Your host has been called an organizational bricoleur, a polymath, deep thinker and researcher and it comes out in his comfortable and open yet focused style. He’s been a transformational coach and team building facilitator for decades, with a rich inner life as well. (BeTheDream.com & TeamPartnering.com)
David came out of working with the Environmental Defense Fund, helping companies be more energy efficient. The Regenerative Agriculture Sector Accelerator (RASA) and the Global Regeneration CoLab (GRC) caught his attention when he was introduced to the concept of regeneration. Going beyond a net-zero effect was imperative in his mind.
Regeneration is a kind of policy prescription for making the world better than it was, such as biodiversity, carbon sequestration, new jobs and a different kind of engagement with the environment. Can people be good for the environment? In his deep dive into self, he found a potential that they could.
David shares his notions about how he wants to use the ‘last part of his life’ to learn how to use the tools available in the virtual space and the internet to assist the growth of humanity. The internet is the largest engineering project ever and it still is growing, with the advent of collaborative tools now. Electromagnetic engagement, light pulses, often spill over into personal experience, too.
Spiritual awakenings that align skill set, passion and purpose don’t have to be metaphysical. In fact, for many late in life they are not. It’s a redirection of intelligence, knowledge and skill set to serve their community or humanity in an uplifting way. Regeneration is such a path as it aligns people, places and things for restoring the capacity of people to serve the land.
In this new level of engagement, with the IOT, he suggests that we need to consider the interconnectedness of nature and humanity, which is another level of complexity that hasn’t been explored to the extent necessary. Now society has to engage this interconnectedness and the capacity for collaboration is growing. Perhaps these notions become self-evident in reflection.
The Global Regeneration CoLab has become a peer-to-peer support network for regenerative efforts around the globe. The participants see themselves as collaborators rather than competitors. Zen asks David about the nature of electromagnetic fields and the interactivity of humans and the internet producing some ‘serendipitous’ moments, i.e., bumping into others unexpectedly.
Dave refers to the latter as increasing the probability of serendipity and that the nature of the interaction brings a ‘sensemaking’ component into play. He noticed the sensemaking was something that developed as the people grew in the understanding of each other and the work that could be done for the environment.
Asked about the simultaneous personal development along with the projects, David admits he didn’t expect there to be as much self-development as part of the process of learning how to work together in supporting the regenerative efforts. What he found in addition was that he became more aware of personal wellness and the personal traumas that also surfaced as the organization developed.
Asked about his own growth in awareness he offers that his learning curve has been steep with all the elements of the CoLab, such as time zones, how people interact, what they bring to the discussions, and the complexity of organizing the variety of types of meetings for a global community. We don’t often think of how systems really work, only that they work for us in delivering goods and services.
We invite you to listen in further as we explore the ways people are learning how to work together in non-hierarchical environments from different backgrounds, cultures, skillsets and time zones. The silver lining from Covid, in this case, has allowed the opportunity for the GRC to develop.
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