Leading Audacious Change – Starting with Wholeness

By Marcus Druen for Enlivening Edge Magazine

When the pandemic travelled across the globe I quickly realized that we won’t go back to normal. Instead of continuing to travel the world for consulting and coaching clients, I was luckily able to do most of my paid work online and invest my newly found spaciousness in extended walks in the Surrey Hills, a lush forestry part of the UK, more time with my family, and starting my own podcast, something I wanted to do for years.

The title of the early podcasts was aptly “Not back to normal” and I enjoyed interviewing inspiring guests on various topics related to the seismic shifts we were experiencing. A highlight conversation was on Love, Power, and Purpose with Christiane Seuhs–Schoeller, a pioneer of self-organisation in Europe and speaker at the Integral European Conference 2018 near Budapest—where some of you dear readers might have conversed with her and possibly me also.

Over the course of the first eight episodes, a new title emerged: Leading Audacious Change. We need more leadership at all levels, in every nook and cranny, and we are the people we have always been waiting for. The time is now. “Hesitation augments fear, whereas audacity augments courage.” ~Publius Syrus, Latin writer & Stoic influencer

Change starts with ourself and in the here-and-now, so in addition to asking my interview guests what changes they were making, I made a change of my own, for example, I de-funded my bank as I could no longer live with the knowledge that they use my funds for dodgy deals.

Moreover, we need to not only shift how we act as consumers, and how companies are organised and teams are working; we also need to transform entire value chains and capitalism at large. Mother Earth let us know the hard way what she thinks of our obsession to optimise our society for efficiency. It is now evident that we urgently need to learn the process of Wholeness…

Therefore, and also inspired by Re-inventing Organizations by Frederic Laloux, the second season of this podcast is dedicated to Wholeness.

There are five main episodes in which I interview carefully curated guests, and each episode explores Wholeness through the lens of a systemic level: self, team, organisation economy, planet.

My intention of writing about my own (non-commercial) podcasts for Enlivening Edge Magazine is to spread the wisdom and insights of my amazing interview guests far beyond my own reach.

Each episode is packed with inspiring stories, encouraging insights, practical tips and instant call-to-actions at the end, because we want to accelerate the movement for re-building better. Change starts with you, so let’s start by starting…

On behalf of all previous and future guests, who have given their time, attention, energy, wisdom and love to this project: I hope you enjoy listening.

The conversations in season 2 are mostly about Teal.

My guests are all long-standing practitioners of Holacracy and other self-organisation approaches and various mindfulness/introspection practices.

Each eposide has a practical guide also, where we give tips to two ficticious personas (Michael, mostly Orange, Michaela, mostly Green & also Teal;) we specifically refer to Wholness practices from Laloux’s book.

Here is a snapshot of the Wholeness season’s guests:

Episode 2: Wholeness at the Level of Self with Martina Weifenbach

Martina is CEO and co-founder of myndways, a training and on-line academy for the super-powers of the digital age including resilience, empathy, and creativity. She holds a PhD in Business Innovation from University of St. Gallen in Switzerland. Martina has published a practical guidebook about Mindfulness and Innovation and her own podcast is called Lebensliebe – Love Mindfulness. And she is a Yoga Teacher as well.

Episode 3: Wholeness at the Level of Team with Kamil Barbarski

As an entrepreneur Kamil co-created many products and companies including MAK3it, Walkaboutyou, and Purpose Exploration. Kamil is also a Certified Teacher for Search Inside Yoursel—SIY, a Google-born leadership program for emotional intelligence, resilience and mindfulness.

Episode 4: Wholeness at the Level of Organisation with Gerald Mitterer

Gerald is a founding member of dwarfs & Giants, an innovative organization design and strategy partner for the 21st century.

Episode 5: Wholeness at the Level of Economic System with Simon Berkler

Simon is a founding part of The Dive—a Benefit Corporation or B-Corp. The Dive are curators of deep systemic change for organisations who consider economic success and social responsibility as inextricably linked. Most recently, Simon became founding member of Shift Collective, which is a collaboration between innovative consultancies for a triple bottom-line economy: people, planet profit.

Episode 6: Wholeness at the Level of Planet & Cosmos with Stephen Reid

Stephen is currently a co-director of Dandelion Collective (the not-for-profit worker co-operative behind the Psychedelic Society, and a teacher of two open courses Tools for the Regenerative Renaissance and Introduction to Crypto & DeFi. Previously, he was the youngest ever board member of Greenpeace UK, he co-founded NEON New Economy Organisers Network and worked as a technology consultant for the Labour Party, the Living Wage Foundation and 350.org.

All episodes of season 2 are produced and will air bi-weekly until the end of March. After Season 2 ends, season 3 commences.

Find all episodes here: https://leadingaudaciouschange.buzzsprout.com/1066048

The graphic is the co-creation between the wonderfully talented visual artist, Claire Alexis, and my vision for the podcast. In the middle, between the two faces is a person (who intentionally looks more woman than man), who is crossing a bridge above a deep gorge; change always starts with you, in the here-and-now, and what we need right now is leaders in every walk of life, who step forward into the unknown, for which you need to courage of course, and most likely also the “audacity” to challenge rules and norms.

This person represents you, me, all of us, the individual, which is also the first of the five interviews of a season, exploring the season topics (Wholeness) through the lens of the systemic level of the self.

The four layers of each face represent the other systemic levels: team, organisation, economic system and planet. The icons on the left suggest what we want to leave behind, the ones on the right what is emerging right now…cryptocurrencies as the operating system of a decentralized financial system, and wind turbines as a beacon of green energy and sustainable living.

Whilst the 2020s might become the most disruptive decade in human history, it might also usher in the golden era of Wholeness, in which we use our ingenuity to achieve what Buckminster Fuller envisioned decades ago:

“We are blessed with technology that would be indescribable to our forefathers. We have the wherewithal, the know-it-all to feed everybody, clothe everybody, and give every human on Earth a chance. We know now what we could never have known before—that we now have the option for all humanity to make it successfully on this planet in this lifetime.” The only thing I would expand is to include all sentient beings, not just humanity.