In Mauritius 🇲🇺 we may not have snow and glühwine but it is the jolly season of the flame tree and lovely tropical fruits and that is what gives us the Christmas feeling 🤗 From my little farm on this tiny rock in the Indian Ocean to all of you at IDG@Work, wherever you are in the world, I send you my warmest Season Greetings!

Comfort looks innocent. It feels deserved. Yet it may be one of the most powerful forces quietly undermining our values, our leadership, and our ability to build regenerative systems. Most of us don’t walk away from what we believe in because we stop caring. We walk away when living those values starts to cost us time, effort, patience or ease. Comfort rarely shows up as a conscious choice. It hides behind words like efficiency, convenience, and making things easier. It often sounds reasonable: - “We don’t have time for this right now.” - “The market isn’t ready.” - “Let’s not overcomplicate things.” - “We need quick wins.” None of these are wrong on their own. But together, over time, they form an invisible operating system. It subtly prioritises ease over alignment, and short-term relief over long-term value. The uncomfortable truth is this: many decisions that keep organisations stuck are not driven by bad intent, but by an unexamined preference for comfort. I believe most leaders genuinely care about sustainability, wellbeing, fairness, or long-term impact. The issue is that those values often become conditional. We support them as long as they: - don’t slow us down, - don’t disrupt existing models, - don’t introduce friction, - don’t require us to sit with uncertainty or resistance. The moment they do, we postpone, soften, or reframe them into something more manageable. Not because we don’t believe, but because full alignment asks more of us than we are willing to face. Building regenerative food systems inevitably introduces friction. It asks leaders to: - hold complexity instead of simplifying it away, - resist short-term incentives, - stay present when outcomes are uncertain, - engage with interests that don’t neatly align. This is where comfort quietly becomes a liability, because meaningful change rarely happens in its presence. What we often call “resistance to change” is, at its core, resistance to discomfort. And that is where inner development quietly becomes a business capability:

Hello Community, ok, let's continue our reverse-engineering challenge with the 3rd dimension: Relating. Thanks to your feedback, we've changed the document into a Google Spreadsheet, which hopefully is easier to navigate (the video still shows the Google Doc, since we filmed it before :-) 👉 Here is the Google Spreadsheet to add your reflections about the real client outcome for the IDG skills under the 'RELATING' dimension Next week on Tuesday, Dec 16th, 12.30pm Nadene will welcome you for our last hangout of the year. And we'll finish the challenge with the last two dimensions in the new year! Looking forward to your thoughts and reflections around relating. Warmly Sarah (and Nadene)

We talk a lot about transforming our food systems. But almost no one talks about transforming the people who shape them. At first glance, farming and inner development seem worlds apart. Farming is physical, practical, rooted in soil and seasons. Inner development is mental and emotional, rooted in awareness and mindsets. Yet the irony is this: our food system will not regenerate unless the people within it do. And here’s the uncomfortable truth: we will not fix food security or soil health through techniques alone. We need different farmers AND different leaders shaping the system around them. As a farmer myself, I realised that food systems are not purely agricultural problems. They are human systems and human systems behave according to the mindsets, fears, blind spots, and values of the people inside them. This is why complex challenges (“wicked problems”) overwhelm us. We respond with roadmaps, committees, think tanks, five-year plans. These feel productive, but they often tackle symptoms rather than root causes. The cycle continues at every new government mandate or annual budget exercise. So what’s the real bottleneck? Not a lack of knowledge. Not a lack of technology. Not even a lack of land (at least not in my country Mauritius). The bottleneck, I believe, is inner capacity: - the courage to rethink entrenched models - the humility to learn from nature rather than dominate it - the empathy to consider farmers, consumers and ecosystems together - the systems thinking required to see beyond silos - the resilience to stay committed when results take seasons, not quarters. If we want to move from extractive farming to conscious land stewardship, we need to cultivate not just soil health, but human capacity: farmers who think regeneratively, policymakers who understand complexity, consumers who see value beyond price, and leaders who prioritise long-term resilience over short-term optics. The land can regenerate. The question is: can we? And how do we go about it? These last questions have been a lot on my mind lately and honestly, I am not sure I have the answer(s). For now I am mostly trying to get there by seeking partnerships (together we're stronger, right?) and consistently move conversations back to the real bottle necks stated above. Maybe that is the answer: consistency and persistence.

Hello All, I am working with a client on their talent development needs and am exploring using the IDG Guide to do a 360 degree style survey for the stream leadership teams. Looking forward to any best practices I can emulate. Thanks in advance.