Gaia Leadership

We have always built our company, our Gaia, on some fundamental beliefs: our trust in the inherent power and ability of people, together with our conviction that successful organisations are created by people who make use of more of their potential. From this, our core has developed and expanded. With the certainty that strong results and sustainable development require an integration of the part and the whole. And that is where both people and business can grow.

When we look around the world today, in an increasingly difficult-to-navigate landscape, with rising complexity, rapid and unpredictable changes, and mutual interdependencies, we see that what we believe in and stand for has never been more important. How do we unleash the power in our organisations? Can we create both development and growth while strengthening the focus on sustainable value? How can we lead and steer today’s and tomorrow’s organisations to meet the ever-accelerating pace of change? How do we build resilient organisations created and developed by thriving people?

In a series of blogs, we have described the part of Gaia Mindset that concerns the thriving individual. We suggest that you start there: Gaia Mindset, Holistic Perspective, Learning, Co-Creation, and A New Approach to Leadership.

The Resilient Organisation

To meet the transformative time we live in

The resilient organisation is an organisation that creates long-term sustainable value and results and has the resilience to continue doing so, regardless of disruptive events and a high degree of unpredictability. It is also the organisation that enables, allows, and challenges the thriving individual to grow and create value.

We believe that the resilient organisation is built on and starts from the four cornerstones that we have previously reasoned about:

• Holistic perspective and identification with the whole
• Learning and development
• Co-creation based on warmth and care
• A non-hierarchical approach to leadership where every individual is a leader

Regardless of whether it’s about business planning, how the organisational structure should look, governance and monitoring, decision-making, or other crucial organisational aspects, we believe that these four are well worth starting from and basing the work on.

Sometimes we ask our customers the following question: How much of the potential are you using in your organisation? Even in very successful businesses, the answer often falls between 50-60 percent. What is it that they see, what are they longing for, and why isn’t the figure higher? When we ask follow-up questions, the answers largely revolve around deficiencies in collaboration, leadership, courage, drive, and ownership. Excessive bureaucracy, control, and the organisation itself often stand in the way of creating energy, initiative, and development.

The Prevailing Way of Thinking about Organisation and Management

When we look at the prevailing way of thinking about organisation and management today, we see that it largely stems from the long-established industrial way of thinking about production. For example, we tend to liken our organisations to machines, which is also evident in the way we talk about them. We often, and quite unconsciously, use terms such as bottlenecks, interfaces, input and output, breaking down, implementing, accelerating and braking simultaneously, etc. In short, logical, rational, and structured thinking is strongly present in how we design and live in our organisations.

It’s worth mentioning that for a long time, it has been highly successful and effective to organise and manage operations based on these principles and models. What we also observe, however, is that something new began to emerge around the turn of the millennium when global megatrends started to change the landscape significantly. The strong pressure for change now challenges us to move beyond viewing the organisation as a machine that can be controlled, manipulated, and optimised – where people eventually, in the worst case, become insignificant cogs in a large machinery.

How Can We Think in New Ways?

We see that we need to create something much more adaptable and at the same time robust. In fact, our organisations and operations are human systems driven by ideas, energy, and action. Places where thriving individuals are given space to grow, take responsibility, and create value. To create these more vibrant and resilient organisations, the structure and the culture we strive for need to go hand in hand. When we integrate the two, the culture we aim for will be supported by the structure we create and maintain. And vice versa.

So how do we build organisations and governance models that support us in reaching our direction? That support the culture and leadership we desire? That contribute to creating results and value in a world of constant change and increasing complexity? These are truly exciting questions to explore together!

In Closing,

What we propose can be summarized as follows: An approach where you start from and identify with the whole you are part of. A focus on your own and others’ learning. Co-creation with your surroundings to build sustainable value. Seeing yourself and those around you as leaders.

You can read more about Gaia Mindset here. In a series of blogs, we present different aspects of Gaia Mindset. They address both the perspective of the thriving individual and the resilient organisation.

You can find the earlier blogs by looking here for posts containing the words Gaia Mindset. Follow us on LinkedIn, where we continuously engage in dialogue about Gaia Mindset.

 What do you want to succeed with? What is deeply meaningful to you? To what do you want to contribute?

When we are in touch with our dreams and our inner motivation, and from this, encounter different contexts with curiosity and a willingness to contribute, unexpected results and value can arise. One group that stands strong in this is entrepreneurs. Behind the entrepreneur’s creativity lies the connection between seizing opportunities, solving challenges, and creating value for others while the business itself develops.

We can all adopt the entrepreneur’s mindset, which is effective regardless of context or role. A metaphor that can help illustrate this is to see oneself as a personal company. If I, figuratively speaking, resign today and come back to my organisation tomorrow as an entrepreneur, what do I do then, and what questions become important? Who is my customer, and what does she want to achieve? What opportunities and challenges does my customer have? Is there something I can offer? What do I want to achieve and contribute to? This shift in perspective also creates a shift in energy. What was previously problems and obstacles become business opportunities for the personal company. The one who was previously my boss is now my customer. We know that this shift creates a new interplay between the part and the whole, where both parties grow.

Gaia Mindset Co-creation

There is a strong human drive to interact, rooted in our long history of living in herds whose survival depended on the ability to cooperate and build trusting relationships. Although we don’t live that way today, this drive and these needs remain in us. In today’s organisations and contexts, it helps us build relationships, be connected, and assist each other. We can also use this power to seek win-win solutions and arenas for co-creation and synergies – something that many today testify is crucial for success. From this, questions arise: How do I help others succeed? And how can I open up and become a magnet for co-creation? How do I build a network around me?

Understanding that I need others to succeed is central to a sustainable entrepreneurial approach and to creating truly sustainable value and results. When I see myself as a personal company, I also see that I do not need to know everything and solve everything myself. Others grow by helping, and similarly, there is satisfaction in offering help when it is requested. We all need more perspectives, more angles, and sometimes actually concrete, tangible help. My network thus becomes one of my most important resources, and it becomes important to find a balance between my need for autonomy and the need to co-create with others. Wanting to be in mutual dependence with others creates partnerships. We meet, think, reflect, learn, and create together. At the same time, I need to be an independent person who stands firmly in myself, is internally driven, and takes responsibility for myself and my own development.

Warmth and togetherness

Today’s world calls for our engagement and leadership – not least when it comes to taking responsibility for myself and the whole I am a part of. To enable this for myself and others, warmth and togetherness are needed. To feel that I am in close contact with others and to feel that I want to contribute to making others better. When I look at myself and others with a warmer, more compassionate gaze, it becomes possible for me to see life as an adventure, a journey, where I constantly learn and grow as a person. And when I venture into the unknown, take risks, and perhaps experience that I sometimes fail, self-compassion helps me move forward.

When we meet ourselves and each other with compassion and in contact, we gain access to more perspectives of the whole and to increased mutual learning. When we feel that we are in relation to another person, we want her to succeed and grow, we want to exchange thoughts and ideas, we are interested in her perspective and input. In short, we become better when we are in relation and create value together. So real co-creation within an organisation starts and ends with relationships and interpersonal contact.

What we propose can be summarized as follows: an approach where you start from and identify with the whole you are part of, focus on your own and others’ learning, co-create with your surroundings to build sustainable value, and see yourself and those around you as leaders.

 

You can read more about Gaia Mindset here. In a series of blogs over the coming months, we will present different aspects of Gaia Mindset, both from the perspective of the thriving individual and of the resilient organization.

What do you want to succeed with? What is deeply meaningful to you? To what do you want to contribute?

When we are in touch with our dreams and our inner motivation, and from this, encounter different contexts with curiosity and a willingness to contribute, unexpected results and value can arise. One group that stands strong in this is entrepreneurs. Behind the entrepreneur’s creativity lies the connection between seizing opportunities, solving challenges, and creating value for others while the business itself develops.

We can all adopt the entrepreneur’s mindset, which is effective regardless of context or role. A metaphor that can help illustrate this is to see oneself as a personal company. If I, figuratively speaking, resign today and come back to my organisation tomorrow as an entrepreneur, what do I do then, and what questions become important? Who is my customer, and what does she want to achieve? What opportunities and challenges does my customer have? Is there something I can offer? What do I want to achieve and contribute to? This shift in perspective also creates a shift in energy. What was previously problems and obstacles become business opportunities for the personal company. The one who was previously my boss is now my customer. We know that this shift creates a new interplay between the part and the whole, where both parties grow.

Gaia Mindset Learning

A present holistic view, where we integrate different perspectives, provides a platform for moving forward – even in the most complex environments. Such progress requires that learning is at the center, as we can seldom solve new questions and problems with the previously known solutions and answers. Our contemporary world, the constantly shifting landscape, the significant challenges that almost all businesses face today, means that the time before knowledge starts perishing is getting shorter. It becomes crucial that we see ourselves and each other as developable and constantly growing. I need to value the ability to experiment rather than provide ready-made solutions.

One way to grow and connect with what is meaningful to me is to develop the ability to be aware. My awareness strengthens when I am in touch with the present moment and with what is happening in every moment – both internally and externally. With increased awareness, I can see things more clearly and make more active, conscious choices. It helps me to let go of old thoughts and behaviors and continue with lighter steps and greater confidence towards what is important to me. Awareness gives me access to the central insight that I am not my thoughts and feelings, but I have thoughts and feelings. When I can pay attention to myself in this way, I provide conditions for personal growth and direct more energy towards what is both meaningful to me and creates value.

For the entrepreneur, it is obvious that she herself is the only one who can take responsibility for her development. If we continue to play with the idea of the personal company, I need to ask myself: How do I ensure my continued learning? And what does my research and development department look like? How do I ensure that my company is innovative and relevant? How do I create a learning culture for myself?

To learn is to grow

Learning can start in many ways. Inspiration makes me explore new knowledge. Taking responsibility challenges me to new insights and other ways of working to achieve results. Challenges create action, increase urgency, and make me stretch towards what I may almost not believe is possible. Curiosity gives me the courage to embark on an adventure towards unknown destinations. It also challenges me to see things from someone else’s perspective by asking questions rather than drawing my own quick conclusions.

To translate our exploration into action, we can use our creativity. Then we gain access to imagination and can visualize, think anew, and imagine things beyond the possible obstacles we may see in the present. To make creativity effective, we also need to concretize and manifest our ideas externally and invite others to share them. It is then that our curiosity, desire for learning, and idea generation are translated into new solutions and paths forward.

We also need learning that not only strengthens our skills but also creates increased maturity and stronger judgment, learning that means we meet life’s challenges by continuing as adults to gradually develop our ability to lead in complexity, create meaning, and self-reflect. It’s simply a journey where we continue to grow throughout life, we get twenty years of experience instead of one year of experience twenty times.

Growing as a person enables us to reach new levels of complexity and perspective awareness, i.e., an increased ability to see broader and deeper, to highlight aspects that I have not noticed before. It is a way of taking ourselves and what we want to achieve seriously. We become leaders not only in our own lives but also in the contexts we choose to operate in.

What we propose can be summarized as follows: an approach where you start from and identify with the whole you are part of, focus on your own and others’ learning, co-create with your surroundings to build sustainable value, and see yourself and those around you as leaders.

 

You can read more about Gaia Mindset here. In a series of blogs over the coming months, we will present different aspects of Gaia Mindset, both from the perspective of the thriving individual and of the resilient organization.

What do you want to succeed with? What is deeply meaningful to you? To what do you want to contribute?

When we are in touch with our dreams and our inner motivation, and from this, encounter different contexts with curiosity and a willingness to contribute, unexpected results and value can arise. One group that stands strong in this is entrepreneurs. Behind the entrepreneur’s creativity lies the connection between seizing opportunities, solving challenges, and creating value for others while the business itself develops.

We can all adopt the entrepreneur’s mindset, which is effective regardless of context or role. A metaphor that can help illustrate this is to see oneself as a personal company. If I, figuratively speaking, resign today and come back to my organization tomorrow as an entrepreneur, what do I do then, and what questions become important? Who is my customer, and what does she want to achieve? What opportunities and challenges do my customer have? Is there something I can offer her? What do I want to achieve and contribute to? This shift in perspective also creates a shift in energy. What was previously problems and obstacles become business opportunities for the personal company. The one who was previously my boss is now my customer. We know that this shift creates a new interplay between the part and the whole, where both parties grow.

Gaia Mindset Holistic Perspective

To see that I, together with others, am part of a whole is to connect with something greater than myself – a driving force that we all have.

When I identify with a larger whole in this way and choose to take responsibility, I adopt a different approach. I see the bigger picture, see individuals, situations, and events in a broader context. I see how different parts of the system interact with each other and bring that perspective with me when I tackle a specific situation or issue. This increases my ability to create value and sustainable results. I also see that my colleagues are parts of the same whole, and then it becomes relevant for us to cooperate rather than compete. It’s good for me if things go well for others because we are all parts of the same whole.

Embracing Complexity

To truly adopt a holistic perspective, I also need to cultivate the ability to embrace complexity. Seeing how different things, which at first glance may seem contradictory, are connected helps us integrate them into a “both-and” instead of separating them into an “either-or.” I see that in a complex situation or issue, there are seldom simple answers. It’s all about being able to shift perspectives, create meaning and clarity, and based on this make decisions, act, and move forward.

The part and the whole

With a holistic perspective present, I create an ability to lead myself in a direction where the interaction between myself and the whole provides sustainability, coherence, and results. A present holistic perspective provides meaning without losing track of my own boundaries and values. Instead, I can connect my own personal purpose with the overarching purpose of the organization. From this reasoning, the task is to choose a whole that I truly want to succeed. When I find the whole where the connection between my why and the whole’s why is undeniable, I can, like the entrepreneur, create both internal and external growth and integrate the whole’s success with my own.

What we propose can be summarized as follows: an approach where you start from and identify with the whole you are part of, focus on your own and others’ learning, co-create with your surroundings to build sustainable value, and see yourself and those around you as leaders.

 

You can read more about Gaia Mindset here. In a series of blogs over the coming months, we will present different aspects of Gaia Mindset, both from the perspective of the thriving individual and of the resilient organization.

Gaia Mindset Thriving People in Resilient Organizations

We have always built our company, our Gaia, on some fundamental beliefs: Our trust in the inherent power and ability of people, together with our conviction that successful organizations are created by people who make use of more of their potential. From this, our core has developed and expanded, with the certainty that strong results and sustainable development require an integration of the part and the whole, where both people and business can grow.

When we look around the world today, in an increasingly difficult-to-navigate landscape, with rising complexity, rapid and unpredictable changes, and mutual interdependencies, we see that what we believe in and stand for has never been more important. How do we unleash the power in our organizations? Can we create both development and growth while strengthening the focus on sustainable value? How can we lead and steer today’s and tomorrow’s organizations to meet the ever-accelerating pace of change?

We want to tell you more about our core, what we call Gaia Mindset, as a way to address these questions. We truly believe it makes a difference if many, together with us, take on the challenge of creating resilient organizations built by thriving people.

What would be possible in your organization if:

• Everyone takes responsibility for the development of the whole.
• Each individual’s inner purpose is strongly connected to the purpose and direction of the business.
• Challenges in the external environment lead to development and ownership internally.
• There is a focus on sowing rather than just harvesting.
• Problems are solved at the level they arise instead of being delegated upward.
• Internal co-creation occurs naturally across organizational boundaries.
• Each person takes responsibility for their own development, thereby growing as an individual.
• Everyone is focused on making each other successful.

What reflections arise as you read this? Does it feel like utopia? We at Gaia know that it is possible to build organizations that truly harness the inherent power of every individual. These things can indeed be realized, but it requires a new mindset. We also know that an individual can make a difference even if all the conditions aren’t in place. Perhaps it is precisely then that the thriving individual is most needed.

As we summarize our encounters with hundreds of organizations and thousands of leaders, we see that today’s organizations face two major challenges:

• An external one: increasing complexity where rapid changes and interdependencies characterize existence.
• An internal one: a lack of engagement and sense of meaningfulness.

No single part can be successful if the whole does not succeed. The thriving individual needs to understand and identify with the whole, so that it too can be sustainable and vibrant. At the same time, no whole can exist, let alone be resilient, if it does not invest in the development and well-being of its parts. One is a prerequisite for the other in an eternal interplay.

Four cornerstones

For us, four cornerstones emerge, or four individual and organizational capabilities, which become crucial to help us both lead in a transformative time and realize people’s potential and engagement:

• A strong holistic perspective.
• Focus on learning and development.
• Co-creation and caring.
• And finally, the component that acts as a catalyst for the others: a new approach to leadership where everyone is a leader.

Gaia Mindset is built on these four components. They have a decisive impact on how we build our organizations, but above all, this needs to be based on and carried by the people in the organization and by interpersonal relationships. It is in you, in me, and in us together that the journey begins – the truly powerful change is the one that comes from within.

What we propose can be summarized as follows: an approach where you start from and identify with the whole you are part of, focus on your own and others’ learning, co-create with your surroundings to build sustainable value, and see yourself and those around you as leaders.

 

You can read more about Gaia Mindset here. In a series of blogs over the coming months, we will present different aspects of Gaia Mindset, both from the perspective of the thriving individual and of the resilient organization.