Over the past three years, we have been challenged to adapt, learn, and survive massive change. Here are just a few examples: Economic uncertainty and the uneven impact of economic recovery The pandemic Increased political division and uncertainty Ongoing climate...
Recently, there have been many things that could cause anxiety or fear in our lives. Elections, for example, took place in the United States last week. In the days and weeks prior, there was a lot of anxiety and fear as people used emotions to persuade voters. And,...
I visited Yellowstone National Park in the Spring of 1989 following wildfires that burned over 793,880 acres of forest in 1988. I was amazed by the amount of regrowth that had already occurred more proof that Nature is designed to regenerate. There are certain trees...
As I was filling up my water bottle this morning, I turned the faucet all the way up. The high water pressure caused my bottle to overflow. This wasted water was all because I was trying to fill up my bottle faster than it could accommodate. This observation was...
Kindness is underrated in our world today, but I believe it is a powerful force in an interdependent world. Once we shift our worldview to begin seeing our interrelatedness and connections, kindness reinforces and aligns with interdependence. I see kindness as a form...
Last week I wrote about the direct relationship between expectations and feedback in human systems. Nature uses feedback to evolve, but in human systems, feedback is triggered by not meeting expectations. This causes us to deflect feedback, or hinder it. As we...
It's critical to our evolution as humans and living organizations to pay attention to robust and diverse feedback. In Nature, feedback from the larger system triggers evolution and helps curb excess in a system. In human systems, however, there is a direct...
Organizations are focused on how to accomplish change - how to lead it and how to sustain it. In a recent blog, I wrote about the relationship between culture and change. I illustrated why we cannot think of our organizations as machines – especially when leading...
Last week I wrote about the interdependent relationship between culture and change to illustrate how our organizations should be viewed as systems, not machines. In a system, change works when a critical mass of people in a system can transcend the mindset of the...
What if we thought of our organizations as machines? Machines work best when everything stays the same. For example, when our car doesn’t start in the morning, we understand that something needs to be fixed. We take it to the mechanic, and there they diagnose the...