What does agriculture have to do with leadership and thriving in the future? 

In this episode, that’s what Christopher Cooke and I dive into. 

Long ago Christopher chose to focus his holistic engineering oriented mind on agriculture because it is the one of the most complex sectors on the planet. It’s relationship with religion and economies and governance is one of the tightest of all industries, and it is based on the way the world was long before any of those were formalized.

Studying with the likes of greats like Ken Wilbur and Alan Savory, Christopher has learned from a few of the great thinkers of our time and is making his own mark in the world of soil and water conservation.  However, if you speak with him (or listen to this podcast) you might think we were talking about leading humanity through change rather than about agriculture! That’s because from Christopher’s perspective, the biggest challenge we face today is not the individual problems faced by each industry or business, it is the lack of understanding how humans change and how best to facilitate the adoption of new paradigms to help humans reverse the damage of years of degradation of soil, plants and humans in the name of production. 

“We are actually overcoming or reversing a lot of beliefs and values that have been established and enculturated over the last 10,000 years.” Not only in business but in most every industry. 

“The present paradigm of most human cultures has one underlying ethos which is to dominate nature. It’s vital that we avoid discounting nature. Discounting that serves nobody.” 

Christopher notes how one of the primary challenges we face is a lack of a common understanding of what it takes to move humans through change. He explains that there are two types of change:

1)      Change within the paradigm – like palliative care for the dying

2)      Reframing and allowing the space for a new paradigm 

Our job is to grow the new until the existing is no longer needed so it can just go away. Unfortunately, very little attention is given to the second type of change and without it, no new paradigm will be able to take root. 

This is why he is a huge fan of “Take Your Shoes Off First” as it helps leaders, teams and individuals address that second type of change and take conscious steps towards making room for new ideas to bloom. 

“Your book takes us beyond the VUCA times, as it is encouraging people to thrive through the VUCA times but also be able to prepare to utilize innate capacities that they didn’t know existed before they chose to take their shoes off.”

I couldn’t have said it better!  Many thanks to the incredibly insightful Christopher Cooke for joining me on this episode of Take Your Shoes Off First. 

To learn more about the groundbreaking Christopher Cooke and his work, check out: 

-          LinkedIn HERE.

-          3LM Website HERE.

-          5 Deep Website HERE.