As we face increasing systemic challenges, fast-shifting consumer patterns, complex global-and-local supply chains, and inter-connected wicked problems, we find the 20th century ‘organisation-as-machine’ is giving way to the 21st century ‘organisation-as-living-system’. With it comes a profound shift in how we lead, relate, partner-up and perform. There is much we can learn from the living systems of nature and its 3.8billon yrs of R&D. One over-arching principle is that of divergence, convergence and emergence. Divergence is a diversification, a celebration of diversity and difference. In practice this means opening up artificial boundaries between departments within the organisation and opening up stakeholder […]

Guest blog by Steve Jones, PhD I’m pleased to be designated Faculty at the Future Fit Leadership Academy. Allow me to introduce a concept that meshes well with the spirit and purpose of FFLA. As a forester and doctoral-trained applied ecologist, and a former university CEO, I am devoting my life to championing the cause of nature-inspired learning and leading. My ultimate intent is to enhance lives and enterprise success, even as my efforts sow the seeds for responsible Earth stewardship. FFLA has a parallel mission. Nature-inspired learning and leading accepts and promotes that every lesson for living, learning, serving, […]

We are in the midst of a metamorphic period of change unlike anything the world has seen since the Late Middle Ages. With “meta” (meaning “form”) and “morph” (meaning “change”), the word suggests the transformative change in form of human institutions now emerging as we awaken to the realities of climate change and the destruction of ecosystems we have long relied upon for our survival. As the organisation specialist Peter Drucker insightfully said, ‘In times of turmoil, the danger lies not in the turmoil but in facing it with yesterday’s logic’. Nowhere is this metamorphic change more evident than in […]

It is now clear to many leaders, managers and change agents that we need a new way of operating. Yet, so often we seek solutions ‘out there’, a new way that has been invented elsewhere, packed-up, tried-and-tested and ready for us to buy off-the-shelf so we can solve our problems: a silver-bullet, a cook-book approach that, with enough budget, senior management buy-in and will-power, we can implement – job done, tick, move-on, next! There is something within our psyche that definitely prefers the safe, tried-and-tested, well-documented, easy-to-follow, clearly illuminated straight road ahead. But life is not like that. And things […]