In today's rapidly evolving world, where meaningful connections are more sought after than ever, we find ourselves at a crossroads, searching for new ways to unite and work together. These new pathways beckon us beyond the …

Introduction: Setting the context for power in self-organization

For over half a century, we have seen a growing movement dedicated to finding new ways to organize work. People have innovated many alternatives to the management hierarchy that emerged out of the industrial revolution and became a globally dominant organizational model. One thing seems to be clear; the power hierarchy has run its course. The complex circumstances of the 21st century call for…

One aspect I consider to be a foundation within my work is to listen very carefully to my clients’ use of language, i.e., listen to the specific way they use words. This enables me to better understand where they are coming from, and by that I mean to get a better understanding of the unconscious beliefs that are reflected in how they speak.

When I hear certain language…

George is one of my new clients. Formerly a top manager in a large multinational corporation, he now is a full blood entrepreneur and proud of his highly specialized service company. He had many good reasons to leave his well paid job and decided to make things better for everybody in his own company. He learned about Holacracy, read Frederic Laloux’s “Reinventing Organizations” and many other books in the field of the new world of work. And he got support from a consultant to help him navigate the journey. He felt he had found a good way to shift the company towards self-organization with a step by step approach, involving all his 120 employees in …

A few days ago I had a conversation around the resistance against self-organization. It wasn’t the original question my client (let’s call her Ann) came to me, but it turned out to be the question that was at the core of what was bothering her. For me this was no surprise, as most of the conversations my clients bring to me are around resistance one way or the other.

Anne began our conversation with describing behaviors…

When your organization is on the journey into self-organization you can be pretty sure that it will have an effect on your relationships with your co-workers.

Here’s the question one of my clients recently brought to me: “My business partner and I have been very good friends for many years. We founded our organization together and initiated the journey into self-organization with great passion. Over some time now I feel we are losing contact. With everything going on and things changing so fast, I don’t know how to…

You’ve probably read about it, or even written about it yourself: Humanity is on the journey into a new age. It appears that evolution is giving our consciousness capacities for integrating polarities, embracing wholeness, and deeply understanding the connectedness of everything.

On this journey, we humans are invited to move away from…

This is the first in a series of four articles on self-organization. Together, they are intended to offer greater clarity, stories from experience, and practical solutions for the journey into self-organization. I hope to offer a fresh perspective on self-organization and its practical implementation.

This first article is fundamentally about clarification. It offers…

In article one, I defined terms and arrived at an understanding of self-organization as the evolutionary organizing principle of the universe. We ended with the question of how to move forward toward self-organization in a way that supports people and organizational purpose, without confusing the organization context and the social context of the people who energize it. This is fundamentally a question of differentiation and…

Every single day of my life, I face opportunities to consciously make decisions in the name of love. Sometimes I succeed and sometimes I fail. But one thing is always there: the consciousness that absolutely everything has to do with love.

Reaching this consciousness was a diverse and often challenging…

For many years I have been consciously pursuing a life that I consider inspired and guided by my personal purpose. For me, my personal purpose is not so much about finding the answer to the question, “What is the purpose of my life?” but rather, “What is my work in the world?.” By “work” I mean something more expansive than what is generally considered a job or a profession. My work is about what I can consciously and actively do in all aspects of my life to contribute to what I feel I am called to. I consider purpose as something…