Regenerative Enterprises: A Learning Journey Report
A blog post by Shirin Groß-Yachkaschi & Carina Zachariah, originally published by the Agile Organizational Development Guild
It’s been a year and a half since our last blog article on regenerative companies. During that time, we’ve been deeply engaged in the topic of regenerative organizations. We are a research team of seven members of the Agile Organizational Development Guild:
Shirin Groß-Yachkaschi, Carsten Holtmann, Hannes Horn, Thomas Klug, Anke Loose, Claudia Schröder, and Carina Zachariah.
In this article, we’d like to share insights from our research journey and summarize the results we’ve gathered.
How Did We Approach the Topic?
To immerse ourselves more deeply in the regenerative field and experience it firsthand, we carried out learning journeys to organizations to which we attribute regenerative qualities.
The key facts at a glance:
Between March and June 2023, we:
Visited 11 companies,
Conducted Sensing Journeys (based on Theory U) with interviews in various team constellations,
Completed personal journaling after each interview,
Transcribed the audio recordings and shared them with all researchers.
For the interviews, we had agreed on guiding question areas.
We also made a point of engaging with the experiences using all of our senses—capturing physical sensations (visual, auditory, olfactory, kinesthetic), as well as gut feelings—in our journaling and group reflection.
The Process of Pattern Recognition
After our visits, we selected quotes and observations from the transcripts that felt relevant and shared them among the group. In June 2023, we met in person for a two-day working session to identify overarching patterns on a meta-level. These observations and hypotheses were then refined and supplemented over the following months, and linked with corresponding quotes.
Not all patterns were found equally in every organization. Some appeared in varying degrees.
In describing and distilling our findings, we made a conscious effort to avoid interpretation. Instead, we worked directly with the content and language that we had heard and experienced.
To validate our findings, we hosted two online workshops in December 2023 with our interview partners, during which we presented the results and invited feedback.
What We Learned from Feedback
These feedback sessions helped us identify a few inconsistencies in our structure and refine the patterns accordingly.
We also realized that there were differing perceptions among the organizations: while some interview partners felt that the patterns we described resonated strongly and reflected their reality, others did not see themselves reflected in the same way.
On one hand, the companies we studied are quite different, which naturally makes uniform conclusions difficult. On the other hand, we noticed a spectrum:
Some organizations are very clear and radical in standing for their regenerative purpose, while others do not see themselves as regenerative and are instead pursuing a more sustainability-oriented path.
At this stage of our research, we are focusing on the patterns we recognized most clearly in organizations that strongly embody a regenerative sense of purpose.
The Patterns
In the following visual, you’ll find an overview of the patterns we were able to describe based on the interviews and our observations.
What’s Next?
We plan to share and discuss our findings in a variety of forums—both within the Agile OE Guild and beyond, for example at the Agile Culture Camp “Fire-Act-Future.”
We also intend to deepen the exchange with our interview partners and other organizations through in-person meetings.
We understand this pattern recognition as an ongoing process—and ourselves as learning observers.
One of our intentions is to find a language that makes this vast field of regeneration more accessible for organizations.
As organizational consultants, we also plan to develop an approach that can support other organizations on their path toward becoming more regenerative. We want to make what we’ve learned and experienced available to others—and will publish our findings in greater depth in the near future.
If you’d like to connect with us about this research, feel free to reach out:
Shirin Groß-Yachkaschi – contact@embodied-mind.com
Carina Zachariah – mail@zachariah.ch
Or any of the other researchers listed above.