What is the meaning of an organisation in the face of 21st century challenges: climate crisis, mass extinction of nature, pandemics, war, poverty, fascism? Are we carrying on with the same business methods that got us into this mess? Who can see a vision of a better way of being which turns our ‘oil tanker organisations’ around?

How do we forge together all the parts we are already working so hard on: organisational agility, diversity, equity and inclusion, starting decolonising, productivity, wellness, customer experience, work/life balance, decarbonising, success, etc etc?

It’s a lot, huh?! Are we doing this and still all getting along? Are we making that impact or are we just fighting each others’ objectives?

Our vision is a multitude of leaders of organisations embracing 21st century challenges and thriving because of that work. Even, their organisations remaining relevant and continuing to exist because of that work.

We believe the foundation stones, for thriving in a storm of challenges, are strong, healthy relationships: across the organisation, with partners, customers/citizens and - the often missing one - an organisational relationship with nature. We respect the hard work you are doing and the often undervalued effort you’ve put into relationships. We see the battering your relationships have taken in the face of those crises which have hit the hardest.

This is the mission of Sandkind is to create space for your team(s) to strengthen those relationships. We are here to give you space, to repair, to revive and return stronger. If we also help you to align your objectives and find common ground to thrive then that’s fantastic. But let’s just start with respect and connection.

Respect

We talk about our vision with respect to all the pattern finders and practitioners who have created a piece or layer of the vision that we knit here into a new pattern.

We acknowledge the destruction our culture has created on the world, so we have sought out Indigenous thinking, guided by elder / Peer of the House of Lords, Baroness Natalie Bennett.

Indigenous teachers - Tyson Yunkaporta and Doris Shillingworth - have shown us how to flip the paradigm of our broken methods - starting with respect and starting with the land. Second: connection - importance of relationships, listening to each other and to the land. Third: reflecting and last: directing. We practice this, for example, by putting time in to recognise and listen before drawing conclusions and creating goals.

Greensand ridge and Chiltern hills - the land we live on the beauty of nature just a short train ride from London which invites us to engage in the lifecycle of the ladybird, hear the sound of the nightjar and notice the missing biodiversity. A relationship not just with one hill or leaf but an opportunity to reset whole organisational relationships with nature.

Our parents and youth volunteers showed us how to light fires and spend time outdoors, having fun, calming us and creating memories for the year round.

Thousands of people we have worked with across hundreds of organisations have shown us better and kinder ways of working and relating. Including but not limited to agile, lean and tech revolutionaries: Thoughtworks, Team Topologies/Conflux, IT Revolution, Psychological Safety. Social impact innovators: Relationship Project, Aspire, GrayDotCatalyst, DEC, StartNetwork, UN Disha project, and many more.

Farmers and outreach workers of the Kigezi region in SW Uganda taught the importance of relating: when the rains stopped the power and all there was to do was to listen and it made all the difference.