Rewetting Organisations

by Tom Geraghty

Allowing the system to self-organise by improving the substrate: creating the underlying conditions for change.

When I was studying ecology at university, one of the activities we undertook in our field trips was helping to restore peat bogs. Peat bogs are ecologically critical and fragile ecosystems. They’re one of the primary stores of soil carbon (storing 44% of soil carbon, despite only covering 3% of the Earth), they help to prevent and mitigate flooding by storing water and slowing flow, and they provide habitats for many rare and endangered species. Unfortunately, many peat bogs have been, and continue to be, extracted for horticultural use, drained for agriculture and forestry, or for grouse rearing and shooting (where they are often frequently burned as well, releasing thousands of years of stored carbon into the atmosphere).

Restoring peat bogs involves a process called “re-wetting”, where the drainage channels used to drain the water away are gradually blocked up or dammed, animal grazing is controlled, and sphagnum moss may be re-introduced to help the system recover. For instance, we might install simple peat dams made of the bog’s own soil to stop water flowing.

Small changes to the substrate: Enabling the conditions for improvement

Once these drainage channels are blocked and the water table rises, changes to the environment can happen quite quickly and the ecosystem begins to self-organise. We may observe different plant and tree species emerging and thriving, such as sundews which are small carnivorous plants, the return of birds such as hen harriers and red-throated divers, in part due to an increase in insect species. We may also observe changes that may seem worse (or at least not what we hoped for) – maybe we’ll observe birch saplings initially flourish, only to be replaced later by bog-specialist species – this represents only a phase in the longer term transition towards something better suited to the habitat.

Why is this important? Ecology is one of the complexity sciences, where complexity refers to systems with many interacting parts, non-linear behaviours and emergent, hard-to-predict properties. Complex systems, such as ecosystems, cannot be fully predicted or controlled: they can only be guided, nudged, and influenced. Re-wetting peat bogs represent an emergent change process of habitat improvement – it’s not a precisely engineered intervention. We can’t predict exactly what will happen as a result of our intervention, but we are pretty sure it’ll be good – or at least better than it is now. 

Complexity and Emergence

This emergent, hard-to-predict quality isn’t unique to peat bogs. It’s characteristic of all complex systems, from ecosystems, to economies, to organisations. Organisations are complex systems. We cannot engineer and predict exactly how they will function, and small interventions can lead to far-reaching, unpredictable changes. Just as with peat bogs, it’s often more effective to create enabling conditions for change, than to try to dictate the exact outcomes that we want. When we restore and re-wet a peat bog, we make a change, monitor the effect, and adapt our strategy – we might block a drainage channel, observe the changes, and then tactically block another somewhere else, then wait, observe and respond appropriately. Although the overall trajectory is towards positive change, we can’t precisely predict what those changes will look like, where or when they will occur, or how significant they’ll be.

The same applies to change in organisations. Often, leaders and organisational consultants define a desired outcome and produce a Gannt Chart or road map that tightly and mechanistically describes the process to get there. In practice, this usually, and unsurprisingly, fails. Many of us have experienced this in real life, and early in my career, I naively believed it was possible. 

Rewetting Organisations

Instead, maybe we could adopt a “re-wetting” approach to organisational change (this is, of course, our approach at Psych Safety!) by taking small but important actions that alter the substrate – they enable the system and the people within it to thrive and adapt. This could be anything from co-creating team charters or making work visible, to Graded Assertiveness and Humble Inquiry. And just as ecologists monitor an ecosystem by tracking water levels, the emergence and presence of different species, and habitat metrics such as pH and nutrient levels, we too can track key health indicators in our organisational ecosystem, detect any shifts (in engagement surveys, safety metrics, or employee behaviour), and adjust our strategies accordingly.

When we re-wet our organisation, that is, when we raise the water table of psychological safety, we’re restoring the habitat so a broader range of species (or perspectives, talents, and voices) can flourish. Just as water in the bog provides the core condition that lets peat form, mosses thrive, and biodiversity expand, psychological safety provides the essential condition that allows learning, innovation, and resilience to grow in an organization.

Once the organisational water table rises, the ecosystem reorganises itself in surprising and emergent ways. Likewise, once psychological safety grows, people highlight previously unseen issues, engage in constructive debates, and build on each other’s ideas in ways leaders may never have predicted.

By focusing on raising the water table of psychological safety, rather than trying to micromanage every detail of organisational life, we create an environment where individuals and teams can flourish, adapt, and co-create solutions. Just as restoring water to a peat bog enables the natural processes of regeneration to unfold, building psychological safety in an organisation enables the people within it to self-organise, innovate, and thrive.

As leaders and change agents in organisations, maybe we should consider ourselves ecologists; stewards of thriving, ever-changing environments. Instead of trying to impose rigid change structures, how can we ‘rewet’ our organisations, accepting a little more uncertainty, a little less control, and foster the conditions for better outcomes to emerge?

Further reading on rewetting and rewilding:

Contact Chris D’Agorne or visit How To Rewild if you’re interested in habitat restoration and rewilding, whether it’s the scale of a small garden or thousands of acres of moorland.

Psychological Safety in Practice

Psychological Safety & Social Justice

This is an excellent piece from one of our Psych Safety alumni, Kai Cheng Thom, on Psychological Safety & Social Justice:

We “…need to vastly expand our capacity to create psychologically safe organizations and movement spaces at scale – spaces where people are able to connect, contribute, innovate, and learn without the expectation of perfect adherence to any one ideology. We will need to step beyond the notion of safety as a utopian bubble where nothing bad is allowed to happen and into the embodiment of safety as a living practice and dynamic process – something that we are all responsible for and deserving of.“

Accountability

Ruth Parris has published this excellent thesis on the lived experience of accountability. Ruth describes the lived experience of “accountability and defines it as a dynamic interplay between external expectations and internal experiences. Being accountable means being continuously engaged in the justification of one’s actions in both regulated and relational contexts, in three dimensions:

• Relational and Experiential: Accountability is not just about carrying out responsibilities; it involves being answerable for one’s actions in a way that is felt deeply and personally. This includes an internalised obligation where we feel we must justify our decisions and behaviour to others.
• Distinguished from Responsibility: While responsibility might simply denote an assigned duty or role, accountability is a broader concept. It encompasses the requirement to explain, justify, and be subject to oversight, whether through formal mechanisms such as legislation, or through social and organisational practices.
• A Tool for Learning and Control: Ruth also highlights accountability as a mechanism that can facilitate learning, especially in safety-critical contexts such as maritime. Accountability acts both as a means of ensuring adherence to standards and as a process that, when properly understood and applied, brings people together to improve practice and behaviour.

This week’s poem:

Extract from The Deserted Village, by Oliver Goldsmith, 1770.

Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay:
Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade;
A breath can make them, as a breath has made;
But a bold peasantry, their country’s pride,
When once destroyed, can never be supplied.

Read the full version of The Deserted Village here. The work is a commentary largely on the enclosure of common land by wealthy landowners and the resultant exclusion and expulsion of rural populations to the city. Mount Auburn Cemetery in Watertown and Cambridge, Massachusetts, is named after the village in the poem.