One of the founding pillars of Adventures with Agile is building relationships with incredible people around the world. When we were introduced to Michael Sahota through the amazing, kind nature of the worldwide agile community and power of social media, his positively captivating energy and enthusiasm immediately resonated with us. Once connected, we realised we shared many values that underpin the work that we do, including:
People over Process enable us to make decisions that optimise our people to succeed in solving complex adaptive problems.
Leadership go First to make any sort of large-scale change that has a real lasting impact, the leadership i.e. Senior Stakeholders (exec/board) need to be on board and prepared to change too.
Shift of Consciousness organisational culture that has people over process, means changing the way we show up to work. The result is better teams, better products, and a better working life.
Given our shared values and vision for change, we made plans to run Michael’s Certified Agile Leadership (CAL1) training here in London, recorded a podcast on Leadership, and hosted an evening meetup on “Inviting Organisational Growth” at YOOX-Net-A-Porter (watch online).
Within just a few weeks of announcing the CAL1 courses, all 3 dates sold out in January, March and June. We believe it is one of the most transformative 2 days of agile training that you can currently attend; so, it’s not surprising that Michael is now the number 1 trainer of the Certified Agile Leadership training worldwide, having taught over half of its graduates.
“Transformational. Rewarding. Its not about the process, it’s about the goals. I learned to listen and focus on myself: how I show up. I loved the safe environment, trust, respect and customization of course content.” – Chris Gullet, AVP Enterprise Platforms
The CAL course is a journey, an experience, and evolves according to the participants and processing that Michael and his wife & coach Audree bring to the 2 days. No two CAL classes are the same as it keeps on evolving. As most CAL1 graduates discover, this is not a class about organisational change or agile. Rather, it’s a deep, deep look at who YOU are and what YOU bring to the world, be it work or otherwise. Of course, Michael shares his experience and insights into organisational “transformation” but what’s most important is the rare opportunity this course offers for people to take a real look at who they are now, where they want to go and the different tools they can use to help shape how they show up to work each day. As a result, most AWA consultants have attended this class as we see it as vital in one’s overall ability in organisational change. Three of our consultants have shared their experiences on our latest podcast. You can hear what they felt and discovered here.
We urge anyone involved in organisational change to attend Michael’s class.
Fast forward to today… Michael and Simon have developed a deep friendship, unearthing some of the ways that we can work together to shift the consciousness of the world’s big corporates, making life better for the people who work there.
Our first experiment is for Adventures with Agile to start organising and marketing more of Michael’s CAL1 and CAL2 programmes in and outside of the UK. This means AWA will now be responsible for the logistics and marketing for most of the CAL training that takes place in Europe and Northern America. With the first of these training dates confirmed for Dublin on the 2nd and 3rd November, during the Scrum Gathering conference!
This is a huge opportunity for AWA training, providing us with not only the opportunity to continue working with Michael on a global scale but to also take steps in establishing Adventures with Agile in more cities and countries across the world. We have always had the ambition to embed change on a global scale, so it’s hugely exciting that we now have the capacity to build the infrastructure to support our vision.
See all upcoming dates for Certified Agile Leadership training here.
World First – CAL2:
We’re also running the world’s first ever CAL2 programme, which is available exclusively to Michael’s CAL1 graduates. CAL2 is a deep dive into the concepts of the CAL1 that includes practical role-playing experiences and advanced personal growth skills. It also covers additional material that builds on CAL1 around organizational evolution and high performance. In CAL1 people learn about the playbook; in CAL2 people clear away their blocks so they can operate it more fully. This programme is designed to run over a 4-month period, starting in October.
“Working with Michael over the last year has been a beautiful and inspiring journey, both for me personally and for AWA. Having had the opportunity to attend most of Michael’s CAL1s in London I have seen first-hand how transformational his class is, both for myself and for other attendees. Subsequently, the learnings from Michael have not only been of enormous benefit to me, AWA and our consultants but for our clients too. We’re very excited about what the future brings and look forward to being able to take this class to Dublin, NYC and San Jose over the next few months.” – Simon Powers, Adventures with Agile
“When I started working with Simon a year ago, I had no idea how amazingly things would evolve. We discovered a deep connection in how we see ourselves and how we are using Agile as a way to shift how people work on the planet. A deeper collaboration made total sense to us since we have such deep alignment on our vision. I am very excited for how we will be able to more effectively reach executives, managers and Agile coaches to create deep and lasting change.” – Michael Sahota – Agilitrix
Watch this space for more news and developments as they happen!