Influences & Network

This section is not intended to be at all comprehensive, but to give a flavour of the influences and sensibilities that have shaped Oikos’ work over the years. It is also intended to grow interest and networks around this field of ‘change leadership for sustainable development’ as a whole – in the belief that Oikos is pointing to some of the best ‘access points’ to the sort of radical and profound change now required. In no particular order...

As you’ll have seen from the film, I’ve been very influenced by Otto Scharmer’s work, particularly on the ‘U Process’. He and his colleagues are leading the way in helping ‘change consultancy’ breakthrough into much more profound, socially connected and impactful territory.

The New Economics Foundation has been coordinating work on a New Green Deal, involving a number of leading thinkers/activists, including two former colleagues of mine, Tony Juniper and Colin Hines. Download their 'Green New Deal' publication here.

Judith Hemming and her constellations work has both transformed me – and enabled me to transform a number of client systems... If only more clients could find a way of opening to this most profound change process, we could transform the world in no time! For a sense of the depth inherent in her work, read a recent lecture here.

Chris Robertson, founder of Re.Vision and Spiral Consulting is both a friend and mentor – and I’ve been particularly ‘grown’ and supported by his thinking about, and style of working with, emergence. This article will give a flavour of this, but hardly captures it!

The Transition Initiatives movement is growing rapidly from humble beginnings in Totnes, inspired and resourced by Rob Hopkins’ best selling Transition Handbook. For a flavour, download this Transition Initiatives Primer.

Esther Cameron is a wonderful organisational change consultant, with whom I’ve collaborated on and off over the last four years, and learnt much. Quietly wise, very funny and always up for bold experiments!

Professors Peter Reason and Judi Marshall, and Dr Gill Coleman are the founding energies behind the pioneering MSc in Responsibility and Business Practice at Bath University Management School. Peter’s inaugural lecture Justice, Sustainability & Participation makes the bold case for radical shifts in academia’s orientation towards teaching both business and sustainability subjects.

The Sustainable Development Commission is at least attempting to serve as an ‘agency of change’ amidst the bureaucratic complexities of the UK government and a somewhat stuck Whitehall culture. This record of a recent workshop may prove usefully provocative for leaders in similar environments, wrestling with how to initiate meaningful change. Of course, Oikos would go somewhat further...

Academically, my work has been shaped by a wide variety of influences – but especially formative have been: the anthropology of Keith Hart at Cambridge University, the cultural studies ‘movement’ and people like Donna Harraway and Dick Hebdige in the U.S.; an organisational studies paper by Paul Jeffcut,; Ken Wilber’s work on consciousness; complexity theorists such as Patricia Shaw and Margaret Wheatley; and the phenomenological, systemic healing work of Bert Hellinger. I’m currently interested in the growing field of ‘performative social science’...

The Sustainable Development Commission is chaired by Jonathon Porritt , who left Friends of the Earth just before I got my first job there as a campaigns strategist in 1990. He and his activities continue to both inspire and agitate me: what might a ‘next generation’ form of change leadership for sustainable development look and feel like – to deliver genuinely progressive results of a creative and soul-satisfying nature?

Similarly, George Monbiot’s articles often open up radical critiques and creative ideas about ways forward in wonderful ways. But what are the change leadership practices and qualities required to realise them in the world – and how might they actually be mobilised?

I have been inspired and encouraged by the ‘social sculpture’ work of artist and academic Shelley Sacks – which in turn has gradually opened up ever deeper understandings of the shamanistic qualities and possibilities underlying the work of Joseph Beuys.

David Ballard’s work to support organisations shifting in service of sustainable development is both full of integrity and passion, and pioneering yet practical. I admire it!

I have learnt plenty about both the art of change consulting and the practice of leadership working with Deborah Rowland and colleagues at RFLC, before the business recently became Transcend Consulting. I also contributed to some of the research and thinking underpinning her recent book with Professor Malcolm Higgs, entitled Sustaining Change: Leadership that Works.

Martin Aylward’s Buddhist retreat in France – run with his wife Gail – is a beautiful place for meditation and renewal. Martin teaches meditation around the world and I recommend him for 1:1 and small group work to develop greater mindfulness and inner tranquillity.

For many years I’ve been stimulated by the work of my friend Dr Joe Smith – currently channelled through the Open University, instigating initiatives such as Interdependence Day and writing books such as Do Good Lives Have to Cost the Earth?

I trained for two years at the Lakeland College of homeopathy, co-founded by a wonderful healer, Ian Watson. The ideas and practice of homeopathy – and some of the deeper understandings of health and healing which emerge from this beautiful form of medicine – quietly inform my consulting practice, and indeed, my approach to sustainable development. For me, ‘change leadership’ is best directed towards healing – or whole-making – rather than ‘curing’...

I’m grateful for my interactions in the late 1990s with Dr Simon Zadek – now Chief Executive of Accountability – who took my (and many others’) strategic thinking about issues of corporate responsibility to a more rigorous and expanded level.

I’ve recently been introduced to the work of psychotherapist Mary-Jane Rust, whose writing on climate change and over-consumption opens up some helpful – if challenging for some – lines of inquiry concerning what it might actually take to move towards more sustainable living. See ,for example, Climate on the Couch

Sitting ‘between’ the work of Peter Reason and Ken Wilber, is the leadership development theory and practice of Bill Torbert, David Rooke and colleagues. Though challenging to many, this sets out a way of seeing – and working with – the notion that leaders operate from identifiably more or less ‘evolved’ levels of consciousness, and that differing capacities stem from this...

Jonathan Robinson – chief executive of The Hub – is an example of the sort of ‘new paradigm’ thinker and leader that we are going to see emerge increasingly in the coming years. If they’re anything like Jonathan, working with them is not only deeply satisfying, but also offers great insights into the future of ‘change leadership for sustainable development’ as well...

I’ve been an amateur astrologer for some 10 years – influenced hugely by the writing and practice of Liz Greene particularly. Astrology is, of course, much derided. And yet, it is actually an ancient and deeply rich source of wisdom – offering much-needed insight into our relationship as individuals with much wider systems. Go to www.astro.com for a flavour – or see Liz Greene’s article about September 11th (2001), for instance, here.

Mark Shayler is an old friend and colleague who runs eco3 and knows all there is to know about upcoming environmental regulations and market trends - and potential ways of designing an innovative product or service in response. An entertaining speaker too...

I don’t know Malcolm Parlett at all well, but I’ve learnt and developed a great deal via those he has taught and informed during his many years as the UK’s leading light in the field of Gestallt. His recent lecture Living Beyond Limits: Hubris, Collapse and the Embodied Return paralleled the underlying premise and ‘journey’ contained in my ’Tall, Dark, Handsome and No.1’ to an uncanny degree.

Underlying all this work is a quiet commitment to the Nature that is in me: the spiritual activity of realising my own True Self and a full, compassionate presence. I’m supported in this by the Diamond Heart work, developed by A.H Almaas.

If you are doing leading-edge work that relates to this interconnected ‘field’, described through the various examples described above, and would be interested to be part of this emergent Oikos community, please be in touch.