We showed up ready to have a conversation about the future of organizations. In our little corner of the world, we’d been musing on big, meaty questions such as…

“What do we want work to look like a decade from now?”
“What will the organizations of the future look like?”
“Who will design the operating models of the future?”

Instead, we observed a conversation that the revolved around the tools themselves and their immediate uses:

“Is your company using Copilot or Claude?”
“How are you managing token usage on your team?”
“How is AI saving you time in your personal life?”

The immediate-term focus of the conversation caught us a little off guard. But maybe it shouldn’t have.

We’ve written about it before: Leaders are so overwhelmed by the pace of change occurring right now. And in times like this, it’s normal to react with short-term thinking—to focus on what’s right in front of you, what can be fixed immediately, or what feels within your control.

Many of our current client conversations include discussions of overwhelm and exhaustion. Really smart, strategic leaders are already stretched thin—and with AI adoption, they are under pressure to move faster, solve problems quickly, and maximize efficiency. Sometimes the pressure comes from the outside: from their board, market and competitive forces, or their executives. But often it’s driven by their own mindsets, that have been cultivated and rewarded over decades (Speed wins! Adopt early! Show ROI!).

But this is risky. Under pressure to prioritize speed and productivity, we are seeing leaders lean on old tricks to address a new, emerging situation. They are approaching AI through the same lens of previous waves of automation. We think this is a miss.

Why AI is different

Generative AI, specifically, is a distinct kind of technology that presents distinct challenges compared to prior technologies. On a recent HBR podcast, Kate Niederhoffer outlined a few reasons why AI adoption in organizations is unique:

• AI’s deceptive mimicry: While AI is not human, AI has the ability to mimic human behavior and thought.

• AI decouples effort and quality: Prior to AI, effort used to be an indication of the quality of someone’s work. AI changes that, making it more difficult to discern when someone’s work is of a high caliber.

• The wide variety of ways people use AI: There is no prescribed protocol for how we use AI, and we use it across a range of professional and personal instances. This contributes to suspicion about people’s work outputs as well as their expertise.

• A natural language interface lowers the barrier to entry: Generative AI’s natural language abilities make it incredibly easy for most people to use, immediately. There is a much lower barrier to entry in using this technology vs. technologies before it.

We’ll add one more:

• The technology is self-emergent: AI improves itself over time, meaning that AI’s potential capabilities are neither known nor possibly controlled by humans.

When these factors converge, we have to recognize that successfully adopting AI in an organization depends on a million invisible things: norms, roles, relationships, processes, systems… all the things that dictate how work gets done. The technology and the people are deeply intertwined.

This is the trap we see: In order to move fast while under immense pressure, many organizations are approaching AI adoption with the same set of knowledge and tools that were used in prior tech adoptions. And the sneakiest part of this trap? It places the technology in the driver’s seat oven over the people. It perpetuates the feelings of exhaustion and overwhelm that leaders and workers are already experiencing. And AI does not get tired; does not experience emotions. So the trap continues.

Emerging thoughts on a way forward

Let’s get something out of the way: We are not experts on AI adoption in the workplace, and you should be very wary of anyone who tells you that they are.

But we do have some pretty deep expertise in how organizations develop and adopt new ideas, and we’ve spent the past two years observing how a wide range of organizations are approaching AI adoption.

Our view is that AI adoption in organizations requires considering additional contexts in addition to the technology:

• The organization: Its purpose, goals, systems and structures, ways of working, and cultural norms

• The people: The people who currently work in and with the organization, and their goals, motivations, desires, mindsets, skills, and capacities

• The technology: This technology is easily accessible, mimics human behavior and thought, has no prescribed use case, and is self-emergent/self-improving

Healthy AI adoption requires recognizing that the organization, people, and technology are deeply intertwined in a way we haven’t fully experienced before—and we need to consider all three factors equally.

One helpful place to start is to treat AI adoption as an adaptive challenge. If you aren’t familiar, an adaptive challenge is one where the solution is unknown, and will require developing new mindsets, values, and behaviors. As strategy guides, pretty much every challenge we take on with our clients is adaptive in nature.

We have some specific ideas for how to do this. At risk of leaving you with a cliffhanger, on September 17, we are hosting a (free) webinar, where we’ll explore this challenge further and share some practical ideas for how to move forward. We’d love to have you.

We’re so worried that in February of this year, researchers Dr. Nadya Shaznay Patel and Dr. Jawn Lim developed the Anti-Futures Triangle as a means of naming and explaining why so many organizations are getting stuck in “strategic myopia.” Sarah introduced this framework in our two-part Substack series, Owning our Future.

Patel and Lim use physical descriptions to describe the three Anti-Futures vectors: there’s the push from an undesirable future, the pull towards the past, and the weight of the present. When occurring all at once, this push, pull, and weightiness can lock us in, with little ease of movement and no clear way forward.

It highlights a paradox: we are swiftly moving into an uncertain future even as we feel stuck in place.

AI has escalated this—particularly the pushy part. We’re tumbling forward with valid fears about AI’s human, environmental, and societal costs.

At the same time, there’s acknowledgement that critical thinking, problem-solving, empathy, and ethics will be vital abilities in the jobs of the future. These are human traits that AI can’t replicate with the same texture and discernment. But they have to be actively grown and developed. In an employer survey of 501 business executives, 78% said they’re looking for critical thinking in their new hires—but only 34% of college graduates arrive prepared with it.

We’re already seeing a sharp decline in internships. So here we are, looking around the triangle, asking the question: where can today’s curious young minds learn the mental ropes?

In the past, a strategy intern might have learned through conducting their own secondary research, looking for connections between ideas, and sussing out the difference between an observation and an insight. They might have been in meetings with more senior strategists, asking basic but important questions, like—why are we measuring that number? Why not this one? What matters here?

Today, if they can land an internship, a strategy intern is much more likely to be sitting with an AI chat window and honing a set of prompts. And that’s kind of a bummer. We’re beginning to understand that this creates an erosion in critical thinking skills, not an enhancement.

Taken to the nth degree, this points us toward an uncomfortable future. It’s one where we no longer know how to think—or dream or problem-solve or relate to one another. It’s a future where we don’t get opportunities to hone and trust our own intuitions, let alone write or research. It’s a future where we’re all a little less… human.

But—what if that’s not the future?

What if our future is actually more human? Humane? Creative? Lush? Full of trial and error and very human mistakes?

Come dance with me.

Some context: I’m a dancer. These days, in my 43-year-old-single-mom-and-business-owning body, dancing looks like meeting up with a collaborator once a month and making moody, meditative video dance art—based on a vision only he can see, and one that I’m delighted to participate in.

In my earlier years, while some of my goal-oriented peers were starting their strategy internships or applying to MBAs, I was making weird performance art in warehouses and learning the politics of corporeality. I was teaching teenagers, much to their chagrin, to feel and move their own organs and muscles and bones instead of copying shapes in the mirror. I was using the act of making choreography to search for physical connections—between ideas, between humans, between states of being.

The neuroscience of movement is clear: moving your body changes your brain. It triggers the growth of new neurons, new connections between neurons, and the release of BDNF: a protein called “miracle-gro for the brain.” Moving your body in ways that are unfamiliar change your brain even more. Whereas the brain can get used to familiar movement and automate it, novel movement like dance requires more neural effort. It’s one of the greatest gifts we can give our minds.

Neural effort is just the tip of the iceberg. It’s one thing to dance. It’s yet another thing to make dance. The mediums of bodies, minds, fabrics, lights, sounds, and space are full of potential and often unpredictable.

At its most basic, making a dance is an experiment in bringing something to life. To do it, you research, imagine, and prepare. You assess (and reassess) what’s possible, figure out where and how to exercise control, and find ways around the inevitable barriers that pop up. You relate to and with other people—the technicians, the stage managers, the dancers. Sometimes this is clean and sometimes it’s so, so messy. You learn to pay careful attention, lest you miss a happy surprise. You make decisions about what bring forward and what to let go of in service of where you’re going.

This is strategy. And that was my internship.

When I became a strategist, I had to learn the tools of the field. But I didn’t have to learn the thinking; I had already been practicing it.

Let’s go back to our future humans.

I’m not necessarily suggesting that weird warehouse dances are the internship of the future or the full antidote to AI brain rot (though, honestly, it’s not a terrible idea). But it does make me wonder: if, by force or by choice, we let go of the premise that critical thinking is honed at a desk with a computer, what changes?

What if strategy skill-building in the future is about seeing, hearing, and feeling connections out in the world? Learning how to facilitate people, organizations, and communities in their own environments? Creating tangible, touchable versions of insights? Discovering the intricacies of systems through our endlessly complex natural ones?

Let’s take the thought experiment even further. So—our interns are fumbling about in the woods collecting leaves and guiding conversations. Perhaps, in this future, our individual work output and our own self-value are not intertwined. Perhaps we are creative, critical thinkers because we choose to be. Perhaps dance is one of the joyful and valued ways we express our humanity and learn about each other. Perhaps society has deep respect for tending to things with one’s own hands. Our future humans enjoy rich mental interiors and strong relationships. There is shared wisdom. Clean water. Plentiful food. Laughter.

You are not a bystander.

As Sarah points out in Owning Our Future, many different futures are possible. But it takes work to recognize when the pervasive and insidious mindset that “the future happens to us” has set in. The reality, both bleak and hopeful, is that we make choices about what future we’re creating every single day.

And it is not easy to get into a mindset of possibility when so much is so foggy, so heavy, and so worrisome. When power and control feel so out of reach. Remember The Anti-Futures Triangle? It doesn’t just create a mental constraint; it puts us in an actual stasis where skepticism and cynicism are the default.

But if dance has taught me anything (and hoo, it’s taught me a lot), there is always a little wiggle room. And if you can find some space to move, all kinds of new futures open up.

I’ll leave you with this silly but serious request—take a few seconds to wiggle your body today.

And notice what happens, even briefly, in your precious and cherished human mind.

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Imagining Preferred Organizations

Imagining the organizations we prefer is a distinct act within futures thinking. We’re not trying to predict the future. Nor are we trying to plan how an organization may react to a range of plausible scenarios. This is also not an exercise in organizational design (please, please do not allow your futures thinking practice to spark a premature re-org!).

Rather, the task at hand is to imagine multiple, preferred future organizations that might enable your purpose at a selected future date—and then courageously choose one to pursue.

When done well, the result is a clear, shared ambition, along with an emerging hypothesis about how you might move towards your desired future. Said another way: The result is an organizational strategy you can put into practice.

There are quite a few concepts packed into the above, so let’s expand on them:

• Start with your purpose: No, we will not quote Simon Sinek. Yes, you should start by ensuring there is a reason your organization exists. What is the mission or purpose of your organization in the world? Futures thinking is a practice of considering how your organization may shape-shift in order to fuel your mission at a future date.

• Anchor your time horizon: Does your preferred future organization exist 5, 10, 25, or even 50 years out? We’ll say it: We tend to choose a 10-year time horizon. It’s a long enough arc to allow our minds to push the boundaries of possibility, yet it comes quickly. Ten years requires fast steps towards action.

• Who is at the table for this exercise? Futures thinking is not a solo activity. Its power comes from bringing people together to consider multiple versions of the future. Will your futures be envisioned by a small team of executives who share decision-making rights? Will you create a forum for all staff to consider and contribute? Will clients, customers, or shareholders have a voice? There is no one right set of people, but consider the implications of your selection. A good question to start with: Who are the communities that may help fuel your mission, and who are the communities you impact?

• Remember, an organization is a system: You are envisioning a system of interacting components. What are the goals of this system? Who or what is present there? How might the work flow? How might decisions get made? Who or what feels the impact of this system’s behaviors? Don’t get too hung up on designing all of the parts, but remember that change lives in the interconnections between them.

• Imagine in multiples: This practice requires expansive thinking, and we love it for that (you can read more about why in our strategy field guide). We encourage you to deliberately explore multiple scenarios for your organization. Before you get attached, visit each one. Stay for a while. Look around. Each scenario is a muse that offers inspiration and implications, not the goal.

• Prioritize preferences even over predictions: We’re making a deliberate case to focus energy on preferred futures. This means noticing signals of changes both inside and outside your organization, and cross-referencing those with the conviction of your purpose or mission. Shift the group’s energy from the gravitational pull of the past, and towards the promise of the future you want to work in together.

• Invite play: This isn’t overtly mentioned earlier, but in my experience, futures thinking is most effective when we cultivate space for imaginative play. Using our imaginations to play is a distinctly human act. It is also how we experiment and learn. Unfortunately, most of us don’t usually have permission to play at work. But imagining and enacting the future requires that we deliberately create spaces where it is safe to explore, disagree, experiment, and fail.

Emerging Evidence

We know that activities like futures thinking have a tendency to be dismissed as luxurious thought experiments. But there is emerging evidence this is exactly the type of activity leaders need to make space for during times of rapid change and uncertainty.

Just last month, The Wharton School of Business published a study of gaming studios experimenting with AI adoption. They observed four stages of AI adoption. In stage one, organizations introduced LLMs and stopped there. In stage two they attempted to introduce new workflows. In stage three, AI produced knowledge that previously required multiple teams to work together, changing how collaboration occurred.

But it was only at stage four that these studios experienced impactful productivity gains. At stage four, the studios essentially practiced futures thinking: They wiped the slate clean and asked, “What is the ideal organization we want, if we let go of how the present and past are dragging us down?”

The studios that imagined their preferred organization from scratch saw leaps in productivity. Of 20 interviews, only three studios reached this stage. The differentiator was not the technology. It was the willingness to design forward, to a desired future, rather than from a current state.

Where to Begin

The leaders who successfully navigate this moment will share a trait: They’ll have moved from reactive adoption (keeping up with AI news and chasing the tool of the week) to intentional design (clarity on their preferred future and a disciplined path toward it).

If you are following “future of work in the age of AI” discourse at all, you are likely familiar with Block’s recent experiment in org design. In some ways, Jack Dorsey is practicing futures thinking here: He’s imagining one preferred future organization, and then running experiments large and small to nudge Block in its direction.

While I don’t know if the Block team explored multiple preferred futures before selecting one to move towards, I can appreciate that, at its core, this is a very real application of futures thinking in effort to create a new type of organization. And if you don’t like the future Dorsey is building, remember that the act of futures thinking is not owned by Block, Sequoia, nor anyone in Silicon Valley. We can each take agency through our own actions.

And that is the point I’d like to leave you with: The organizations that thrive in 2036 will be the ones whose leaders make deliberate choices today about what they want to become tomorrow. 🔮

Picture it. It’s 2036. Work these days looks quite different than it did ten years ago…

Perhaps you are an expert contributor in a global network of independent workers. This network assembles world-class teams of individuals to address complex challenges, assigning you to work on behalf of a diverse range of organizations. The network covers the administrative challenges of self employment, along with providing stability though health insurance and parental leave. You feel financially stable while getting the opportunity to learn from a wide variety of people, all while experiencing the freedom of working for yourself—a balance you did not believe was possible a decade ago.

Or, you are part of a tightly aligned organization tackling a problem you care deeply about, such as climate health, healthcare access, or education equity. There are only five of you on the team, but your scale of impact is outsized. You provide a service that generates healthy annual revenue—and because your overhead is minimal, most of your revenue is directly invested into the system you are passionate about changing. You and your colleagues each bring unique expertise along with a generalist mindset; you are constantly learning from each other. Every day, you get to work closely with this group of brilliant minds who are making an impact in an area you care about.

Or maybe you are loving corporate life at one of the world’s largest technology enterprises. While you are one of tens of thousands of employees, the work is fulfilling in a manner you could have never imagined possible at such a large organization. You are part of a small team of cross-functional builders responsible for a specific service. While your team shares progress updates with an equally lean board of directors, as long as you stay focused on your mission and long-term goals, you have the autonomy to run as an independent business. In many ways it feels like you work as a company of 10 employees, but with the resources of one of the world’s largest companies.

Or, are you working to live as a member of the largest employee-owned-and-operated gig platform? In this scenario, you split your time between coaching executives, substitute teaching, and caregiving for your aging parents. While these environments are quite different, the skills require overlap. Your employer understands this and matches you with interesting opportunities that suit your sometimes limited availability. As an owner-operator, you sit on the company board and chair the benefits committee. You are particularly excited about the new approach to disability benefits that the company is rolling out next month.

Welcome to the future.

Whew. We hope you enjoyed that quick trip to 2036.

What did reading each of these scenarios make you think about?

What did each one make you feel?

What you just encountered was a version of futures thinking. And not just at a societal level. You experienced the concept of futures thinking applied to the future of organizations.

What is Futures Thinking?

Let’s establish some basics: Futures thinking is the ability to develop an awareness of the future and then (importantly!) integrate that awareness into how we make choices.

We all possess some consciousness of the future already. Every day, in small and big ways, we each consider what future we want and plan how we might move ourselves towards it.

Futures thinking is a broad practice with a multitude of applications big and small. Its most common application is as a strategic tool to better understand patterns, consider a range of possible emerging futures, make choices, and ultimately take actions to achieve preferred outcomes.

The Future of Organizations: An Underdeveloped Arena

When writing and visiting the above futures, I experienced my own spark of optimism, a cynic’s snark, and a bit of affirmation that I am indeed on the right path for me. These were welcome emotions in my present, 2026 state. Why?

Everywhere I turn, there is a sense of overwhelm about the present that butts up against impending anxiety about the future. There’s a gravitational pull towards nostalgia for a simpler time (if *that* ever existed). In my experience, huge swaths of our society are living in the “Anti-Futures Triangle”, where overwhelm and fear take over, shutting down our collective ability to imagine a future we desire.

This current state is unsustainable. It’s exhausting. Perhaps most threatening, it’s a state where we allow the future to happen to us.

It’s not only individuals living in the Anti-Futures Triangle. It’s organizations. Most organizations are simply not considering their long-term futures in any meaningful capacity. According to the World Economic Forum, “64% of major firms plan no further than five years ahead, while only 1.2% extend their long-term strategic planning beyond a decade.”

For those that do explore long-term futures, they stop short of considering the actual organization. Consider BCG’s recent “Beyond Tomorrow” report: They present four scenarios for the world in 2050, built on a century of data and trends analysis. For leaders, their recommendation is to “prepare for multiple futures and act to shape them before the direction of the world is clear.”

Their scenarios describe worlds that could happen to organizations, but not with organizations. They don’t explore important questions: What kind of organizations do we actually want to exist in the future? What kind of organizations will contribute to a future society we prefer?

From our research, this is the pattern across most futures thinking occurring right now. While we fret about the present state of organizations, the futures of these organizations are not being thoroughly considered or examined. Our point of view is that they should be.

In part two of this thought experiment, we explore how to imagine preferred organizations and why this work is a critical undertaking.

A leader who is tasked with navigating near-constant change and has found themselves stuck reacting to present challenges, with no clear vision of what’s ahead or the capacity to lift their gaze

A leadership team with great intentions but misaligned perspectives, running endless strategic planning cycles in an effort to create shared clarity

Both of these scenarios make perfect sense. We’re living through a period of great technological, social, and political transformation. And in times of great change, it’s normal to react with short-term thinking—to focus on what’s right in front of you, what can be fixed immediately, or what feels within your control.

But right now, we really need leaders who have a point of view on where they want to go long-term, not just through the next strategic planning cycle. We need leaders who can envision the broader terrain and bravely make choices about where to focus.

In this moment, we need leaders who understand what great strategy is, and are capable of building, leveraging, and adapting strategy.

It’s probably no surprise that we have some *thoughts* about how to do the above. In our roles as strategy guides, we have the ongoing benefit of facilitating, experiencing, and observing strategy approaches across organizations, sectors, industries, and dynamics. This position has enabled us to see how common it is for a team to need a shared concept of strategy—and a place to start.

So last fall, we put together a Strategy Field Guide. It includes our perspective on what strategy is (and, importantly, what it isn’t), why it feels like such a struggle right now, how to recognize if it’s needed, and six specific methods for practicing it.

It walks readers through a deceptively simple definition (spoiler: we believe a strategy is a hypothesis) and challenges some of the assumptions leaders often make when taking on strategy development in times of change.

Importantly, it includes a guide to a set of real practices that help teams arrive at clear strategies they can feel confident about pursuing, learning about, and adapting.

If you could use a strategy pep talk, some clear language to articulate what might be missing in your organization, or if you simply nerd out on strategy like we do, make your way to the field guide, which has a permanent home on our site.

Strategy can feel overwhelming, especially amidst all the work going into maintaining today’s business. But with the right methods and mindsets, we find that it can be fulfilling, satisfying, and honestly pretty delightful.

If you need a partner to work through a strategy with you or you have thoughts about the field guide that you’d like to share with us, please get in touch.

At the end of a work-session, the future direction of the business seemed clear. The executive team was excited. It would require some significant changes throughout the organization, but they were committed to taking them on. Yet a subtle but significant blocker stood in the way: one executive didn't seem on board. They understood the team's enthusiasm and didn't fully share it. This came through in moments of silence, facial expressions, and the subtle language of “I need some time to think."

As facilitators, we had a choice: We could push the emerging barrier under the rug, hoping it disappeared. Or we could bring it out in the open and unpack it. Doing so would derail the intended outcome of the session we were there to facilitate. But an adaptive challenge was emerging. Shining a light on it was the only way to truly commit this leadership team to a shared desired future.

At Mess Hill, we help organizations and teams reach strategic clarity by actively engaging them in the process. We hold them accountable to unpacking their current situation, identifying underlying barriers to change, exploring possible directions, making choices, and seeing those choices through.

Working in this manner allows us to make space for the adaptive challenges that so frequently emerge during strategy work. Rather than ignoring the beneath-the-surface dynamics that are mission critical to achieving a business’s goals and ambitions, we ask teams to examine how their mindsets, beliefs, and values may also need to change in order to make a new direction a reality over the long-haul.

Over the past few years, we’ve developed four practices to help teams identify and face adaptive challenges alongside the work of strategy. (H/t to Lisa Lahey and Robert Kegan’s work in this space!) On their own, some of these practices center individual barriers while others center group dynamics. Collectively, they support the holistic system.

Shine a light on elephants in the room

A team of executives is leading a company-wide transformation. Half the team is tired—they’ve been on a change treadmill for years, with twists and turns coming their way at a relentless pace. The other half is new to the org, filled with energy, and cannot understand why their colleagues are so pessimistic. Everyone on the team feels the imbalance but they have no constructive way to talk about it, so the elephant looms in every room, ambiguously holding them back.

This first practice is all about what Lisa Lahey calls “observation before action.” A step that can frustrate those who are eager for quick fixes, it’s about slowing down to gain a shared understanding of the current situation and “shine a light” on blind spots, competing priorities, and hidden intentions that hide in plain sight. As a result of this step, teams begin talking about the values, behaviors, and thus root barriers to change they’ve been ignoring or suppressing (barriers that will continue to show up if unaddressed).

With a shared understanding of behaviors and the mindsets that underpin them, teams can move one step closer to taking on the adaptive challenges that hold them back. But it's only the beginning. Once the elephants are visible, it’s time to create the right conditions for change.

Get clear on decision making power

A team of leaders at a small non-profit is about to start a new round of strategic planning. The team has employed the same process year after year, resulting in dozens of goals backed by upwards of 20+ strategies. Their plans are beautifully ambitious, but the impact is often the same: A few goals are met, while many more remain untouched. Clearly, the organization is falling down on execution, right? Or is the root problem something else?

Frequently with strategy work, determining who holds decision-making power is either unclear or it goes assumed without an explicit conversation. The leaders described above operate in a highly consensus-driven organizational culture without a clear hierarchy. There is an assumption that their goals and strategies must be agreed upon by everyone on their leadership team. The result? Some tough and important choices go ignored. The organization chases everything and nothing progresses.

When teams take time at the outset of an engagement to get real about who holds decision-making power (and the responsibility that comes with it), they set themselves up to make choices that result in meaningful progress.

Get to know your relationship with risk

The path forward seemed obvious. So obvious that no other options were ever in discussion. And yet, progress had stalled. The team responsible for recommending a direction forward still met frequently, but meetings quickly devolved into naming the concerns about what might happen when it was finally enacted. How would they ever progress when the hypothetical risks were such effective blockers?

We say this one a lot: Strategy is a choice. Are you heading north, south, east, or west? You cannot go each direction or you will surely walk in a circle. But with choice comes risk. By choosing to head north together, you are saying no to other opportunities.

Often, a team's relationship with risk is a specific type of elephant in the room. It can either hinder a choice from being made or send a team too far down a single path without careful examination. One way to surface it is to purposefully identify multiple options and explore the implications of each one. In addition to uncovering potential opportunities, this exploration enables a team to get real about the beliefs held by individuals (or the entire group) that will influence decision-making down the road.

Recognize the habits that hold you back

It was not this CEO’s first rodeo. They had experience successfully leading transformations at other companies. But the practices that worked beautifully in past roles seemed to only create confusion and stress with their current team. When they sensed resistance, they found themselves doubling-down on old habits, which only reinforced the team stress. What was going on?

By definition, at the root of most adaptive challenges is the need to change our beliefs. Yet, beliefs often rear their heads via our behaviors. In other words, old habits are really just a symptom of our belief systems, conscious or otherwise. And it takes a lot of effort to be both aware of these beliefs and how they influence our actions.

This means old habits often show up during times of stress, when our capacity is vulnerable. And you guessed it: Those old habits are frequently on display during high-stakes strategy and transformation work, even amongst the most well-intentioned leaders. This is where 1:1 support can be particularly effective. Utilizing a coaching practice alongside strategy work creates a separate, constructive space to identify habits, understand why they emerge, and build remedies to address them.

When we get beneath the surface and unpack why we do what we do, we invite ourselves and our teams to sustain change for the longhaul. That leadership team from the very beginning? They took the time to pause and process before proceeding. The result is a strategy that is clear, ambitious, impactful and—critically—one the entire team is committed to progressing together. ✨

On January 2nd, 2021, I resigned from my workplace of seven years over Zoom. I was a new parent. I was pregnant again. There was a pandemic. I worked with incredible humans on complex challenges. And new parents with great jobs during pandemics don’t just walk away.

But it was a resignation I had been putting off for years. I knew I wanted to work for myself but I was scared of what the leap would bring. I believed in my skills and my network but I wasn't confident in my ability to handle the uncertainty of entrepreneurship. I understood the path forward would hold some falls I wasn't excited to face. So I had been staying in the good job I was growing out of. I had been leaning back and accepting complacency when I was ready to grow.

This hesitation to leave is what Lisa Lahey calls our “immunity to change.” While my intentions were clear, my behaviors were in conflict with where I wanted to go.

From Mess Hill’s work with leadership teams, I know I’m hardly alone in this conflict. We all have immunity to change—it’s part of who we are as humans—and yet I find we don’t talk about it much in personal or work contexts. And we should.

When an organization (remember, an organization is simply a system of people!) is going through change, its leaders and staff need both new skills and new mindsets. Building both at the same time is incredibly exhausting, complex work. As a result, our tendency is to focus on the more technical skills needed to progress change.

Technical skills can be easily identified, outsourced, and implemented. They address problems with clear solutions, where the work is to call upon expertise and processes that move us from problem to solution. Creating a website to launch a new business. Developing a research report. Creating a financial forecast.

Adapted from Ronald A. Heifetz & Donald L. Laurie, “The Work of Leadership”

But by focusing our attention only on technical skill-building, we ignore the most necessary and influential part of change: mindsets. This makes it far too easy to revert back to where we were. We might know the destination but we don't progress on the journey. We are immune to change, regardless of our intentions to enact it.

Ashleigh and I see this play out all the time with clients whose intentions are gold. A leadership team committed to repairing trust amongst themselves reverts back to assuming missintent. A founder wants to retire but doesn't, because they cannot untangle their own identity from the organization's. An executive seeks to empower a team of rising leaders, but undermines the team's ownership through old, bad habits. Examine the change initiatives you’ve been privy to in your own workplace. Do you see these patterns at play? Once you know how to spot them, friends, they are everywhere.

Building the skills to work through adaptive challenges is much more complex work. Why is this the case?

First, adaptive challenges require us to engage with our humanity. And we are not very practiced at doing this, nor encouraged to do so, particularly in western-oriented work environments. Many of us have spent large portions of our careers in workplaces that undermine, undervalue, and outright dismiss adaptive challenges as the “soft” or “emotional” stuff. In actuality, shifting values and mindsets is incredibly challenging work that, if ignored, will only undermine the “hard” goals and strategies of a business.

Second, addressing adaptive challenges requires us to build new muscles, which takes time and practice. Understanding why an adaptive challenge perpetuates and how to move through it requires vulnerability and honest self-reflection into one’s beliefs, values, and behaviors. It requires holding complexity and tension between what can feel like opposing ideas. Progress and swirl can look markedly similar. That team of leaders struggling with trust? They named the issue together and why it occurred: A step forward. But then old habits creeped back in during a moment of uncertainty: A step back. They found the courage to talk about when and why trust breaks: Another step forward. But another old habit left the team questioning everything and wanting to throw all their progress out the window.

It’s messy and exhausting work—and is it really worth it?

The answer is yes. The upshot is there. When a team of leaders with diverse skills and experiences are able to trust one another? New ideas unfurl. When that founder discovers themself beyond the business they built? An organization evolves for the better under a new generation of leadership. When that executive who seeks to empower gives clear direction to their leaders, then steps back? Innovative new products emerge that bring an ambitious strategy to life.

Grappling with adaptive challenges requires us to engage what makes us human: our emotions, our values, our behaviors, and our mindsets. Our ability to think critically and creatively, both alone and in partnership with others. When we grapple with adaptive challenges, creativity and innovation take hold. We get to the root of an issue, our mindsets evolve, new solutions emerge, and we are able to sustain change for the long-haul.

We can only reach our ambitions when we make space for humanity in our work. For me, Mess Hill is only possible because I’ve embraced holding my own fears with care and confidence.

This concept has powerful applications for organizations. In their most direct form, organizations are groups of people who work together to achieve a desired outcome. When people are depleted or simply maintaining, they aren’t able to critically engage with the challenges and opportunities ahead of them. 

To understand regeneration in action, our clearest teacher can be our natural environment. While nature offers endless tutelage, what follows are five simple lessons rooted in navigating complexity, restoring and protecting health, and creating dynamic organizational environments. Some of these are most clearly applicable to leaders, but there’s a seedling in here for everyone. 🌱

1. One single part of a system doesn’t understand it all. 

Because of the intricate interconnectivity of all the components in a system, it’s nearly impossible to experience it holistically. Imagine how a bee experiences a field of wildflowers from above versus how a worm experiences it from underground. They have wildly different interpretations of the same system; their interactions with it are complex, yet their perspectives are limited by what they experience most often.

See it in action: Pick a tree to explore. Walk around it. Notice its height, structure, and how the leaves move in the breeze. Then lie down with your head near its trunk (being mindful of sap and bird poo) and look up into its branches. What do you notice from here? Does it appear to move differently? What’s the shape of its bark? What are you observing now that you didn’t see on your walk-around? 

Apply it: Remember that your perspective on your organization is guided by your experience. Shifting perspectives can be as simple as quite literally looking at something from a new angle. Find opportunities to give yourself a new experience of your organizational system, whether it’s looking at a challenge in a fresh way or seeking out those with different perspectives. 

Elder millennials may remember when the tiny kids in Honey I Shrunk the Kids befriended an ant and got a whole new perspective on their lawn. Befriend the ants in your org. 

2. Adaptation happens. 

Adaptation is either purposeful and mindfully shaped or it occurs by default—but it’s never not happening. In nature, adaptation can be long-term and inheritable, but we also see it on shorter-term timeframes, over weeks and months, not just generations and eons. 

Conditions dictate adaptation—from the availability of nutrients and the presence of wind, rain, and other plant and animal life, to man-made structures, impediments, and natural disasters. Things thrive, morph, and die as conditions change. 

See it in action: Notice a tree adapting to or absorbing an object in its path (for the joyful nerds out there, this is called “edaphoecotropism”). Once you start looking for plant adaptations, you might see them in more places and within more species than you think.

Apply it: Be purposeful about the environment you create in your organization. There are some conditions you can’t control: you don’t know how the weather will impact your shipments, what your competitors will do next quarter, or how the overall economy will function a year from now. But there are many conditions you do have a hand in shaping, no matter where you sit in your org. The more strategic you are about creating internal conditions, the less impactful the outside ones will be.

An example of edaphoecotropism from “Why do Trees Eat Things” by Carved by Curiosity

3. Soil needs protecting.

Bare soil can’t stay healthy. When it’s exposed, soil becomes dry, depleted, and easily eroded as its microbial structure breaks down. Once this happens, it’s not a good medium for growth or a healthy house for life. Humans sometimes try to fix depleted soil by “turning it over” and manually mixing it with air, water, and fertilizer. But the best remedy is to feed it and protect it from the top. Covered soil can store nutrients and boost microbial activity, creating structural integrity and storing carbon and water.

Feel it in action: Find a patch of exposed dirt and pick up a little scoop. Rub it between your fingers. Then find a patch of covered soil (this might be as simple as moving a small pile of dead leaves that’s inevitably pooled against a building somewhere near you) and do the same thing. How does this soil feel different? How does it look and smell different?

Apply it: Protect yourself like soil. You can’t be innovative or foster growth if you are constantly exposed to the elements. If you are a leader in an organization, understand that you function as metaphorical coverage for your teams as well. Ensuring that you are healthy becomes even more important. Don’t wait until you are fully depleted to try and bring yourself back to life.

A side-by-side of protected vs. unprotected soil, from a 2022 USA Today story on the benefits of cover crops

4. Life attracts life.

Sometimes it only takes a tiny patch of something to create an entire biome. It often starts with a little bit of water. Where there’s water, there are plants. Where there are plants, there are insects. Insects, birds. Birds, mammals. You get the picture. 

See it in action: For an incredibly striking visual example of this, search for “half-moon bunds.” It’s a technique of harvesting rainwater in arid areas, where rain is scarce and irregular. These bunds result in lush, “smiling” oases across what appeared to be dead landscapes. For a closer-to-home example, look around for spots near you holding standing water and notice what happens in and around those little pools. (Yes, you might see fungus and bugs. This is life!)

Apply it: You can be metaphorical (or maybe even actual) “life” in your organization, organically spurring new ways of working and thinking. This might look like adjusting your participation in meetings from listening and responding to asking and inviting. Or noticing when you feel reenergized throughout the day—and when you feel depleted—and getting curious about why that might be. What’s the precursor to those moments? Who or what are your life-feeders? 

An example of water bunds from Planet Wild’s video, “A Genius Way to Restore Dead Soil” 

5. Healthy natural systems are loud. 

Have you ever noticed the eerie quietness that blankets the streets right before a tornado siren goes off? (If this feels like a niche reference, come and visit us in the Midwest!)

In nature, the absence of sound often means that something is amiss. On the other hand, lots of different noises are a signal that a system is healthy and thriving. Think whooshing, buzzing, trilling, munching, hooting, and rustling. Sometimes natural noise can sound like music and other times it’s pure cacophony. But it never sounds sterile or empty. 

Hear it in action: Go for an evening walk and look for a spot with multiple plant species present all together. Ideally, this spot includes some blooming plants. Stop, close your eyes, and listen. How many unique noises do you think you can identify? 

Simple lesson: Embrace the metaphorical noise in your organization. Begin to distinguish the sounds of healthy, diverse, multi-species chatter from the often distracting and singular volume produced by those jockeying for a microphone. Lots of noise can feel messy at times but it can also be a signal that things are working. 

A photo of my yard from last summer; one of the noisiest yards on the block

A tiny tip? Start small. 

If you find yourself overwhelmed by All The Things right now, just remember the potential of a seed. The above lessons are small ways you can connect with different ideas and bring them into your work, your interactions, and your organization overall. If something specific resonated with you, share it with your colleagues and let them plant new seeds as well. When many seeds are planted, incredible things can grow. 

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Who’s “we?” Sarah Herberg and Ashleigh Penrod. Strategy colleagues for over a decade, today we are formally and finally business partners. Over the last four years, we each built our own consulting practices and kept returning to one another as collaborators, combining our strengths to step into messes together and help our clients find clear pathways forward.

As we make our partnership official and join forces under a new moniker, we’re merging the best of our worlds: Sarah’s ability to unite strategy and learning to help organizations sustainably navigate change, and Ashleigh’s commitment to creating regenerative systems that improve, revive, and restore themselves over time.

Together, we guide leaders, teams, and organizations through complexity to make clear, strategic decisions while teaching them how to navigate the future on their own.

This can mean working with teams who find themselves stuck or swirling, organizations that are facing complex problems or opportunities without a clear starting point, or leaders who see change on the horizon and want to get ahead of it.

Our continued goal is to help our partners see possibility, know what’s important, and learn how to navigate an unpredictable future with clarity, confidence, and groundedness. As we move forward, we’ll continue to bring the same rigorous and empathetic approach that we’re known for, alongside a combined 40 years of experience and experimentation.

We look forward to sharing more thinking, resources, and lessons learned with you, on topics like learning to work regeneratively, finding joy in messy challenges, and what strategy and organizational development can learn from each other.

Want to help us reach the right people? Encourage like-minded folks to subscribe. Don’t worry; we’re anti-inbox clutter.

Thank you for being part of this journey with us.

At this year’s retreat, I led a training session on organizational change. Poolside, a group of us talked about the incredible superpowers strategists have to influence change within agency and client systems.

While I cannot bring the pool to you, my hope with this post is to impart some of the beauty and magic change in organizations holds when we shift our perspectives a bit. So kick back, grab a floatie and a paleta, and let’s talk about how change happens…

When you hear the phrase “change management”, what comes to mind?

“M&A!”

“Transition in leadership!”

“A plan with many steps!”

“A re-org!”

“Layoffs!”

These were some of the answers offered during our poolside training session. Not a pretty picture, huh? If we look across these mental images, a few assumptions emerge. When many of us think about change management, we assume that change must be…

• Controlled: That change can be created, planned, and managed, typically by those with positional power

• Linear: That change follows a linear progression, one step at a time

• Objective: That there is one, single reality, shared by all

• Organization is Centered: That we are trying to change a business entity

Here is the thing: Every organization is a *system of people*, trying to achieve something together. Said another way, organizations are environments made up of many interrelated components. They are complex, filled with many moving parts, people, and perspectives. And while they cannot be controlled by one individual, because all components in an ecosystem are interconnected, one component can disrupt or disregulate the entire system.1

When we think about how organizations change, we gotta center our energy on how systems of people change.

A perspective shift

When we center the complexity of systems alongside what humans actually need in order to change, it shifts us to a new view on change:

• Controlled → Emergent: We accept that change is continuous, emergent, and cyclical over time, and that while we can encourage it, we cannot control it.

• Linear → Many Containers for Change: By embracing that change is emergent, the focus becomes creating multiple “containers”, or environments where we can name the change needed, practice it, and encourage it to emerge. Workshops, coaching sessions, hard conversations, a retreat…these are all containers for change.

• Objective → Multiple Truths: One person or department’s view is not the universal truth. All views, from various perspectives within the systems, can be true at once.

• Organization is center → People are center: To be clear, this doesn’t mean that individuals matter more than the organization. It means we embrace the reality that organizations are made up of people, so we must center on helping people change if we are to help an organization change.

A strategist's superpowers

Shifting our perspective on change can also spur a shift in how we view our own superpowers.

I spent many years as a brand strategist before I went back to school to study organizational development. Along the way, I had an ah-ha that strategists are already equipped to intuit a human-centered approach to change, but don’t always have a deep understanding of how change happens–or have the right language, frameworks, tools, and methods at their ready. But with a shift in understanding on how to leverage their skills, I’ve come to realize that strategists are uniquely equipped to support organizations in change.

With that in mind, I’d like to share five superpowers I believe strategists can leverage to help systems move through change. These can be applied to your own workplace as well as your clients' systems.

Regardless of whether your title includes the word "strategy," I imagine that many of you will recognize your own skills here.

1. You are an outsider present during transformational moments.

   Going back to school reminded me how unique it is to be part of an organization's change journey. Strategists are present during transformational moments, such as major shifts in leadership, mission, competition, performance, and processes. You can often see a system more clearly from the outside, and that outsider view offers us the opportunity to help people develop new mindsets, behaviors, skills, and ways of working when in these transformational moments.

2. You are comfortable leading with curiosity over expertise.

   Strategists are adept at leveraging our curiosity to solve challenges and unlock opportunity. We know the power of beginning with the right questions rather than trying to have the right answers. When you encounter change, be it in a client system or your own workplace, lean into that curiosity about culture, people, mindsets, and behaviors. Be in discovery mode for a while longer. Turn those assumptions and worries into questions.

3. You are adept at creating a shared picture of a complex situation.

   The strategists I know are pretty great at crafting compelling narratives. I personally spent much of my early career learning to build and share stories about culture, communities, and companies.

   In change work, there is another story to tell: the real current situation inside an organization. How might you use your narrative abilities to shine a light on that story, and enable people in the organization to have a productive conversation about it? It can feel uncomfortable, but offering a realistic picture of the current situation, along with the space to process and reflect, can be an incredible gift.

4. You know how to create environments where experimentation is welcome.

   Systems are complex with interrelated parts, and they do not change through one single move made in a perfectly timed moment. But we don’t always know what is going to work… and what will fall flat.

   Strategists are incredibly familiar and comfortable in experimentation mode. Every strategy is simply a hypothesis to be tested. So lean into your ability to discover, test, and learn. Change requires placing multiple bets and creating multiple environments where people can cultivate new behaviors, mindsets, and skills.

5. You understand, are curious about, and *love* people!

   Many of the best strategists I know stumbled into this career because they love humans and all their unique complexity. Don’t lose sight of the simple truth that organizations are systems of people. When you are uncertain, return to this important strength you have: The ability and desire to be curious about people, to understand what makes them tick, and to build ways forward that center understanding of the humans who make an organization tick.

At its heart, most brand strategy work is closely connected to change. Whether it’s helping an organization clarify its mission and vision, developing a product value proposition, or positioning a new brand, we are typically working with leaders during times of significant transformation in their organizations.

Yet, through much of my career in brand strategy, my teams and I didn’t really explore what the leaders and team members inside these organizations needed when navigating change. It’s such a paradox, really. As a field, brand strategy deeply explores how people think and behave. This human focus is what attracted me to the field in the first place. It centers people and their lived experience, uncovers value and meaning, and forges connections. But it can often leave the people managing change behind.

This realization led me to the practice of organizational development (OD). You might be asking, What the heck is OD? While there are multiple definitions, one resonates most with me: In OD, you are equipping people to more sustainably navigate change in the future, long after your work together ends. It’s a “teach a person how to fish” approach to consulting. If you are a consultant in the creative industry reading this, I am going to bet that you already have this capacity within you. But, it might not be something you are always aware of, or that you bring forward on every project, with every client relationship.

In that spirit, I’d like to share five lessons I’ve learned from the journey into OD that have transformed my relationships with clients. My hope is that they are simple reframes you can leverage to build healthier relationships with your clients. And for my client friends who are still reading along (bless you), my hope is that these lessons enable more consultants that meet you where you are, helping you and your organization move through the choppy waters of change with a bit more grace. 🌊

Your client is a fish in their water. 🐠

As a consultant, you have a unique superpower. Clients are inside their system, or organization. Often, that means they cannot see their whole environment clearly. Or, if they can, their position within the organization brings with it some biases that make it difficult to fully and honestly convey what they see to their colleagues. As an outsider, you are not in their system. This gives you a distinct perspective. You can see the water! Use this to your advantage.

One simple method to enable this is a feedback session. If you can, create a space to share with your client what you’ve observed about “their water.” Do this early on, before you jump into offering solutions. This is a simple way to strengthen the relationship from the outset, setting you up to be a valued, trusted partner.

Are you here to do or teach? 🧑‍🏫

Consulting often falls across a spectrum.

On one end we have diagnostic consulting. In a diagnostic engagement, the consultant shows up as an expert, there to ‘diagnose’ the problem and offer the client a solution. A lot of traditional consulting falls in this space, where you leverage expertise to deliver a solution or recommendation.

On the other end we have dialogic consulting. Dialogic is based on the theory that change in practice requires a change in mindset. This process is much more emergent: You are developing hypotheses, trying new things, seeing what works and what doesn’t, and trying again. You are helping to develop new perspectives, skills, capacities, and mindsets amongst your client, and embracing that people don’t just immediately change because you told them they need to. Coaching is quite dialogic, where the coach rarely (if ever) offers a recommended solution, but rather creates an environment for the client to reach a solution on their own.

Here is the thing: You do not need to commit to being one or the other! In some situations, your client needs an expert to give them concrete advice, asap. In other situations, they need to develop a new mindset or muscle. One powerful thing you can do is become aware of what a client needs, and then talk about it together. In my case, I’ll even use a version of this 2x2 to facilitate the discussion with them.

Name the tension & its positive effects 😡

Tension often exists when a team is stuck or swirling. It can present itself as a conflict between people, e.g. Jan, the CFO, thinks leadership needs to set forth a clear, ambitious vision for staff. Jim, the CMO, would like staff and leadership to co-create the vision, together.

As an outsider, you can see and appreciate both Jan and Jim’s perspectives. In some instances, your job is to advocate for one choice. But in many instances, Jan and Jim both have a good point, and the real magic occurs when they are able to lean into a third way that exists between their points of view.

This is called a polarity. A polarity is “a situation where two interdependent and seemingly contradictory states must be maintained for success over time”.1 Think: rest and activity. They seem to be opposites, but we need both to survive. Polarities are challenging for the human brain to hold — it can be mentally exhausting to hold things that seem to be opposites in your mind at the same time.

But, polarities have huge upsides. From polarities, new insights and ideas emerge. When we understand polarities and are able to lean into them, it unlocks creative force. When we know how to hold the tension, innovation blooms.

Learning about polarities helped me understand what a powerful capacity creative industry consultants have. Strategists and creatives, in particular, are attuned to seeing, holding, and navigating tension in a way our clients are not necessarily supported to do in their work environments.

So I’d encourage you to consider: how might you help your clients recognize the tension in various contexts and see its positive effects, but also recognize and validate that holding tension is hard work?

Are we there yet?! This work is groany. 🥴

When we’re navigating change, making strategic choices, or developing creative solutions, we must go beyond the comfortable and step into discomfort. It’s where progress happens. But sometimes it doesn’t feel great.

Take this visual. When a group of people is working through a complex topic or decision, they want it to feel this way, right?

But in reality, it feels this way:

The “groan zone”2 is that space of struggle that we step into when we allow for divergence and exploration. In the groan zone, we embrace uncertainty, explore what is possible, and try out possible scenarios or solutions. We’re experimenting and failing, debating and disagreeing, weighing our options together, and just sitting in the ambiguity a bit.

Like polarities, I think this is something a lot of creative minds are quite good at. But the groan zone can be unfamiliar (and even actively avoided) in some client systems.

In projects that require creativity and innovation, talk about the groan zone with your clients. And then… sit in it, together. Resist the urge to rush through it. Live in the groan zone and hold the tension together. I bet the outcome of your work will be that much stronger in the end. Oftentimes, I even use the groan zone visual to set up a workshop where we might be stepping into groan-inducing work together. Please feel free to leverage it for yourself.

You are the most important tool. Know your flashlight. 🔦

At the end of the day, clients hire us for who we are. No framework or methodology is more impactful than you. But knowing that also comes with responsibility.

Each of us brings our identity, lived experiences, areas of expertise, and biases into our relationships with clients. This is your “flashlight.” It lights up what you view and impacts how you see a situation. The point isn’t to push down or neutralize your flashlight, but to be aware that you’re carrying it around. Know that you are the most important tool in change, but also know that you bring biases and blindspots that need to be handled with care.

Major shoutout to the Organization Development Consulting & Change Leadership program at Georgetown, where I first learned about many of these concepts.

In that spirit, this year I compiled a list of my beloved *work adjacent* reads to share with you. Each is rooted in culture, deeply human and widely applicable in professional and personal contexts. As we enter the season of fires, hot beverages, reading and puzzles, I hope something here piques your interest.

Gardener & The Carpenter

Alison Gopnik

This is not a parenting book! Child psychologist Alison Gopnik examines the purpose of childhood in human experience, revealing the critical role a long childhood filled with play and exploration has in building a society of creative, thoughtful adults. What started as an attempt to understand the value of play for children inspired my to consider the critical role play holds in the workplace, getting my excited for a future where adults play once again.

Reinventing Organizations

Frederic Laloux

I wish more business books were as rooted in an understanding of culture and systems as this one. Laloux breaks down the history of organizational systems, connecting organization types to stages in human evolution. He then shifts from theory into practice, exploring a new way to run organizations as humanity continues to evolve. For a person existing within organizational systems who then shifted to studying these systems (it me, ya’ll), Reinventing Organizations helped me understand why various organizations do what they do… and what it really takes to progress change.

Emergent Strategy

adrienne maree brown

If you have yet to discover adrienne maree brown, get in, we are going for a ride! A culmination of brown’s lessons on our human relationship with change, Emergent Strategy show us all the natural world has to teach about navigating change with purpose. Poetry meets business book meets self-help… Only brown is capable of remixing these genres in such useful ways.

Navigating Polarities

Brian Emerson & Kelly Lewis

Growing up in brand strategy and advertising, I learned all about the possibility present within tension. Yet when I started to work on more upstream strategic initiatives, I often experienced tension to be a dirty word. Navigating Polarities helped me understand why both are true. Holding tension is hard work, yet also necessary to creativity, innovation and progress. To my agency friends: This is the business book that will remind you of your superpowers.

Beloved Economies

Jess Rimington and Joanna Levitt Cea

When the world is in a constant state of flux and distress, where does one turn for a pragmatic yet optimistic view? Beloved Economies dives in the mess and offers a new way out: What would it look like to transform our economic system in the United States, one person, team, or organization at a time? Alongside a co-learning community of contributors, Rimington and Cea inspire us to see our individual power in creating a new type of system. They then offer seven practices organizations can employ to build a more joyful, resilient and beloved economy. It’s practical and magical, all at once.

I’ve compiled this list on Bookshop for your shopping pleasure. Enjoy!

Over the summer, I conducted a series of conversations with leaders at agencies and consultancies in brand, advertising, and product innovation to understand their organization’s relationship with change. 

These individuals held various roles of influence in their company, from department leads to C-suite. Each worked in an organization that was either in the midst of—or had recently completed—a significant change journey. I was curious: What did this change feel like in their organization? How did it affect those in leadership roles, as well as employees? What was the impact on the organization and business? And what do creative organizations need most when it comes to navigating future changes (of which there will be many)? 

What I discovered was an industry ripe with ambition but in need of support when navigating change. For those of you with experience working in agencies, this might be the most obvious statement you’ve ever read. But along the way, I also discovered a delightful surprise: A few teams doing things a bit differently and experiencing incredible results. The changes they made are well within reach but require a new orientation to what change means.

“We sell transformation”

Creative agencies are in the business of change. Through building new brands, products, experiences, and campaigns, they bring value to clients by helping them understand cultural and marketplace changes, envision a desired future, and bring that future to fruition. 

This may be the greatest superpower of the creative industry: The ability to solve business challenges through imagination. In this industry, people use their creativity and innovation to create new worlds for clients every day. 

“We get hired by legacy companies that know they need to change, but don’t have the internal capabilities to do it [themselves].”

When looking at their own companies, the instinct of agency leaders is to turn their skills inward to develop an ambitious vision of the future, which is invigorating, for sure. Yet when embarking on their own change journey, this superpower can work against creative leaders. So why is this the case?

“We have a lot of visionary folks and very few with the diligence to move everything through.”

For those experiencing a change, receiving a bold, ambitious vision can backfire. As one leader described to me, “the new vision from our parent company is all well and good but feels really far away from our current day-to-day. So now we’re trying to figure out how we fit into that picture.” While the vision in question felt strategically sound to this leader, without support on how to put it into action, they felt abandoned by their executives. 

Leaders, managers, and staff who are not involved in the development of a vision often only see the vast gap between present and future. In particular, people in mid-level leadership roles (think: department heads) spoke about how these bridges were left to them to build, often in their spare time and beyond their core work duties. “There isn’t a lot of support. There is a lot of praying on people to raise their hands. This tends to fall on women in mid-level leadership roles.”

These leaders feel unsupported, left to their own devices to determine how to close the gap between an ambitious vision and present state.

“This feels different when you’re not in control”

Secondly, agencies often experience a client’s brand, business, or product transformation as something they are architects of. But when change happens to them, it feels different. Whether initiated by an emerging competitor, a holding company merger, or a global pandemic, for agencies, this is a new orientation to change. And when faced with a change beyond one’s control, the skills that prove useful in guiding a client in envisioning the future can become a limiting force.

To illustrate this, leaders shared words they associate with change, both when initiating the change and when a recipient of it. When agency leaders were in control of a change, typically because they were initiating an evolution to the business, they described their relationship change using words like Exciting, Energizing, and Invigorating.

Yet when leaders were adapting to a change, whether via M&A, the pandemic, or new leadership at an executive level, they used words like Chaotic, Out of control, Unintentional, Overwhelming, and Pressure.

And while the feelings of overwhelm and chaos are so, so normal when experiencing change, for agency leaders who are used to selling clients on transformation, these are unfamiliar emotions they are not equipped to support.

Walking the bridge together

“We thought people would just figure it out, because we figured it out [when we started this business]. We had to come to the realization that’s not the right solution.”

Two leaders I spoke with shared an alternative experience. During a change out of their organizations’ control, they had employed a few practices with their teams to walk the bridge from now to next together. As I spoke with these leaders, I had to smile. Each was describing practices of Organizational Development. 

Practice #1: Invite teams into the work

Leaders cannot keep the work of change to themselves. It’s when they actively engage and support teams in developing and acting out changes that progress begins. In one agency, executive leadership appointed a small, cross-functional team empowered to build the bridge towards the future together. While team members held some power and influence in their organization, the team was not limited to those in executive leadership. Their purpose as a team was clear and they understood that they had the power and resources to begin moving towards their organization’s goals. 

Practice #2: Invest in trust

Once formed, this same team prioritized building a foundation of trust amongst their members, so they could have honest discourse and debate. This was during a time of swift disruption, when it likely felt as if there was no time for “team building.” They understood that team members would not always agree, and they needed an environment where every person felt comfortable expressing disagreement and working through it together. 

Practice #3: Give today some respect

When entrusted to build a bridge toward the future, leaders and staff can internalize the message as though “today is broken.” When people are told that everything they do and stand for today doesn’t work, they take it personally. It makes them feel broken. After all, they are part of today. 

To counter this, one leader described how their leadership team identified current strengths that would also serve the organization’s desired outcome. This practice helped individuals identify behaviors they could bring forward to make progress towards what originally felt unreachable. 

Practice #4: Learn through experiments, then scale

As a team begins to bridge-build, how do they put new ideas into practice? Rather than crafting plans, one leader described an experimentation practice their team employed. When a hypothesis emerged, they turned those emerging ideas into small experiments they could run. 

This is not an unfamiliar practice. After all, product and innovation teams frequently run experiments to gain feedback on new ideas—learning and refining before scaling. Teams can turn the same practice inward, experimenting with anything from a new way of communicating to a new meeting agenda. The trick is to keep it small, low risk, and focused on learning. In the case of the leader I spoke with, their team was focused on working out the kinks on new ideas before sharing them more broadly and risking disrupting a large group of employees. 

Practice #5: Build in time for rest & recovery

“We’re trying to be really honest with one another when we need a break.”

Seeing a change through takes a while–quite a bit longer than the cycle of many agency work streams. Knowing that, teams and leaders build in time for rest and recovery. One leader spoke of a system with their boss, where they agreed to share responsibilities throughout a lengthy change initiative. One of them might lean in for a bit and then tag out for rest while the other tagged in. It should come as no surprise that this was the same group of leaders that prioritized building a foundation of trust, enabling them to be honest with one another about their needs. 

What it takes

Why are these practices so difficult for most agencies to employ? In my experience, it requires a new orientation towards change. 

When you are inside an organizational system, it can be difficult to see and interpret the system you are part of in an objective way. Even when you can see issues (or strengths!), naming a problem that others are avoiding is a risk, particularly for those who don't hold positional power. This leads to root problems remaining unaddressed, which manifests as swirl or stuck-ness, even amongst the most well-intentioned teams.

Secondly, the creative industry often undervalues the role of supporting people. Some leaders I spoke with dismissed the very reasons their organization struggled with transformation as “people problems” and “the soft stuff.” Yet this same industry typically measures its value in the hours of those very humans.

Think about that for a moment. We’re talking about an industry that’s existence to this point is dependent on continuous imagination, creativity and critical thought of humans. And yet, equipping those same humans to thrive through change is an afterthought, if that. Just imagine the possibilities in an agency environment when the people involved are clear on their organization’s direction, know their role within, and have the structure and support to build their own bridges.

Share Learning To Change

A huge thank you to the leaders who shared their time, experiences, emotions, and lessons learned with me. I appreciate your generosity and candor.

Think about that—it’s not just that it doesn’t deplete itself, it’s that it helps itself grow ever stronger. This idea runs totally counter to our usual business methods, where we extract resources and then work to rebuild what we’ve lost.

As incredible as it is, it’s not extraordinary. Nature already works regeneratively.

Earlier this year, I shared a short explainer on the growth of regenerative practices and how regenerative agriculture (the namesake of “regeneration” in our modern nomenclature) is defined. Regenerative agriculture utilizes five main principles that are designed to protect and increase soil vitality as well as respect, value, and leverage the interconnectedness of natural ecosystems. 

As Sarah and I have reflected on our work together, we’ve recognized that regenerative agriculture offers a model for organizational cultures as well. The work we’ve been doing is a natural marriage of concepts that serves people and business simultaneously. 

Below are five working principles that inform how organizations can start to think and operate regeneratively. These principles are informed not only by our own careers, but by a group of incredibly inspiring researchers and thinkers (please check out their details at the end of this post).

🪴 1. Nurture your people. 

What: Functional and emotional support are required conditions to unlock people’s full potential. This is about prioritizing creating those conditions so that people can flourish. It goes beyond employee benefits and quarterly engagement scores—and it’s definitely not just your Chief People Officer’s job.

Why: When people are worried about getting fired (read: they do not have psychological safety with their teams or leaders), their work naturally comes from a place of fear. They’ll try not to screw up, sure, but they also won’t push the boundaries of what they’re capable of. Alternatively, when people experience authentic support, they’ll support the organization in sometimes surprising ways. 

Example Practice: Reflect on the type of team culture you strive to create. Identify the behaviors that support that culture and get real about the ones that don’t. Once you understand what you’re working towards, you can find ways to honor and celebrate those efforts, whether or not they’re ultimately successful. For example, this might look like a “Risk of the Week” recognition in a team that is tasked with thoughtfully pushing boundaries.

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👓 2. Cultivate variety. 

What: This involves seeking out multiple perspectives and developing a practice to deeply understand and integrate those perspectives into the work. It requires giving equal respect to multiple ways of seeing the world—and creating an environment where complexity and contradictions are not only healthy; they’re welcome. 

Why: Teams tend to shy away from experiencing tension (of course!). But often, tension represents different forms of understanding that, if leaned into, can unlock fresh and wonderful ideas. Think of customer data as an example. Where one person might interpret a pattern to mean one thing, another person may have a totally different interpretation of the same information. Rather than view the contradiction as a problem, we can see it as a gift and use our curiosity to uncover new insight.

Example Practice: Before a product development process kicks off, identify three people who typically wouldn’t be part of the process and invite them into the earliest discovery and ideation work. It could be a brand new hire who isn’t yet familiar with the organization’s common traps, someone who’s been with the organization for decades in another function, or someone who’s simply known for their passion about what they do. Consider how you’ll set them up for success in these conversations (Hint: Let them wear the “hat” of their role, rather than asking them to become product experts).

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🛁 3. Create rest cycles. 

What: Rest is a vital, productive part of every healthy system. And it’s often not a wholesale stoppage of momentum; it’s a time when the pace of one part of the system slows so that other parts can get the attention they need. This principle invites us to build rest into our plans and initiatives and prioritize it like any other business practice.

Why: We often hear leaders talk about rest with a sense of anxiety because it can feel like a black-out period (“We can’t stop or we’ll lose momentum/revenue/people.”). This type of full stop may be needed in particularly unhealthy environments, but organizations are typically more in need of active rest, when the pace slows thoughtfully versus stops entirely. With time to think and reflect, diagnose problems, and identify appropriate remedies, the organization becomes far less fragile to fractures and disruption. 

Example Practice: When establishing deadlines and priorities, reflect on a simple question: What would happen if this initiative became delayed or didn’t happen at all? Answer it thoughtfully. What parts of the business or organization are dependent upon this activity? What parts would be able to continue to operate and thrive? The simple act of imagining can simultaneously build resilience, reduce urgency, and open the door to rest.

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⚡ 4. Reuse energy. 

What: In this principle, we reframe resources as energy. The goal is to transform energy throughout a team or organization rather than waste it and have to seek more of it from elsewhere. Not only does this help improve efficiency, it encourages teams to evaluate the organization’s skills, tools, and assets in totally new ways.

Why: We often see teams caught in a cycle of “wasting and taking,” where their resources become depleted and they look outside for more fuel to get going again. Idea generation is a prime example. Teams ideate around new products and offerings, a tiny percentage of them might move into a next stage, and the ones that don’t move forward or work well are considered failed. They go into a figurative garbage, never to be seen again. But, as Jess Rimingto and Joanna L. Cea write in Beloved Economies, “Failed ideas make great compost.”

Example Practice: As a precursor to a SWOT-type analysis, run a “compost” brainstorm. Invite a team of cross-disciplinary and cross-functional people to get together to unearth areas of the business, organization, or brand that appear to be latent. What’s been tried before? What’s been left behind as the organization has grown and shifted over time? Understand that not everything unearthed will be immediately useful, but some of it may result in surprising strengths.

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🌱 5. Trust that there’s time. 

What: This is an invitation to be thoughtful, curious, and imaginative. It’s easy and, frankly, reasonable to get swept up in a culture of urgency and feel as if there’s no time for anything but “doing.” But the gift of time and trust is that it can give teams the confidence to take a step in a new direction. 

Why: Urgency is a comfortable, familiar feeling. In fact, it’s often an explicit part of an organization’s value system. But we’ve found that a culture of urgency can cause teams to cut out the practices that will keep the organization—and business—healthy for the long-haul. These are things like demonstrating care for each other, creating deep engagement with customers, developing thoughtful business hypotheses, and placing discerning bets. 

Example Practice: Turn “briefs” into conversations rather than emails or forms. This encourages parties to share nuance with each other, imagine potential pathways and outcomes together, and get on the same side of the table, facing a problem or opportunity together. Acknowledge that there’s time for this conversation and that it will ultimately net in better results.

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The results of this way of working are thriving teams in thriving organizations, who—you guessed it—run thriving businesses.

These principles are informed by brilliance:

• Beloved Economies: Transforming How We Work by Jess Rimington and Joanna Levitt Cea 

• Tomorrowmind: Thriving at Work—Now and In an Uncertain Future by Gabriella Rosen Kellerman and Martin Seligman

• NOBL Academy, a treasure trove of organizational thought leadership from organizational consultancy NOBL

• The Regenerative Business by Carol Sanford

• The Rodale Institute’s pioneering work in regenerative agriculture and development of the regenerative organic certification

• The Regenerative Agriculture Alliance’s leadership in energy transformation and uniting business and natural ecosystems

In my observations since, such experiences are the exception to the rule in most workplaces today. I believe most workplaces are missing a huge opportunity: The opportunity to enable adults to play at work. 

What Spider-Man Showed Me

As children, we learn through play. And not just any type of play: Pretend play. According to Alison Gopnik, professor of psychology and author of The Gardner and the Carpenter, playing pretend is a uniquely human activity. And it’s an activity human children deliberately practice in order to learn:

“Rats and foxes and kids play rough-and-tumble, and crows and dolphins and kids play with things. But human children also play in a way that is more unusual – indeed, quite possibly uniquely human. They pretend.” 

“Why do they pretend? Pretending is closely related to another distinctly human ability, hypothetical or counterfactual thinking— that is, the ability to consider alternative ways that the world might be. And that, in turn, is central to our powerful human learning abilities.”

I have two boys under five, so observing pretend play is a top activity of mine. With Gopnik’s words in mind, I took a closer look at a recent game of superhero occurring in my living room, and there it was: Older brother kicked things off by suggesting various superpowers to little brother, and both were on their way to testing out their web shooting abilities and invisible powers. As they bounced around the room (and furniture), a healthy debate filled with suggested powers and resulting actions ensued. In their wake I watched toys, blankets and pillows move across the room. Any sense of time or awareness of physical reality was suspended, for the time being. At a glance one might see a messy living room and some kids who should NOT be jumping off the couch. But looking closer, there it was: A science experiment.

When kids play pretend, they are doing experiments. From the outside it looks like a mess, but they are creating hypotheses, or images of how the world might work. They are testing each out, learning which of hypotheses have merit and which do not, forming new ones, experimenting more, and on they go. 

Through pretend play, children develop the ability to imagine how the world might be, and the skills to go forth in building the world they desire. If we adults want to build a better world, we gotta know how to play pretend.

Creating conditions where superheroes are welcome

It seems we lose the ability to play—particularly pretend play—as we get older. From kindergarten on, the vast majority of us aren’t regularly exposed to environments that create space for nor reward pretend play. And while the systems that heavily influence our lived experiences do not embrace play, this is not a piece about our education system nor capitalism. This is an attempt to help individuals play pretend a bit more within their work. In reading up on the evolution of play and experimenting (or playing around!) with various conditions in client work sessions, I’ve come to think that by cultivating the right conditions, we can invite pretend play into our work:

1. A safe, caring environment. Children and animals only play when they feel safe and cared for. When an animal is stressed or starved, play diminishes. Same goes for adults: In order to fully explore and express their own ideas, adults need to feel safe and cared for. They need to feel psychologically safe, meaning they trust and feel respected by those around them. More basic needs cannot be forgotten either. Food and rest? Without them, the imagination is dampened.

2. Time for experimentation. When animals and children play pretend, it may look like a mess, but there is actually thoughtful structure, akin to a scientific experiment. But the hypothesize-test-learn-hypothesize cycle takes time. In order to fully employ counterfactual thinking in the workplace, adults need time to run a series of experiments, to learn from said experiments, and then to apply those learnings forward. Imaginative solutions are never nailed on the first go. They emerge byway of failed experiments.

3. Permission to disagree. When kids play pretend together, they bicker over the details of their imagined world. They are working out varying perspectives and ideas. To create anew, we need to lean into the contradictions that exist between one idea and another. Yet adults in the workplace often either shy away from conflict, or approach it in a combative manner. We need to actively create spaces where heated, constructive disagreement can occur. It’s only by digging into disagreements that entirely new hypothesis – and ultimately innovations – emerge. 

So what can you do if you want to invite pretend play (and more imaginative problem solving) into your workplace? Perhaps an experiment with play is in order. Can you identify a project or initiative, however small, where you could experiment with play? 

We facilitate worksessions! One of our favorite types of engagements is workshop facilitation. We design a custom experience to help your teams solve a particular problem, while building a new skill along the way. Learning to play and beyond, we welcome the opportunity to talk through challenges and seeing if a workshop would help your team progress.

Everyone seems bought in, the CEO is excited about the new direction, strategic planning for the next year is taking all your hard efforts into consideration. And yet… nothing seems to be… changing. What is going on here? 

I’m ashamed to admit I led strategic initiatives for far too long before I confronted this challenge. I know I’m not the only guilty party. But why does strategy so often ignore the need to support organizations through change?

Three barriers to beginning

First, strategy often asks for big, wholesale change. It suggests a bold pivot from the present. This in itself *is not a bad thing*! However, adopting such transformational change requires risk and bravery from people: From the leaders who co-sign on the new direction, as well as the employees responsible for activating it. 

Second, it’s quite often not clear where to begin. Strategy often places focus on painting a picture of who the company aspires to become. And while a clear picture of the end game offers confidence and inspiration, it pays no attention to first steps forward. 

Third and perhaps more insidious, strategy often reveres the burning platform. In effort to deliver clarity and conviction, strategy can inadvertently glamorize dramatic change while diminishing the value of the first, small steps forward. We need to celebrate the small steps, making them appealing and motivating for people to invest their time and energy in. 

A simple practice: A small-but-mighty thing

In response to these challenges, we’ve developed a few practices to help teams begin to act on a new strategic direction. Since big change can sometimes just feel overwhelming, we’ve tried to keep this practice refreshingly simple. 

The summary below will give you a sense for how this activity works, or feel free to copy this Miro board built to guide your team through. 

This activity can be done virtually or in-person, as part of an existing meeting or in a focused session. It takes teams about 30 minutes to complete. Begin by gathering your team. Break into small groups of individuals who work together and know one another. 

The first portion is all about internalizing the new strategic direction while simultaneously boosting one another’s confidence. In the first part of this activity, team members are going to recognize one another’s strengths as they relate to the strategic direction. This is all about letting your colleagues know exactly where and how you see them as pivotal in activating the strategy. If your strategy includes values or guiding principles, it can be useful to link strengths with these. (We like guiding principles as they tend to be more actionable than values, but that’s a different post). 

Next, individuals are asked to translate all that positive feedback into a commitment. But not an outlandish goal that will be challenging to realize. Rather, team members should focus on identifying one “small-but-mighty thing” they can do to bring the new strategic direction to bear. 

Small-but-mighty things take on two characteristics:

1. They are small! They don’t require one person to do all the lifting, but rather embrace the power that comes when everyone on a team is doing one small thing. 

2. They leverage strengths, leaning into what a person is already incredible at. 

Individuals share their small-but-mighty things with others in their group. As each person shares, the group is encouraged to discuss how they can hold one another accountable and how they can support one another in delivering upon their commitments. 

Finally, everyone places their small-but-mighty commitment in a virtual or physical shared space (think whiteboard or Miro board). This small but powerful act enables teams to see how their collective strengths can come together to create small but meaningful steps towards change. 

Teams who have followed the small-but-mighty practice report gaining clarity in how they can move a new direction forward, a better understanding of their colleagues, and a much-appreciated confidence boost during times of change – all critical to moving strategy off the page and into action.

If you try out any aspects of the small-but-mighty thing practice, please let us know how it went for you.

Special thanks to Ashleigh Penrod who helped Loom perfect this practice for our clients. 

While I didn’t know what the future would hold, I did know a few things:

• I was ready to learn what working for myself felt like.

• The work I was most proud of didn’t stop at building brands, but helped people inside organizations thrive through change.

• Megan Trice was an incredible teacher and business partner.

Two years later, I am so proud of myself, and Loom, for what we’ve accomplished. 

I’m proud of Loom for the impact we are having. I’m a confident gal, but not great at singing my own praises. But over the past two years we’ve done some incredible things:

• We’ve helped seven (!) organizations big and small discover their direction while also equipping team members to see change through. 

• We’ve designed and facilitated workshops and training sessions on everything from navigating conflict at work to long-term strategic planning.  

• We’ve found incredible collaborators, partners and mentors who believe in me, in Loom and the work we’re doing. 

I’m also incredibly proud of myself for leaning into learning about, well, myself. When I set out on this adventure, I had no idea how much self-discovery would accompany starting my own business. It’s by far been the most challenging aspect of independent consulting for me. But it’s also been the most rewarding. 

Finally, a huge thank you to every client, collaborator and cheerleader who supported Loom these past two years. Whether you took a chance on hiring a brand new firm or allowed me into your inbox, I so appreciate you. May 2023 brings more opportunities for us to put our heads (and hearts) together.

When we think about the most valuable brands in the world, they tend to share a few common traits: They are clear in their perspective and deep in their meaning. They are simultaneously committed to their beliefs while remaining connected to culture (particularly as culture inevitably changes). They know who they serve and purposefully facilitate connection with them. In fewer words, brand equity reaches far deeper than brand awareness – the Patagonias, Nikes and Apples of the world are well-known for certain. But it is their ability to consistently be known for contributing a certain type of value to the world around, over time, that is truly impressive. 

Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO, is hailed for leading a cultural turnaround. That Microsoft’s brand equity increased across the same time period is no accident. Nadella cultivates a high-trust culture were learning and risk-taking are rewarded.


So what does it take to build a brand’s equity? Building a valuable brand requires an organization to do three things well:

First, creating a strong brand requires curiosity: About the world around you, about the people who you aim to serve, about how society is changing, about your inner strengths and weak spots. In studying all these elements we begin to see what your brand might stand for (and against), who your brand might serve, what might make your brand different from competitors. 

Second, building a strong brand requires commitment over time: Brand value cannot be built through one-off tactics: It’s only through the culmination of multiple thoughtful actions, over time, that a brand’s equity begins to increase. A name change, brand architecture, brand identity, even internal communications and organizational changes all work together to create a strong brand equity, one step at a time. 

Third, great brands are ultimately the product of human effort. Creating a strong brand requires a strong team: A team that believes in the brand’s potential, is built on a foundation of trust, and is thereby willing (and rewarded!) for trying new things and taking calculated risks. Your team can be the hidden superpower – what makes or breaks – your ability to cultivate brand value. But as a leader it is your responsibility to build such a team.

So you want to build your organization’s brand. Where to begin? Start with a curious, open mind. It’s one of the most simple but important steps you can take when starting on the brand building journey. Continue with a commitment to the long haul. Along the way, you will learn more about what your brand stands for, who it serves, and what unique value it contributes to the world. And throughout it all, prioritize your people. It’s only when they feel empowered, supported and valued that you will be able to cultivate a strong brand for the long haul. 

Photo Credit: @satyanadella

The hiring manager, who became an inspirational mentor to me, assured me that I already had many of the skills of a great negotiator and that the rest I could learn along the way. In the spirit of learning and growing, I ended up taking the job. And guess what? She was right. I already had a lot of negotiation skills in abundance. I am a curious problem solver, a good listener who can empathize with people and I am always trying to find a creative solution. These three things turned out to be my negotiation superpowers and had nothing to do with what I had assumed would make me successful at negotiations. I also managed to negotiate a 25% pay increase with the new job so apparently I did have some skills. 

When it comes to negotiations, I don’t think my story is uncommon, particularly for folks who don’t identify with masculine versions of power. My business partner, Sarah, was very skeptical of my negotiation background because she had been prodded by others to step into a version of negotiations that wasn’t authentic to her (like being coached to loom over clients in meetings to make her petite frame bigger and more intimidating to those in the room...yuck). It turns out she didn’t need to loom large over others to be a great negotiator, her strengths as a strategist who understands humans make her a natural. 

So let's demystify this: what is a negotiation really? Daniel Duty, a negotiation expert, said it simply: negotiating is a method of problem solving. As the book High Conflict highlights, human beings have two intrinsic capacities when it comes to problem solving: an instinct for adversarialism and an instinct for solidarity. Adversarialism emphasizes an or proposition. It's us versus them. It's win-lose. Solidarity focuses on the and. It’s us and them. It’s win-win. We solve the problem together. 

Negotiation encompasses both of these, but in our society we tend to hold adversarialism up on a pedestal. While it may have its time and place, it is often not the most effective method of negotiation. Because here is the other thing: negotiating always happens between people. Human beings. The conflicts that matter the most happen in the context of long-standing relationships. What happens if we take an adversarial approach? Well they won’t be very healthy relationships for long. We need another way.  

I want to start a movement to rebrand negotiations. The version I teach people is human-centered. It's a problem-solving approach that honors human beings while not sacrificing innovative ideas and great solutions (no warm tea here). It fosters productive disagreement while also showing you how to resolve conflict and find a path forward together. It helps people shift from an adversarial, win-lose approach, to one that engages curiosity, empathy and creativity to find the win-win. 

I can’t think of a company that doesn’t rely on the alchemy that happens when a group of people come together to create new ideas and solutions. A team’s success in doing so relies on their ability to activate diverse points of view. They must find ways to craft solutions not in spite of differences, but in light of differences. While there is much that goes into creating these types of cultures, embracing human-centered negotiations plays an essential role.  

At Loom, we are excited to engage in this work in a few ways: 

• Human centered negotiation workshops: Helping individuals build their skills in managing everyday conflict and having hard conversations.

• Problem solving workshops: Helping leadership teams work through conflict in a collaborative and efficient way. If you feel like you have been going around and around in an infinite loop, your team just can’t land the strategy or a client relationship has gone sour - we can help you break free and move forward. Sometimes a powerpoint just isn’t going to do it. 

• Org design projects: Sometimes it's the systems and structures that are holding us back.  We also help design organizations to enable healthy conflict. 

If you are interested in learning more, drop us an email at hello@weareloom.co. We would love to help.

Source: Aurélie Guillerey

Have you ever been on a project where things could not move forward until there was alignment? Meeting after meeting occurs, in an attempt to align on a vision, strategy, or plan. If only everyone could just agree on a direction, then we could move forward and begin making our dreams a reality.

But this lack of alignment is a reflection of something bigger at play. Beneath the surface, there is tension. We often ignore this tension, dismissing it as an interpersonal issue, less important than the “real work”.  In doing so, we miss a great opportunity. Tension is where innovation is born. When we lean into disagreement, we create space for new ideas to manifest.

Early in my career, I worked with a client where this kept happening. As the ad agency, we would talk about the challenge internally, but when we got in the room with the client, we ignored it. Everyone on the client’s side ignored it as well. We opted to be overly friendly to one another, pretending this tension--which we had collectively and quietly decided was a “people problem”--did not exist. And what happened? I think you can guess. Milktoast. A direction for everyone, and thus no one. Forgettable solutions. A frustrated client and agency. In ignoring the seemingly insignificant “people problem”, we sacrificed solving the business problem.

Since the great milktoast incident of 2012, I’ve learned to help teams lean into these moments of tension in a productive manner that engages and respects everyone involved. This post offers you three steps to apply whether you are a team leader or contributor.  It begins before you come together, by setting the stage for a productive disagreement. Next we offer a few tricks and tools for leaning into the disagreement in those moments where rug sweeping is oh so tempting. And finally, we end on a few ideas for how to turn a great conversation into action beyond a single moment in time. 

Set the Stage

If you have an engagement coming up where tension might be present, now is the time to start setting the scene. Here are two practices to help create an environment where that tension can be aired, but in a respectful and productive manner:

1. Create a neutral environment. Your meeting shouldn’t be on one party’s “turf”. If you are gathering in person, consider hosting in a neutral third space. If on Zoom, you might suggest individuals move to a space they don’t typically work from and then blur their background.

2. Use pre-work to prime. Homework prior to a critical meeting is a great tool to get team members reflecting on a tension that is simmering beneath the surface. You might ask participants to study an organization going through a similar challenge. This encourages folks to step back and look at themselves as a neutral outsider might. Another approach is to offer a simple but critical reflective question, such as “what are you most worried about when it comes to X” for team members to think on prior to your meeting. When you gather, share your answers in a round robin manner. 

Lean Into the Tension

As you enter into a conversation about the disagreement, your goals should be to get the tension out in the open, and then have a productive discussion about the merits of potential paths forward. To help, here are three methods we’ve found useful:

1. Name it to tame it. Voice that there is tension.That you feel it. Explain how it makes you feel. This isn’t about overburdening the team with your emotions, but creating psychological safety for others to open up about how they may be feeling. This sounds simple, but in the land of Minnesota Nice, it’s a crucial step that is often skirted. 

2. Space to share perspectives. Often part of the discomfort in a disagreement is we conflate the person and the perspective. “Jane is just a naysayer. She isn’t optimistic enough.” This buries the reality that as head of IT, Jane is closest to the myriad of daily obstacles that get in the way of making the vision a reality. One way to do this is by going around the room and having each person share their perspective on the issue, with an emphasis on the experience that led them to this conclusion. This enables team members to see the problem from different angles, and begin to discuss their tension in a safe space. 

3. Explore multiple directions. Each path forward has risk and merit. No one solution is perfect. So get all the possible directions out on the table. Try to get them out first, and then weigh the risks and merits of each, one at a time. Simple role playing techniques work nicely here. For instance, try asking everyone to evaluate a direction from the customer’s POV, then from the perspective of IT, and so on. 

Continue the Progress

Getting a disagreement on the table is an exciting transition. What once felt stuck is now in motion. At this point, it’s important to resist the urge to tie everything in a tidy bow, and instead make some space for unresolved strands to surface. This will actually allow for more forward momentum in the long run. Three things you can do here:  

1. Voice what was learned. Ask everyone in the group to share one thing they learned or saw differently based on the discussion. This encourages the group to celebrate the breakthrough that was had, and begins to hold everyone accountable to the shift in perspective. 

2. Voice lingering worries. It’s also useful to create space to voice the concerns that still hang in the air. This isn’t about criticizing the progress made, but rather acknowledging what occurred was progress, not perfection.

3. Create space for reflection. With an unlock, it’s incredibly tempting to throw yourself 110% into making the agreed upon direction become real. It might feel counterintuitive, but try building in a couple days for reflection. This gives time for internal processing, and can help resolve the lingering worries. It also is a great way to create space for new ideas to manifest. 

One meeting will not dissolve all of the tension. But one meeting can open up possibilities that were not being explored when the tension was sitting in the way. Sometimes that opening of a doorway is all that is needed to break free from the meeting merry-go-round and unlock progress towards more productive solutions.