We are in a polycrisis
(A ‘polycrisis’ is a polite way of saying “we’re screwed” if we don’t do anything)
Our world is kind of self-destructing in a few different ways, all at the same time. Our challenges include (but are not limited to):
- escalating dangers from the climate crisis,
- political crises (wars and increasing conflict),
- economic instability,
- social injustice,
- disparities in wealth
- …
This messed up situation is a polycrisis. It’s basically everything, everywhere, all at once. It is a “wicked problem”. It took decades to get to this point because many things gradually got us here.
This means each of us must choose.
Either we keep doing what we’ve always done (which gives us the same results).
Or each of us, in our own ways, can try many different things and be willing to learn with each other, so we can make real change. Change that will not only allow us to survive, but also to thrive.
We must stop choosing the leadership that doesn’t work.
Leadership that doesn’t work is what we’ve been doing:
- working independently and ignoring different perspectives;
- recognizing problems, but not understanding them; and,
- following ‘best practices’ the solve the ‘recognized problem’, but not actually making things better.
Too often people stick with what they know because it is predictable and comfortable (in the short-term). And it doesn’t require much thinking.
It is much easier to claim that there is no other way, than it is to learn to think, to understand, and to figure out what does work.
We need to choose the leadership we really need: collaborative, exploratory, and experimental.
To solve the “wicked problem” of the polycrisis requires each of us to focus on the topic that matters most to us. The process requires:
- working with other people,
- understanding new things and new perspectives, and
- figuring out (through experiments and learning) what does work.
The process is messy. And frustrating. And scary.
There will be lots of false starts.
But eventually promising possibilities will emerge.
Everyone is a leader. Everyone can create impact.
Regardless of what type of leader you are (big company, small company, not-for-profit, community group, friends group, family …) you can make an impact.
None of us individually will ‘solve the problem’. But we can solve parts of it. This includes helping other people to solve the parts they can.
Like drops in a bucket, if enough people keep adding their parts, things will change. Imperceptibly at first. Then very slowly. But eventually all the collection of so many parts result in profound shifts and evolutions.
We all have choices. And WiseGrowth Leadership is a lot more fun to see what you can do.
You can make an impact. And you can influence others to create their impact. Together, we can make a lot happen.
WiseGrowth is collaborative, exploratory, and experimental leadership. Are you ready?
WiseGrowth is quite different than the leadership being taught in business schools and rewarded at work. Developing WiseGrowth is hard because it requires thinking and acting differently. But it is also so much more fun.
If you want to be one of the people making change, but you don’t know where to start, this blog is for you. Sign up to receive updates of new posts.
Who am I?
My official bio:
- I have lived and worked in 6 countries on 3 continents.
- I worked in the financial environment (capital markets and high-tech startup/entrepreneurial environment), I teach business and critical thinking at the Masters and College level, and I coach and consult business leaders to help them make things happen that they were not able to.
- My projects include building one of the original high-tech accelerator programs in Toronto where our ROI was globally unprecedented (according to York University research). In my projects, I and my teams generate results that most people didn’t think were possible, often breaking records.
My unofficial bio:
Experimenting for performance improvement
- On paper, my family is professional, worldly, and successful.
- But my family also has extensive intergenerational trauma.
- I started studying trauma healing as a teenager and continued through to academic research. With a lot of studying, experimentation, frustration and joy, I dramatically decreased the impact of the intergenerational trauma and developed a behaviour change model.
- My experiences and research let me figure out how people actually learn, unlearn, and change their behaviour, which is why so many of the people I work with improve their performance so significantly.
Making sense to understand
- I was lucky in some ways that I have always been around exceptionally smart, international, successful people. And I spent a lot of time in stunningly beautiful nature, and around outdoors people, farmers, and ranchers.
- But I was also usually the youngest person. And (undiagnosed) dyslexic. And because I lived in so many different environments, I constantly had to learn new things just to keep up. Therefore, I always felt dumb. And slow.
- Fortunately for me, rather than ‘being dumb’, I became incredibly curious so that I could learn a lot of things very quickly, and develop some level of mastery where necessary. And I found ways of making myself useful, so I could spend time with the people I enjoyed being with. Eventually, I earned the right to tell some very powerful people what to do.
- My ability to understand complex things quickly is a process I have used with clients and students to help them achieve results they hadn’t been able to before.
Empathy to foster collaboration
- Through my life, I have been an ‘outsider’.
- As a kid, I lived in places where many people didn’t like ‘our kind’.
- As a kid, I lived with many different families: rich and poor, agricultural and globally-ranked professionals. I skied and sailed at some of the the top resorts. And I’ve mucked out barns and assisted vets on surgeries.
- As an adult, I lived and worked in many different cultures: blue collar to elite-designer white collars and different languages, religions, and politics.
- It was challenging and scary at times. But parts of it were really fun.
- Since I was often so dependent of strangers very different from me, I learned to connect with them, and often to figure out a way for us to work together.
- My ability to connect with a range of people allowed me to figure out (most of the time) how to increase collaboration (not just co-operation, but collaboration where the outcome is greater than the sum of the parts).
My motivation to teach WiseGrowth
Throughout my childhood and early adulthood, I often was in or near pristine nature. Big mountains. Huge rivers and lakes. Majestic animals. And enough flora and fauna to keep several teams of researchers busy their whole lives.
I also had access to real food: wild strawberries on mountaintops, fresh organic vegetables from the back garden, grass-fed beef (before we needed to specify it was grass-fed), chickens that ran around the barnyard during the day and were in the coop at night as protection from coyotes.
It is breaking my heart that we have put nature in such peril. And that the current generation has not idea what life was like before global warming.
But I also believe in business and politics. Both business and political leaders can and must be part of the solution. I work with the ones who want to be part of the solution.
We lost our way because we wanted things to be easy. Now we face the hardships caused by those decisions. But hard is not a barrier to change. It just means we have to be more creative.
By leveraging my ability to foster collaboration, understand complex situations, and figure out what actually creates real change, I can help leaders achieve more of what is possible, faster.
Are you ready to lead real change through WiseGrowth ?
I would be pleased to explore how I can help you become a real change leader in your business or community.
Cat vM