Organizations

At Seed Systems we do Capacity Building & Culture Transformation and Strategic Planning. For Strategic Planning scroll down.

I. Capacity Building and Culture Transformation:

To thrive in the new Sustainability Era, organizations need to transform their cultures, develop new leadership competencies, and create living structures for communication. The industrial age business was built like a machine. Now we know better: organizations are alive and need to be designed in harmony with life. Here are some of nature’s design principles to work with:

Waste = Food (No waste in nature)
Interdependency/Interconnectivity
Nurturing (Co-creativity)
Diversity (All life, all time)
Sun as source of Energy in Nature

Here are some of the design shifts your organization willl need to make to open your path to sustainability (for more on these see our book, The Necessary Revolution)

  From: To:
     
> ENERGY Fossil Fuels -->      Sun
> PRODUCTION Global -->       Local
> MATERIALS Massive Waste -->      Zero Waste
> VARIETY Mono Culture -->      Diversity
> DEFINITION of SUCCESS My Wealth alone -->      All thrive

And of course, this revolution begins with you. Essential skills you’ll need to master to include co-creativity, collaboration, systems thinking, balancing reflection and action, advocacy and inquiry, and many more.

Ready to lead? We can design a capacity building/culture transformation program for you like the one we did for Nike as our friends Sarah and Darcy have so generously described in their testimonial on this page. We have 18 years experience in all sectors cultivating organizations who are leading this sustainability revolution. You’re next.            

 

II. Strategic Planning as an ongoing practice

Designing from desired future rather than current reality, we help organizations achieve their highest aspirations. We do this by articulating the gap between the vision of where they want to be and the reality of where we they are now. Then we coach leaders to outline a concrete plan to bridge that gap, explicitly defining goals, timelines and accountabilities. And we help them create active learning communities where partners support and challenge each other to follow through on their commitments and turn visions into "facts on the ground."

 

As a client wrote recently, 

"When I came on as Executive Director, we had a great organization, but lacked direction and a coherent vision among the leadership. With Sara Schley’s help, we put together a strategic plan that became a powerful “living document.”  This plan has served as a guidepost for all of our endeavors since.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For our approach please see our powerpoint Strategic Planning. Adapted from our colleague Michael Shandler.