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.