Cultivating the space for growth

If the soil is depleted, the seeds won’t grow.

I am a design professor seeking to bridge the academics of environmental sustainability, the professional design community, and those who want to create change but don’t always know where to begin. We know the world around us is not sustainable, instead we need to find ways to design regeneratively - rejuvenating ourselves, our communities, and our planet. In this edition I talk about the work we need to do as designers and as leaders that is sometimes slow, mundane, and not always seen, yet it is necessary for change.

Depleted Soil  

“No pumpkins this year?” my neighbor asks. “I tried, they just didn’t take”, I say.  

Two years ago at this time of year, my front yard was a pumpkin patch. Bright orange gifts attached to long leafy vines scattered about as the last of our other veggies were harvested from the garden. We had a bumper crop of zucchinis, beans, lettuces, and even corn (which was the result of my daughter's “measuring seedlings in centimeters” assignment that no one thought would ever actually result in something edible, but did). This year, I planted pumpkin seeds in the same way, watered them in the same way, and the sun shone down on them the same way, yet they never produced… nor did a lot of our vegetables. The seedlings came up, a few flowers blossomed, and then, that was it. As the sunflowers took over other parts of the yard, I declared it the year of sunflowers (which I also wrote about here). After my season of disappointing results, my amateur gardening googling revealed it was likely my soil. I hadn’t taken care of my soil at the end of the previous year. I’d just left it, weeds took over, which I pulled before replanting. But that was about it. I simply put new seeds in depleted soil and hoped they would grow.  

As autumn nears, I find myself missing the pumpkins naturally decorating the yard, and I’ve recommitted to fixing the soil for next year. I’m weeding and turning the soil, adding compost, and planting cover crops to protect and renourish the soil. The work is slow, mundane, and won’t be seen for some time, yet is necessary.  

cultivating depleted soil

Too many steps ahead

About five years ago I led a large, collaborative initiative at my university. As a strategic planner, visionary, designer thinker, and facilitator I was in my element. I poured my heart and soul into a multi-year project that had support from multiple entities across campus, until one day, it didn’t. I had lost people along the way, and as a passionate leader, it crushed me.    

Simultaneously I was in a Strengths-Based Mindfulness Leadership group. We just completed the Clifton Strengths Assessment. Rather than focusing on improving your weaknesses, the Clifton Strengths helps you identify your strengths and how to use them effectively while also helping you understand the blind spots they might create. My assessment came back and there at the top of the strengths were Strategic and Futuristic. This wasn’t a surprise to me, but the blindspots potentially created by these strengths were, and they were spot on to what I had just experienced.  

• Strategic Strength: Because of your strengths, you can reconfigure factual information or data in ways that reveal trends, raise issues, identify opportunities, or offer solutions. You bring an added dimension to discussions. You make sense out of seemingly unrelated information. You are likely to generate multiple action plans before you choose the best one.  Strategic Blindspot: Because you evaluate patterns and pathways so quickly, others might find it difficult to follow or understand your thought process. Be aware that sometimes, you might have to backtrack to explain how you got to where you are. 

• Futuristic Strength: You are a visionary. Your powerful anticipation and detailed visualization of a better future can turn aspirations into reality. Your vision of tomorrow can inspire and push others to new heights.  Futuristic Blindspot: Some people may dismiss your visions because they can’t see the future like you do. Accept that you must address real issues today to get to a better tomorrow. 

I was taken aback by my report and the serendipity of the timing correlating to what felt like a massive failure. While some saw my work as important impactful work in strategizing a plan for our collective future, it became clear that I was working ten steps ahead. While I was on step 11, many were back on steps 2 and 3. I expected them to be with me, not realizing I had to not just explain, but also guide them through all the steps between 2 and 10. Confusion, fear, and mixed signals lead others to pull their support in both me and the project. My blind spot became my downfall.  

drawing of guiding between the steps

Last month an email went out to our division asking for volunteers to be a part of a new planning group. The description was almost identical to what I had done five years ago. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t sting - there was no reference to the years of work and many individuals who contributed to the project I led. A close colleague sent me a message saying “it’s like you were ahead of your time, they weren't ready for your ideas then”. My ideas were metaphorical seeds planted in soil that was not cultivated to grow. My work at the time should have been to work on the soil and guide people through the steps. Now, some years later, the community around me had discovered steps 2 through 10. Whatever the work in between, it was slow, mundane, and wasn’t seen, yet is necessary to get the community there.  

Cultivator as leader 

As regenerative designers, sometimes our job is to plant the seeds, to lead - to light the path with bold visionary ideas of new paradigms and systems. To propose an entirely new way of living and working in the world is way more than 11 steps ahead. This work is needed. But we also need to remember that most people, communities, and systems aren’t there yet. We also need to design the steps to transition our collective culture through all the steps that come along the way.  

I expected my seeds to grow in soil that was not cultivated. The weeding, the composting, and the cover crops are all ways of helping my garden transition from season to season so that it can flourish.

I expected my colleagues to be in the future with me and understand the strategies needed. I hadn’t adequately communicated the reasons for why I was already there, so that collectively we could flourish.  

Just as it is our job to sometimes be leaders, it is also our job to be cultivators - tending to the soil, laying the groundwork, adding the compost, sparking ideas, creating spaces and communities for growth, pulling weeds, receiving communication and adjusting the process along the way, maybe even adding some worms.  

The work is slow, sometimes small and mundane, and most likely won’t always be seen, yet is necessary. Because if our soil is depleted, nothing is going to grow.  

planting fava beans as nitrogen fixers for the soil

Designs, systems, thinking, doing  

Design thinking and systems thinking are sometimes loved, sometimes hated, and sometimes tied together, sometimes not. I sometimes have trouble simply with the word “thinking” in the title - because while they are both about considering larger thoughts and connections, as a process, they are action orientated with a goal of implementation and not just a thought.  

Design thinking emphasizes a circular pattern of iteration and implementation - always going back to understand, explore and materialize design outcomes. The most common methods describe empathizing with the user, defining the problem, ideating, prototyping, testing, implementing, and repeating back every step of the way. Meaning that there might not be one implementation, there might be three or eight or one hundred until ideally the right outcome is achieved. (Or it ends because the budget runs out, the launch date arrives or the semester is over.) Each of these steps helps cultivate the soil.  

Systems thinking, on the other hand, does not share a closed loop, but rather looks at the interconnected parts and structures which could include the material, social, economic, political, geographical, and others. Each of these parts informs how the soil is cultivated.  

drawing of “design thinking” meets “systems thinking”

Both lenses allow us to consider if we’ve asked the right questions, if we’ve considered the correct stakeholders and if we’ve collected enough information about the inputs and outputs of our design, if we have cultivated the soil. You can make the world's best product ever, but if it isn’t used correctly, or doesn’t work in the context it’s presented, it hasn’t achieved its purpose. Just like a seed planted in depleted soil, will not grow.  

For every “great designer”, every “winner”, every “bold innovation”, there were thousands of cultivators and fertilizers along the way to make them successful in their contexts. Their work was likely slow, mundane, and won’t always be seen in the end, yet was necessary.  

Urgent call to slow down. 

Our planet is in crisis, our culture is in crisis. There are so many calls for urgent action. I often find myself caught up in a speeding bullet of needing to act now - wanting to move forward at a million miles an hour to try to fix things. But if we don’t slow down, breathe, and take the time to process and cultivate along the way our designs can become lost, ineffective, fail to launch, and even cause harm.

It can be hard to do slow work when you feel an urgent call. It can be hard to do slow work when it sometimes feels mundane, and won’t always be seen. Yet it is important to use checks and balances such as a Design Thinking method. It is important to understand the larger systemic connections of systems thinking. It is important to till the soil, add the compost, plant the cover crops, and work the land. Sometimes these come in small design interventions, in designing conversations, experiences, or ways to reframe our thoughts and actions. The work is slow, mundane, and won’t always be seen, yet it is nourishing, restorative, regenerative, and necessary.  

cover crops sprouting amongst fall leaves and rain