Paul Zonneveld and Mieke Jacobs are the co-authors of the recent book Emergent, which brings a systemic intelligence lens to the questions of how organizations get into and ultimately resolve complex challenges, with a focus on mergers and acquisitions.
Paul and Mieke have both spent decades working with the question of how to help leaders and organizations thrive. What surprised me most about this conversation was the deep attention to history that systemic intelligence brings to these questions of thriving. As Mieke said to me offline, just as human beings store trauma in our bodies, impactful or traumatic events in companies are stored in their visible and invisible structures. These events still show themselves in the internal relations and in the organizational culture.
This deeply resonates with me: that we can understand what's happening in our lives and relationships by tracing the threads back through history to these root events. I've been on my own personal journey to understand my family history, to understand the roots of my own fears, and to heal from and let go of burdens that are no longer mine to carry. To see it applied so elegantly in an organizational context was a masterclass in how to approach organizational understanding in an entirely new way.
If you care at all about what makes groups of people work, you will find this conversation deeply inspiring. Make sure you stick around to the very end because, in addition to my conversation with Paul and Mieke, Mieke reads a beautiful original poem entitled ‘rIVER’ and Paul leads me through an incredible 30-minute meditation focused on ancestral work and tapping into our ancestral field.
Show Notes:
Listen to my previous conversations with Chelsea Simpson and Michael Stern
Emergent by Mieke Jacobs and Paul Zonneveld
The Power of Systemic Intelligence
linkedin.com/company/the-power-of-syst
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#44 Systemic Elegance (with Mieke Jacobs and Paul Zonneveld)