The Yin and Yang of Organisations

As within, so without.

I’m involved in setting up a new organisation within the SEEDS ecosystem. ( I wrote about SEEDS last week, and it seems I succeeded in conveying my excitement, but may have lost some folks with the details. Fear not — I will be unpacking various aspects of SEEDS over the coming weeks, and hopefully all will become clear.) Initiating a new organisation — with its own unique culture — raises a lot of really interesting questions, including something I am really passionate about: the need for yin/yang balance.

This is something I have thought about a lot, and wrote about in my doctoral dissertation. When an organisation is setting out to generate social change, it is important that it should be the change it wants to see in the world. (Same goes for individuals setting out to generate change.) There has to be integrity between what it is saying and what it is doing, or it just doesn’t work. (See what I wrote about As Within, So Without, and my all-time favourite leadership story, about Christiana Figueres.)

So, because SEEDS is all about regenerating our ailing ecosystems and communities, reducing economic inequality, and building the brave new regenerative civilisation, it feels absolutely crucial that it develops a healthy balance between yin and yang. If you believe, as I do, that our current problems of…