The Regenerative Life

Teaching your team to be water, wearing away rock

Regenerative Life is an excellent book by Carol Sanford, which I recommend to everyone who feels that their team struggles to realise their need for self-development to achieve their objectives. Why do you need a (new) book to accomplish this? Because the book gives guidance on how to teach the team to see the world (e.g. the business) differently by better thinking about their capabilities in their role - and not by teaching them how to see the world (business) we see it.
Firstly, there are different level of perspective we can teach our team.
First, we can teach them the basics (‘Value Return’), after which we can focus on their self-improvement (‘Arrest Disorder’). Once these levels are accomplished we can move on to training the team on unique or outstanding performance (‘Do Good’). Finally, we want to show them how to contribute to a better world (‘Regenerate Life’).
Leaders can take different roles to achieve the betterment of their team along the lines above. These roles are grouped according to their main purposes: 3 main purposes with 3 roles in each bucket of purpose. As this is a framework, we can exercise any role from any bucket, and in fact, we are encouraged to try different roles in an ever-changing environment.
As to the three buckets of roles. The Initiative Roles provide the foundation for growth, including the roles of the Parent, Earth Tender and Designer. The Manifestors bucket includes responsibilities that aim at bringing new ideas to surface. These roles include Citizen, Entrepreneur and Economic Shaper. Finally, the bucket of Destabilisers include roles that aim at helping with uncertainty. This includes Spirit Resource, Media Creator and Educator.
For example, the Educator role means teaching learners about how to discern the right idea from the myriad of ideas they encounter a day. This role also includes teaching how to implement the the type of thinking required for the job, and how to develop intelligence (for example, which book to read). Educators also create value-adding processes, teaching the team how to think in a way that may challenge mindsets and the status quo to come up with different ways of doing to enable the business to grow.
The book is structured in a remarkably intuitive way, which helps both reading and implementation. There is no esoteric view in the book, nor does the book present any intangible ideas. Everything in the book is pragmatic, well-organised and is there to be implemented in an easy way.

While I loved the premise and overall message of this book, the writing felt really dragging and pedantic and not conducive to an enriching reading experience as it just bogged the concepts in the middle of a lot of words to in the end not say much at all in almost all the paragraphs

This is tough to review for me. I'm either not in the right head space or not smart enough to grasp what the author is suggesting we do. She is obviously brilliant in addition to helping people see differently. So I respect her approach, I just don't understand it in this form. I'll have to try a podcast or the forms of her insights in order to get it. Kudos to her for her impact on the world, and more power to her.

Thanks very much for the ARC for review!!