Earthself CIC

Organisation, institute, community, or project name the design lens was applied within: Earthself Community Interest Company

Organisation, institute, community, or project website (or other social media page): https://www.earthself.org

Country or countries in which the design lens was applied: Scotland

Main language utilised when working with the design lens: English

What prompted you to work with the design lens? It's rare to see an ecological organisational lens, and as someone who has spent over a decade exploring the question, "If Earth had a business, what would it do and how would it function?" this was an opportunity for me to have something else hold the exploration and offer me a different way of engaging with the question and the work I do.

In today's world, it's hard to design an organisation to function like Earth when its not the norm. I wanted to be able to see any blind spots in my thinking and be able to explore aspects of how I was designing Earthself more deeply. When I saw the lens on LinkedIn, it was something that immediately pulled me in and invited me to explore it further.

How did you work with the design lens?

In this context, I explored working with the design lens by overlaying a compass on top of it so that the top of the lens pointed north and the bottom of the lens pointed south, etc. I then found a tree close to my house that attracted me to work with it as the anchor point of the design lens, i.e. the central point of the design lens.

With the compass overlay I was able to orientate in the landscape to the hills in the north and the river in the south so that I was embodied in place. I would then spend time walking around the tree to find where I wanted to stand in relation to it.

Upon returning home, I would then look at the design lens and see what part of the design lens this orientation referred to and would then select a question from that section to hold as inquiry in terms of developing Earthself as an organisation.

I continue to do this as and when I'm inspired and have worked through the development of a number of key areas in Earthself through using this process. My intention is to arrive to an answer to the question that can then be embedded in organisational process.

What did you gain from working with the design lens?

At times I gained confidence in that some of the ways I was approaching organisational design was already embedded within Earthself. Other times I identified areas that were weak and required further operationalisation. Some examples of what I gained in this way are:

1. Writing up the cosmology and worldview of Earthself, including its philosophy so that I could communicate this more clearly;

2. Refining the design of how coaches move through Earthself beyond graduation from the ICF L1 NatureProcess Coach Training and how a graduate coaching clan can help shape the organisation's growth in the future.

Right now, the design lens has guided me through this process to adapt one of the questions, "If Earth is our primary stakeholder as stated in our governance, then how do we formalise how we listen to, incorporate and celebrate its voice in how we work so that we can ensure anyone involved in the organisation is clear on what this means and how we do it?"

Is there anything else you'd like people to know about working with the design lens?

I've found that having the freedom to identify how to work with the lens for myself has enabled me to tap into my own autistic strengths and EarthConnected approach to coaching on a deeper level and to be able to play even more with what it means to be an ecological being.