The Natural Strategist: Cultivating a Mindset of Care and Connection

By Stefan Raffl

Discover how to be a high-impact leader and make a positive change with The Natural Strategist. This book offers a unique and holistic perspective on how to cultivate a mindset of care and connection to create sustainable models that will foster flourishing. Through this b

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Degree Press
• Release date: May 11, 2023
• ISBN: 9798889269816

Book preview

cover.jpg

The Natural Strategist

The Natural Strategist

Cultivating a Mindset of Care and Connection

Stefan Raffl

New Degree Press

Copyright © 2023 Stefan Raffl

All rights reserved.

The Natural Strategist

Cultivating a Mindset of Care and Connection

ISBN

979-8-88926-938-0 Paperback

979-8-88926-981-6 Ebook

To my wife and to my mother

who have always nurtured the best in me and inspired me

in their own unique ways.

Contents

Introduction

Part One.

The Root System

Chapter 1.

Imagine Your Reality as a Landscape

Chapter 2.

Digging Deeper: What Our Values Reveal

Chapter 3.

Decoding Nature’s Blueprint of Leadership

Part Two.

Cultivating a Mindset of Thriving

Chapter 4.

The Nature of Caring Leadership

Chapter 5.

Make Mindful Presence a Habit

Chapter 6.

Build on Your Strengths

Chapter 7.

Obstacles Are Your Friends

Chapter 8.

Make Friends with the Unknown

Part Three.

Care and Determination

Chapter 9.

Bringing Your Strategy to Life

Chapter 10.

In the Weeds

Chapter 11.

Cultivate the Conditions for Thriving

Chapter 12.

Growth in Action

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Appendix

Introduction

It all started when Matt asked me what was going on. He pointed to all the scratches on my forearms.

I did some work between my roses last weekend, I said. I looked away, trying to change the subject. Can we see some pictures? Helen asked. Her voice was lighthearted with a hint of intrigue. I pulled out my phone and searched for some pictures of my garden. I quickly found one of Crown Princess Margareta, an elegant and impressive rosebush climbing to our balcony, covered in peach-orange blossoms.

For all to see, I projected my phone onto our conference room screen. I continued with the roses. We followed the small rose bushes as they moved along the white border with dark red bricks on top. The roses showed off their white, yellow, and apricot buds and blooms, interspersed with lavender-blue catmint and the occasional bright blue heads of Kew Blue bluebeards on stems with silvery leaves.

Huge yellow trumpet-shaped flowers swayed in the breeze on the branches of the namesake Angel’s trumpet tree. They reached over and over, as impressive as the huge white flower heads of the Annabelle hydrangea, almost as big as my head. We could not smell the fragrant scent the Angel’s trumpets sent throughout the garden, but we could see the garden changing and transforming throughout the year.

The white rhododendrons, next to the magnolias with their seductive allure in the early part of the year, competed for attention with the fireworks of white created by the azaleas. They pass their flowering duties to the hydrangeas, also all white, which carry the garden through the summer in tandem with the brilliant white hibiscus and their dark red splashes, which are the last to bloom.

As the year draws to a close, the red Yuletide camellias and the yellow of the lemon tree bring color through the cooler months, and the winter-flowering camellias continue into spring.

What a rhythm. What a flow! Helen said. I bet you had no super detailed operating plan to create this. It can only be the work of an architect and what he does. Everything just works together. Everything flows beautifully. Everything just fits.

Why don’t we use some of your gardening strategies to build our plans?

We had just finished a meeting. My colleagues and I had been working with our planning team to develop our business unit’s operating plan for the next fiscal year. We were determined to put together a better operating plan, a smarter operating plan, a more effective operating plan—a plan that was mapped out in great detail and that would allow our business unit to meet the challenge with excellence and to achieve its ambitious goals. We had brought all the expertise we had into the room. We felt good about our work and confident that we could achieve our goals. We would make it happen.

We had reached out to all parts of the company, reviewed and prioritized a long list of goals, and narrowed an equally long list of proposed initiatives to a few. After much debate, we had decided to keep the number of initiatives small and focus the efforts of our business units on a handful of programs that had the potential to make the greatest contribution to our long-term goals. The promise of a more focused plan was that it would be easier to manage and increase our chances of success.

We had carefully developed a set of proposed metrics that would monitor performance. We made sure to include leading indicators to help track progress and execution. Predictive metrics would help us project performance beyond the picture in the rearview mirror. We even took the time to pressure test our fully developed plan. We had marked a few areas we would revisit in a future round of revisions to make the plan even stronger.

But Helen was right: It was not a set of detailed metrics that made the garden thrive. It was a vision of expected outcomes and then giving it the time and consistent care to grow and thrive.

How does an idea or project become successful? How do gardens thrive, and how do businesses thrive?

At first glance, they don’t seem to have anything in common. When we think of businesses, the first things that often come to mind are: numbers-driven, profit-maximizing, forced effort, pressure, self-interest, disengaged employees.

When we think of gardens and nature, we relax. We see green, we see flowers, and we see flow and color. We hear birds, and we see trees growing tall. We see the sky. We see life.

We seem to be conditioned to think the flourishing of people and organizations is diametrically opposed to strong performance. What if we combined the operational consistency of business with the flow found in nature? We would all be able to flourish and achieve exceptional performance at the same time.

When we take a gardener’s view, we instinctively step back and begin to see the bigger picture. We begin to notice what is going on around us. Almost naturally, we know when to get involved and when to let things grow. We decide with care and proceed with determination to let things unfold and evolve.

Unlocking Understanding

I have always liked models and frameworks. They fascinate me. Something about their analytical rigor and structure really gets my brain working, and I love exploring ways to apply them to real-world situations. They are like secret overlays that reveal all the connections and relationships between different things, making it easy to move forward quickly and efficiently.

Putting them into practice in the real world taught me their value. As a finance and operations executive in a high-tech company, I had a knack for getting things done without drama. With an eye for what was needed, I helped shape the financial architecture of business units and execute multi-year plans. The results we achieved, the efficiencies we created, and the growth we regained earned us respect.

Numerous change projects were successfully completed, often on a large scale, spanning a hundred countries or more. I became known for calmly leading people and organizations through significant change and transformation. It was my distinguishing trait. I was passionate about cultivating excellence and working with people.

My approach to achieving financial operational excellence focused on improving performance visibility and building operational discipline. The use of key performance indicators, dashboards, and advanced analytics were at the core of what helped me build target models and track and drive margin expansion and cash flow improvement.

I was always quick to pick up on what was needed. By listening to people and observing what was going on, I was able to respond to their needs and the needs of the organization and help solve problems.

Some of the most valuable lessons I have learned haven’t just come from my time at work. They have come from my experiences with nature. Whether through long hikes in nearby parks and mountains or tending a garden at home, observing and uncovering nature’s blueprint profoundly influenced my leadership approach. It taught me the importance of patience and care for growth, and that things are always changing, often in ways we cannot predict.

In the natural world, everything is interconnected. The actions we take today have an effect long into the future. Outcomes will almost always be more favorable and better if we have a vision for the future, if we pay attention and take care of things. We can create a cycle of growth and renewal.

In today’s business world, our default mode is often to try to optimize and maximize what we have. We are quick to break things down into smaller pieces, creating an even tighter grid around them to support even smaller goals. Planning and execution are essential to running a successful business. But we must also be aware of the limitations they place on us. By focusing only on what we can see and measure, we risk missing potential opportunities and failing to consider the impact of our actions beyond our immediate goals.

Focusing on the immediate and short term can create a false sense of progress where we become comfortable and move faster in our self-defined lane. As a result, we limit our flexibility and agility. We run the risk of missing the bigger picture and ignoring potential new issues that appear on the horizon.

Pausing to observe, as we do in nature, gives us valuable information and insight. It helps us make decisions that lead us to a future we want. By stepping outside our routine lanes and broadening our perspective, we can develop a long-term view that keeps us on track.

Albert Einstein famously said, Look deeply into nature and you will understand everything better. His words ring true, as many scientific discoveries have come from deliberate observation of nature. Isaac Newton found great inspiration in nature, even though physics is a discipline of rationality, complexity, and elaboration. He was moved to develop his theory of gravity by observing the simple act of an apple falling and wondering why it always fell straight down, never sideways or upward.

Studying and learning from nature can inspire innovation, offer solutions to complex problems, and provide a deeper understanding of the world around us.

A Leadership Mindset of Thriving and Care

A gardener! Isn’t that the perfect description of what a real businessman is?

In Being There (1971), a film based on Jerzy Kosinski’s novel of the same name, Peter Sellers encapsulates the concept of leadership in a single sentence. In this gem of a film, Sellers plays a simple gardener who unexpectedly rises to become a trusted advisor to a Washington tycoon and politician (Ashby 1979).

Today, I find myself similarly inspired by the intelligence of nature, the drive of business, and the inherent logic of management frameworks. I have learned a great deal from my experiences in the natural world. Through that lens I have come to appreciate the value of being mindful, paying attention, and approaching things with care.

I have come to realize how everything is connected and how there are people behind everything we do. By adopting a mindset of care, we can build sustainable models that achieve the impact we seek. A holistic perspective allows us to act with purpose and intention, and to navigate challenges with agility and nimbleness. We can cultivate the optimal conditions for growth that allow individuals and organizations to thrive and prosper.

At the heart of leadership is a deep understanding of how interconnected our world is, together with a commitment to care for the people and systems within it. This book is about activating strategy in a natural way.

At its core, this book is about inspiring possibilities and bringing them to life. It encourages us to adopt a leadership mindset that takes its cues from nature, where success begins at the intersection of determination and care and evolves with a rhythm of continuous growth. It takes the long view and shows how we can operate from a place of integrity that allows people and businesses to thrive.

In part one, we will take a closer look at the behind-the-scenes workings of nature and systems. We will explore how methodically connecting values, purpose, and vision will lead us to develop a strategy that goes beyond simply creating an action plan. Instead, it rises to the level of fulfilling the promise of our vision and impact in the future.

In part two, we will explore how a mindset of thriving, like a tree’s root system, builds the foundation of care and intention that helps make strategy real, even in the face of obstacles and ambiguity. By working with these challenges rather than against them, we can open up new possibilities and move forward. We also look at how strategically applying mindfulness and building on our strengths can help us achieve our goals.

In part three, we will get down to the nitty-gritty of execution. We examine how culture shapes operations and results, and how structure and agility are critical to responding to changing conditions. By creating a continuous cycle of growth and renewal, we can foster an environment where people and businesses can thrive.

I used to think leadership was all about driving growth. But I have come to learn growth happens naturally when we take a step back and create the right context and conditions for thriving. We can activate strategy the natural way