Reading the Wind

In many sports, navigating the wind is a powerful metaphor for regenerative leadership. Both require similar things:

• A deep understanding of the environment.
• The ability to adapt quickly to changing conditions.
• A commitment to maintaining a sustainable and balanced approach.

All of this has to happen while maintaining sensitivity to the winds – social, cultural, and economic – that influence your organization’s direction and growth.

?Learning to Sail

Understanding what it’s like to be inside a living system can be challenging for people who, like me, "grew up" as professionals within rigid, hierarchical systems. So it's often helpful to think about how living systems depend on movement. A way to understand the movement within a living system is to imagine yourself sailing.

When I began sailing, I learned that the fastest way to get somewhere is with the wind at your back and the sail at a 90-degree angle to the boat. This is called a run, and it’s pretty quiet. Sometimes the lack of noise makes it hard to realize how fast you’re going. When you’re tacking against the wind, however, it’s much noisier. It feels faster when, in reality, you're moving much more slowly.

As leaders we think working harder helps us make more progress at a faster rate. Our sailing metaphor helps us understand why the opposite is often true.

The constant change of external conditions - like wind - demonstrates the dynamics of a living system beautifully. A living system is not in the control of an organizational leader. As you learn how to read the wind, you can actually have a lot of fun?dancing with the changing dynamics?of the system. This helps you, as a leader, leverage the energy of the living system. You learn how best to navigate a destination in partnership with their environment.

Like sailors, regenerative leaders recognize they cannot control external factors. But you can influence how your organization responds and adapts to them. This adaptive approach is crucial for fostering resilience and ensuring long-term sustainability.

Beginning to Soar

Hot air ballooning is another important metaphor to help us understand what it's like to lead in a living system. Like sailing, hot air ballooning is also about leveraging changing wind currents. In this example, though, you cannot steer the balloon in a traditional sense. Instead, you must rise or descend into the currents of air moving in the direction you want to travel. Instead of sailing with or against the wind, a balloonist tacks by changing altitude.

Hot air balloons are able to soar because they are in complete synchrony with the wind.

As leaders, the hot air balloon metaphor takes us deeper into leadership that navigates change by understanding and aligning with the underlying currents within the organization - not by brute force. This means you have to be constantly attuned to the subtle shifts that always occur in organizational cultures. At the same time, you have to recognize changing external market conditions and incorporate them into your strategy. ?

When a hot air balloon pilot misreads the wind, this leads to a wayward journey. When a leader misinterprets organizational or market dynamics, a project or the entire company can be steered far off course.

Ballooning also requires the patience of holding a long-term view. Decisions made at 1,000 feet can impact the journey many miles down the road. Like hot air balloon pilots, we must learn to be patient, think strategically, and wait for our course to adapt naturally.

Moving With the Wind

Reading the wind encapsulates the essence of regenerative leadership.

As leaders, we can transition away from control to a more adaptive approach. If we don't, we may not survive the constantly (and increasingly) changing dynamics of today’s environment. Hot air ballooning and sailing illustrate this shift because it’s no longer about fighting the wind. Now, it’s about reading the wind correctly and using it to your advantage. Just like navigating wind currents, leadership requires a balance between setting the right strategy and adapting to circumstances. The best sailors and balloonists among us know how to work with – not despite – the forces around them.

The metaphor of wind highlights the importance of being responsive, adaptive, and sustainable in one's approach to leading and managing change. This perspective is crucial in today's ever-evolving and interconnected world, where leaders are called upon to guide their organizations through complexities while ensuring their actions contribute positively to the broader ecosystem.

Some Final Questions

We are in the midst of major winds. Now is the time to ask ourselves:

·????? What direction do the currents want us to go?

·????? How best can I navigate through the wind? ?

·????? Is it time to sail - or is it time to soar?

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