About my podcast: New Work and Sustainability

What is new work? What is sustainability? How does this hang together? Why and how does it matter for your organization, for you as a leader, and for your teams?

Imagine your organization as a living system (not a machine) designed for people to thrive, grow, innovate, and laugh. Bringing themselves and your business forward. So rather than reducing our negative impact, how about spawning new systems and structure to create more value, and constructively contributing to life’s evolution?

Not possible? Why not?

We have the tools, we have the research, we have organizations that are going into this direction.

What is the purpose of your organization? How do you relate to your employees? How do you relate to your communities and nature? How can you design your organization for the long run, in times of uncertainty, climate change and other crises?

Too complex? You do not want to start the journey? Stop reading then! If you continue, here are some things, you could take on this journey and you might want to test out some more:

Organizational level

What is the purpose of your organization? (see John Strelecky; Hutchins/Storm)

How does your strategy include dimensions of people’s growth, developmental aspirations, developmental communities, and developmental practices? What does it mean for your organization to be deliberately developmental, a learning organization and creating an everyone culture? (see Kegan/Lahey)

In how far do you see your organization as a living system in which methods such as biomimicry, circular economy, cradle to cradle are built in your design? How does your sustainability policy look like and how is it integrated into your business purpose? What does regeneration mean for your organization? (see Hutchins/Storm; McDonough/Braungart)

How does your living systems culture look like? Why and how does systems thinking, complexity theory and adult developmental psychology matter to you? (see Dave Snowden; Daimler/Sparrer/Varga von Kibéd; Amy Edmondson; Brené Brown)

What is an evolutionary organization with a spirit of abundance for you? And how do you embrace change and transformation or do you dear to call it evolution already? (Frederic Laloux; Aaron Dignan; Lipmanowicz/McCandless)

How do you create an organizational design that allows your leaders to lead meaningfully and your teams to actively participate in your organization, to innovate, to thrive, and to grow?:

• How do you create and cherish spaces to think and decide (Daniel Kahneman; Ted Rau; Daniel Steinhöfer)?
• How do you live diversity? (Alice Hasters; Mohamed Amjahid; Shakil Choudhury)
• What role does strengthening resources of your employees, mindfulness and resilience play for you? (Storch/Krause; Jon Kabat Zinn; Marian Rojas Estapé; Rafael Santandreu)
• How do you include your employees actively in shaping and developing your organization, your products and services through participation, better communication, and authentic collaboration (Lipmanowicz/McCandless)

Team level

How do you meet and how do you collaborate as a team?

How do you decide and who decides on what and why?

How do you come up with and nurture your practices, your rituals, and your team agreements?    

How does your meeting culture look like?

How does participation and voice look like in your team?

How do you integrate sustainability at the team level? How do you participate in and shape the sustainability policy of your organization? What does regeneration mean for your team?

Here is what can help you along the way:

• Liberating structures
• Design thinking
• Regeneration and sustainability camps and projects
• Play, serious games, lego serious play
• Systems constellation work (systemic business constellations/deep democracy)
• Visualization and transparency tools (virtual whiteboards, trello, file sharing etc)
• New work methods and tools, agile tools
• Sociocratic tools for decision making

Individual level

How do you lead? What matters to you? How do you relate to your team members?

How and where do you come up with new ideas and projects? What are your next steps?

How do you learn? Where and with whom do you learn? How do you share your knowledge?

How and where do you recharge your batteries?

What does sustainability and regeneration mean to you? How are you connected to nature?

Here is what can help you along the way:

• Lifelong learning in self-organized settings such as communities of practice, lunch & learn, BarCamps can complement formal training and on the job training
• Inner work: values, hurdles/patterns, resources/strength, purpose/vision, goals: Professional coaching, self-coaching, peer-coaching
• Mindfulness and stress management: meditation, walks in nature, Jacobson progressive muscle relaxation, laughter yoga, improv theatre, dance
• Somatic work and emotion regulation work: breathing and somatic techniques such as pranayama, Gestalt approach, Schultz autogenic training

Now I am curious? What do you think? How does new work and sustainability hang together for you in your organization?

Join the journey to “new work and sustainability” on my podcast with new episodes every two weeks:  https://nicole-helmerich.com/podcast/ and

let us continue the discussion via email or on LinkedIn or in my communities of practice LS go online and Facilitation Lab and New Work Practices

Thank you for your feedback, ideas and your support on this journey!

Happy to share the books I cite:

Mohamed Amjahid (2017) Unter Weißen. Was es heißt, privilegiert zu sein.

Brené Brown (2018) Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.

Shakil Choudhury (2015) Deep Diversity.

Renate Daimler (2008) Basics der Systemischen Strukturaufstellungen. Eine Anleitung für Einsteiger und Fortgeschrittene – mit Beiträgen von Insa Sparrer und Matthias Varga von Kibéd.

Aaron Dignan (2019) Brave New Work.

Amy C Edmondson (2018) the fearless organization.

Alice Hasters (2019) Was weiße Menschen nicht über Rassismus hören wollen aber wissen sollten.

Giles Hutchins/Laura Storm (2019) Regenerative Leadership: The DNA of life-affirming 21st century organizations.

Jon Kabat Zinn (2013) Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness.

Daniel Kahneman (2013) Thinking, fast and slow.

Robert Kegan/Lisa Laskow Lahey (2016) An Everyone Culture: Becoming a Deliberately Developmental Organization.

Frederic Laloux (2014) Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage in Human Consciousness.

Henri Lipmanowicz/Keith McCandless (2014) The Surprising Power of Liberating Structures: Simple Rules to Unleash A Culture of Innovation.

William McDonough/Michael Braungart (2002) Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things.

Ted J Rau (2021) Who decides who decides? How to start a group so everyone can have a voice.

Marian Rojas Estapé (2018) Cómo hacer que te pasen cosas buenas.

Rafael Santandreu (2018) El arte de no amargarse la vida.

Daniel Schweighöfer (2021) Liberating Structures. Entscheidungsfindung revolutionieren.

Dave Snowden et. al. (2020) Cynefin – Weaving Sense-Making into the Fabric of Our World.

Maja Storch/Frank Krause (2017) Selbstmanagement – ressourcenorientiert. Grundlagen und Trainingsmanual für die Arbeit mit dem Zürcher Ressourcen Modell.

John Strelecky (2008) The big five for life.

About me

Since 2015 it is a great pleasure for me to accompany individuals and teams in different forms of constellation work. If you are interested to learn more about it or to use it for yourself or your team, I look forward to your message via email or on LinkedIn.

I work with leaders, teams and organizations. I am a new work coach, a sustainability consultant and a facilitator. In my work I bring new work and sustainability together. I run a podcast on „New Work and Sustainability“. I belief in learning and growing in communities of practice. I founded and run communities of practice on liberating structures, facilitation and new work practices: LS go online and Facilitation Lab and New Work Practices.