their preconceptions and assumptions about organizational change and individual transformation.
This is not light reading, it is deep, meaningful, transformational and necessary reading for every agile coach who wants to make a lasting difference through their work.
—Shane Hastie
Director of Agile Learning Programs
International Consortium for Agile (ICAgile.com)

I have the sudden flash that this book is a good step beyond “taking the red pill.” I regard Tobias Meyer’s short book as one that starts that pill; this maybe helps keep it down.
—Dave Gipp, Agile Coach

Personal. Powerful. Beautiful. The Preservation of the Agile Heart is a look at agile through a poet’s eyes, revealing intensely vital distinctions unseen by casual observers. Discover more within agile, and yourself, as you move from mindset to consciousness, guided by the always thought-provoking Jean Richardson.
—April K. Mills, author of Everyone is a Change Agent