Quiet Leadership: The Organisation as Ecosystem

Today i am #WorkingOutLoud to share more of the emerging illustrations from the Quiet Leadership work: this one explores the ‘Organisation as Ecosystem’, a theme i have circled around from a number of directions in my broader work, but which i position at the centre of this journey.

The premise is that, beyond the formal structure, our Organisations behave like ecosystems, with each piece both drawing upon, and impacting upon, the others. Through these myriad interactions, meta-effects emerge (like ‘culture’). The ecosystem idea also allows me to bring in a central context of individual vs collective responsibility: we can each, through gentle action, care for one part of the forest, but none of us can tend for it all. Or to put it another way, all of us tend to it all: we can only sustain a healthy ecosystem if our energy and activity is aligned within a common framework of care. This allows us a view that our actions do not need to be identical, but they must be aligned.

This work forms part of the broader Quiet Leadership Journey: a free programme that i am prototyping, based around ‘conversations with strangers’, over a four week journey. You can sign up here if you are interested in making this journey in 2021.