Sustainable Innovation Services

The Integral Framework is the most comprehensive lens through which we can perceive reality. Our behaviours and the systems we are part of, originate in our individual mindsets and collective cultures. To act differently as leaders and to create different results in our organisations, we first need to upgrade the individual and collective spaces from which we operate.

We define Leadership as an “act of improving the ‘status quo’ while simultaneously serving as a role-model to others for one’s behaviour.”

The visible decisions, behaviour and actions a leader takes to create the final outcome is sourced from the invisible inner leadership paradigms from which leaders operate. As such, we will call the sum of all the invisible dimensions of leadership the ‘Leadership Operating System’.

To succeed as a leader in a rapidly changing world, it is insufficient to simply install new ‘apps’ onto an outdated operating system. To carry out the difficult task of leadership, the leaders today need to first upgrade their operating system.

Developmental psychologists (Graves, Torbert, Keegan, Cook-Greuter) outline a vertical progression of inner development towards new, more nuanced and sophisticated inner leadership paradigms (operating systems). Leaders consistently living from these paradigms benefit from unheard levels of performance, inclusiveness and ability to reframe difficult problems. They are able to integrate seemingly opposing forces to design breakthrough products, services and radically innovative and sustainable organisations.

Our inner paradigm filters how we understand and perceive our reality including the meaning we give to abstract concepts. As such ‘Sustainability’ literally means different things to different people. As our internal leadership paradigms evolve, so does our understanding of what sustainability means to us and how we want to translate it to the reality. Sustainability integrated in the core business as the next evolutionary step of sustainable value creation requires an embodiment of the described new leadership paradigms.

Traditional ways to innovate and create value are based on existing leadership paradigms and linear thinking. To produce true sustainable innovation and reinvent our organisations to better respond to the technological and sustainability disruptions, we need to evolve our inner leadership paradigm and deploy a deeper, systemic innovation process. Theory U (Otto Scharmer) helps to generate solutions ‘from the future’. By bringing the entire system ‘in the room’ and utilising our newly gained leadership capacity, we can create radical sustainable innovations integrated in the core business of our organizations.

To help leaders develop the needed operating system to create integrated sustainable value, we have defined the end goal ‘RQ’ as a combination of cognitive, emotional, moral, physical, spiritual and state intelligences.

Leaders need to build clarity around their purpose, act from a future-oriented and sustainable growth mindset, source their actions in emotional awareness, display integrity and ethics in their decisions, develop and maintain their vitality and manage their own internal state.

These 6 key ‘anchors’ provide clarity, stability and resourcefulness in a rapidly changing world while at the same time, act as a launchpad into sustainable future. Our leadership development and innovation services are built on the above dimensions and ensure your leaders are equipped to take your organisation towards a sustainable future.