Part of our intention with OD for Life has been to craft a manifesto — a bold statement of our commitments... an urgent call to action... a compelling invitation to join us. In this way and more, we hope to "connect practitioners from across organisational and leadership development to help shape a new narrative of progress, characterised by care for all people and life on our planet."

An important step was to gather in a beautiful 2-day retreat last week, bringing together 28 people from a dozen countries. Early on the first day, Dorothe Liebig introduced the word "maniflexo" in response to our sense that it will need to be a living document — not a proclamation of eternal truth and universal representation, but something that continues to evolve as more voices are integrated and as more is learned along the way. The word maniflexo may take some getting used to, but we all felt the wisdom in its sentiment.

In a first follow-up to the retreat, six of us gathered on a call yesterday to begin to explore what might be the content of such a document. Certainly, it should name the things we had gathered to take a stand for, boldly and without apology.

At the same time, we felt that it should not only proclaim: it should also reflect our collective inquiry. There is much that is still unknown, and our curiosity guides us as much as our commitment. And so it was clear: there should also be questions in this document of ours. I was reminded of something I wrote a few years ago proposing Mission Questions rather than Mission Statements:

"[A] mission question seems more likely to be able to hold diversity even as it builds unity, to demonstrate humility alongside audacity, and to invite a broad community to see themselves in it — to recognize that it is also their question. The thing that makes people feel really alive and connected is being in the questions together."

Finally, we noticed that there was something in between our proclamations and our questions. And that was the beliefs that nudge us forward in our inquiry — the belief that organizations can be shaped differently, for example. These must also be named if our document is to be a useful guide and an effective invitation.

I share all this here because we are committed to transparency and because it's an exciting process, filled with potential to contribute to meaningful change in the world.

But also, my sense is that what we are experiencing, what we are doing, is somehow at the heart of an organizational development that is in alignment with life. If people anywhere are to organize themselves in shared purpose (in "organization"), and if that organizing is to be developed "for life," with life, on behalf of life, then it may be that they will need to identify the things that they stand for and boldly proclaim, as well as the beliefs that underpin those proclamations. And then they will need to sense the questions that they intend to live into together. As I wrote those years ago, this may be "the living process of crafting a story together — of being in shared service of its unfolding."

If we’re honest – if we really take in what science is telling us – the situation humanity faces is so dire that we need every industry, every sector to lay down their tools, turn to the world and say: these are our skills and resources; how can we help?

This was my appeal in a recent article written for the tourism sector.

The March 2022 OD for Life Inquiry Circle was a search for answers to that question for the field of Organizational Development. How can we help?

It was clear that we wouldn’t be able to come up with a complete and final answer for the entire field during our two-hour Zoom call. But our insights would feed into an in-person gathering to craft a manifesto next month, and to continuing conversations beyond. And as it turned out, we generated quite a powerful vision of the future in our short time together.

WHAT WAS YOUR ORIGINAL CALLING TO THIS WORK?

Our starting point was to reconnect with what had first drawn each of us to this field. What was the original spark of love and urge to serve? The original hope to make a change in the world? We wanted to see if our profession’s highest calling is already baked into our own calling to the work.

And indeed, the answers inspired. We were drawn to help “individuals, organizations and cultures thrive” and to “unlock the potential between humans to connect in how they see the world” so that they can “have life and love at their core.” We recognized that “knowledge is relational, active and alive” and that “institutional knowledge needs to be storied [and] shared so it is alive and can be embodied.” We wanted to “support leaders to be authentic — heart and soul and all there is.” We noted that this language of love, aliveness and authenticity wasn’t available to most of us in our early days in the profession. But there has been an important shift in recent years, and there is a helpful new sense of urgency with it.

A woman named Ramona Fricke shared a particularly striking description of her own calling. In her work, she is guided by the metaphor of a lush, green forest in the moments after a strong rain shower, when all the dust has been wiped off of the leaves. The smell of rich, fertile soil fills the air, and the forest can breathe. Everything comes to life, refreshed and renewed. Now, everything can grow and thrive and reach for the sun. Now, the potential that is there can be unleashed. This is the effect she strives to have in her work.

We might not need much more of a manifesto than that!

WHERE IS ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT NOW?

From there, we looked at the current state of the field and observed that much of the work is still held within the mechanistic, reductionist paradigm that shapes so much of our world. But there are also signs of movement and progress.

Din shared two recent frameworks that point the way forward. Each shows a progression from transactional, individualistic approaches to the more systemic, transformational and life-aligned.

Din also pointed to the latest issue of Organization Development Review, with a collection of scholarly articles about the more life-aligned, “net positive” future of the field. We are clearly not alone in sensing that something more is needed — and possible.

WHAT IS THE CALLING WE ARE SENSING WITHIN THE FIELD OF ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT?

To offer an example of sensing emergent calling, I described my work with regional and national tourism organizations, who are coming to see their work less as “managing the tourist destination” and more as “cultivating the hosting community.” Communities will continue to welcome visitors, but that activity will fall within a larger intention of healing people and place, in what is coming to be called “regenerative tourism.” That shift in intention is likely to have profound effect, transforming roles, relationships, skills, activities and outcomes.

Carrying that example forward, we playfully imagined the front-page headlines we’d love to see in the future that would let us know the field of OD had heeded its own call.

Of course, there were new tools, methods and activities in our imagined future scenarios.

But we were also clear: “it’s not about the tools.” Most of all, it’s about a shift in mindset, which might look something like this:

• The majority of CEOs are “driven to regenerate for the future,” and to care for the “health and energy” of people within the organization.

• The work of Organizational Development is to “speak the voice of the possible.” It is to cultivate meaning — “the meaning of life,” even.

• The “fundamental relationships organizations rely on” have been reconceived — “from customers to members,” for example, or even “co-healers.”

• Our organizations — even our factories — are “breathing life into communities.”

• Nature is our explicit guide. We work “in nature, as nature.”

• Play is recognized as “the highest form of work,” as the most powerful “evolutionary process.” Awash with “creative and participatory” methods, businesses are seen as “playgrounds” for purpose-driven work, as “practice grounds for a more thrivable world.” Here's how one headline put it:
  

Purposeful Businesses: The Playgrounds of the World. How Mission-Driven Businesses Are Catalysing Cultural Change for Life

The result we foresaw was significant, sweeping changes in the world. Yet at the same time, there was such a shift towards practice, learning and emergence — a shift from doing to being, as some said — that our imagined future headlines were less focused on concrete outcomes and more focused on process, progress and flow, in an unfolding celebration.

In all, we imagined that our profession would be characterized by “a feeling of alignment, of being on the path.” Of the murmuration of starlings, dancing joyfully across the sky.

At the end, though, we felt a craving for action. Shared separately as report-backs from breakout groups and snippets in the chat box, these snapshots of the future felt humble. “Is that really all we have to do?” asked one person. “Is there something more?”

But gathered together here in one image, the contrast with current reality becomes clear and stark. This is revolution we’re talking about, in a bold charge across the Big Divide that Din had pointed to. All of this — embracing regeneration as primary purpose, giving voice to what is truly meaningful, reconceiving fundamental relationships, breathing life into community, surrendering to play and process — all of it will require trust in life. In self-organization. In ourselves and each other. And that will require methods to support us all in learning and moving into that trust. It may be that this is at the heart of what our field is called to do.

If this future calls to you, too, please consider joining us May 5 & 6 in the Netherlands, where we will assemble the insights we've been discovering in this series of conversations, along with the collective wisdom that emerges from the experiences and intuitions of those who have gathered with us. Together, we will sketch out a bridge across that Big Divide.

What is our responsibility as Organizational Development and Leadership Development practitioners

in confronting the crises we face as a planet?

Which unique gifts do we have to offer to the biggest questions of our time?

How do we take a stand as individuals, as organizations and as a field to act for the good of the whole?

These were the questions that drew together a group of thoughtful people from around the world for a deeply nourishing 2-hour call in February 2022. We were three co-hosts on the call: Din Van Helden, Joeri Kabalt and I, representing a larger team of stewards from the growing OD for Life movement.

After Din guided us in a lovely meditation to draw support from our ancestors, we acknowledged that humanity needs to find a way to put life at the center of everything we do. The starting point, we proposed, is to align ourselves individually and collectively with life’s wisdom and needs. To show up most of all as stewards of life's ability to thrive. Those of us who guide leaders and organizations have a special and important responsibility in this work.

Through conversation in small groups, we explored practices that help us show up in this way, creating space for “being” as much as “doing.”

• Many named immersion in nature, both as a daily personal practice and as a collective experience to guide us towards wiser action.

• Others mentioned meditation. Joeri described her daily meditative walking practice “foraging for beauty” near her Amsterdam home.

• Several said they turned to journals, documenting gratitude and seeking insights and inspiration.

• Movement like yoga, tai chi and qi gong came up often. Dance is "life moving through you," we noted with some delight.

• Conversation itself came up more than once, in one case guided by the philosophy and methods of Nonviolent Communication. We can find our way to wisdom together, with enough open-mindedness and open-heartedness.

These sharings affirm the collection of practices we have been noticing and gathering across many contexts.

So what becomes possible when we bring these practices of aligning with life into our work with groups?

Din shared some details of a recent 3-day facilitation project where she felt profoundly aligned with life, as if she were channeling a force that was larger than herself. It was an inspiring story, with a set of powerful questions, a trusted collaborator, and a crashing waterfall all playing supporting roles. The outcome was that even the participants who had been standing skeptically with arms crossed were moved to deep emotion and to new levels of learning and wisdom.

Others on our call then shared their own stories of powerful moments, when they felt they were sensing and serving life’s wisdom. In one case, against all odds in a bureaucratic and hierarchical context, the outcome was a feeling of solidarity and care — “a juicy love fest!” “I fell in love with them,” our storyteller said of her client group.

And still others shared with some vulnerability that this is not often their experience, that there are many barriers to this kind of presence and potential — barriers in our contexts, and in ourselves. We could all relate

As we talked through these kinds of blocked experiences, the emergent wisdom seemed to be that we have to get comfortable with that discomfort of not quite connecting to others, to ourselves, to life. We have to stay with it, search further for the heart-centered question that might open up a portal, listen for the rhythm of possibility. Self-care, preparing ourselves, and preparing the setting can all help us be with and work through that discomfort. The “juicy love fest” storyteller shared that it had taken her a week to ready herself for that breakthrough moment.

Near the end of our call, one participant shared the story of group hosting work he does with his father around Conscious Parenting. He described the opening and closing ritual of gratitude, of honoring the space and the energy of the group, of inviting wisdom and guidance into the circle. On the spur of the moment, he agreed to close out our own call in this way, and it was a wonderful modeling of what is possible.

In our debrief immediately after the call, Joeri, Din and I agreed: we fell in love with them, everyone on the call. That seems to be one measure of how well life was invited to be a guide. Just as important, our sense was that the experience had left us all just a little more resourced to align with life's call to wisdom and care.

The thing that stands out most from our online OD for Life event in December is the overwhelming sense of warmth, depth, curiosity, and connection. It’s not a small thing, in one day over Zoom, to create a field of safety among 27 strangers, through an agenda that was pieced together almost overnight as we pivoted from a two-day in-person retreat to a one-day online call. And yet our gathering was a gentle and inspired arriving together, noticing who else is here, appreciating them, reflecting together on what is needed.

None of that would have been possible if the four of us hosting the event hadn’t spent many months building our own relationships. And even before that, three of us had spent two years weaving a pattern of care through the Bio-Leadership Project and a series of Inquiry Circles. All of this set a tone and a mutual attunement that seems to have infused our invitation and our hosting.

Michelle pointed out the similarities with a previous hosting experience that she had written about, and how our work of the past months had similarly carried the feminine energy of the womb. “[O]ur work focused on tending ‘the field’ — the relationships and rhythms of our group that enabled us to be strongly in community — in ‘common unity,’” she wrote of her earlier experience, though she could have been describing our own. “[It created] an ease in being together, a strong trust in each other, a shared understanding of what needed to be done and what each of us brought.…”

Then, as we moved rapidly into designing and delivering our online session, dividing segments of the day between us, she noted the masculine energy of the will, “of decisions and discernment. Of divergence, as we divided to conquer,” she had written. “Again, we were reminded how important it was to take those months … to strengthen the field. With that foundation, we could trust [each other] to make the right decisions.”

It was fascinating to notice that we had initially defaulted to the journey metaphor. But this invitation to consider the energies of womb and will guided us into new metaphors of nurturing and holding space. Cultivating a field of practice. Tending the soil of community. There was richness also in these framings of the work.

In our online gathering, we didn’t hear a lot of clarity about what a more life-aligned future will look like for organizational development, though there was clear resonance on this topic. But we all recognized that we can’t do it alone. There was a sense of wanting to find courage together, to practice presence, to embrace not knowing and not being the hero, as some in the group shared. There is such a need for places like these, where people can reflect on their profession in a carefully held environment. Caring relationships make that possible.

We are four who have converged to steward an ongoing conversation about the role of organizational and leadership development in these times. Already, there have been valuable lessons.

As we were planning an online gathering in December, for example, it seemed important to share stories of organizations already working from a more life-aligned field of practice. In the last two years of Inquiry Circles (part of the work that led to OD for Life), one of us — Andres Roberts — had done the most to invite guest speakers and to honor their many inspiring stories. And so the other three of us encouraged him to share some of his favourite examples.

To our surprise, he resisted.

As we explored what was behind his resistance, we eventually got to the heart of it: sharing stories of best practices seemed less useful — and perhaps, even, more limiting — than sharing guiding principles.

And so, in our online gathering, Andres pointed to Patagonia with their courageous honesty, acknowledging that “we’re not a sustainable business,” though they’re working to be ever better. He named Guayaki with its principle of connecting with cycles of regeneration, in which (among other things) employees are invited to spend time sitting in the forest to reflect on their role in the problems the organization strives to address. He recognized the Shambala Festival, with its Council of the Children’s Fire, redefining purpose and progress.

It was a powerful sharing that inspired us all, even as it created space for each listener to imagine the principles that will guide their own actions, in their own context.

And even before Andres offered these stories, the four of us had had our own experience with the power of principles. The decision to postpone the in-person gathering we had planned and instead shift to an online offering was not immediately obvious, and we struggled over it for several weeks. There were mixed messages from the Dutch government. As late as a week before our event, gatherings of up to 1,200 people were still allowed, and local bars and restaurants were full. But we were increasingly concerned about the risks as case numbers continued to grow.

At the same time, we suddenly realized that we hadn’t named a cancellation policy. What would be the right thing to do? And what would be the feasible thing to do? We had a commitment to the venue, a small business owned by people who had become friends. We knew they would be hurt financially if we withdrew our event, and we would be hurt if we had to forfeit our deposit. We had also hired a wonderful colleague to support project administration, and we needed to honor our monetary commitment to her.

Our conversations went around and around all these variables, until we stopped and asked: what principles will guide our decision? The clear answer that came was: care. With that realization, we initially felt a burst of release and energy: we could go ahead with the event, guided by that principle. Each of us reached out to those we had invited, with a personal message that went something like this:

We want to share the principles that emerged that have helped guide us in deciding to go forward with the event. It's been such a beautiful process of care between the four of us — caring for each other, for those we've invited, and for this movement that we're working to serve. So here are the principles we noticed:

1. That there is life in the event, about caring for life. There is energy there, and we want to honor that.

2. That everyone has a choice to take care in a way that matters to them. Part of how we will take care of ourselves and each other is to ask everyone to take an instant Covid test (which we will provide), in addition to showing proof of vaccination or recovery or PCR test and taking other precautions.

3. That the movement needs commitment, and investment is like putting nutrients into the soil. So, in the context of 'stepping in' with whole hearts, we would like to invite people to do two things. One is to let us know: what do you need to be well? The other is to really commit to being in now, meaning that the financial commitment is fixed, and if anything changes, we use that money for an alternative experience as part of the system in future.

Everyone welcomed the message and the sentiment and reasoning behind it. And this remained true when, a week later, we reached out again with the decision to postpone the event to May. All but one of the two dozen participants agreed to keep their financial commitment in. And we were able to honor our commitments to the venue, to our colleague and to the movement.

Looking back, there was a brief moment when we regretted not having named a cancellation policy. Certainly, there is a place for such things. But in our context, a standardized policy might not have anticipated the complexity we grappled with. And invoking it might have felt sterile and impersonal, whereas grounding our communication and our shared decisions in the principle of care was deeply nourishing to our many relationships and to the community.

What are the principles that guide your work at the moment?

OD, we need to talk.

And gather, and dream, and act for THE WORLD.