TBC 2026, 1pm UK Time (BST) - Online
Thinking Like an Ecologist: A Field Guide for Organisational Change. 3hr Workshop (online)
TBC 2026: 1pm-4pm BST (UK time)
What if your organisation is less like a machine, and more like an ecosystem?
We can’t engineer them, we can’t roadmap our way through them, and the dominant mechanical framings we’ve inherited keep failing us in predictable ways. Ecological thinking offers a different posture — less command, more stewardship; less intervention, more attention to the conditions from which behaviour emerges.
This introductory workshop is for people who work within and for organisations, and wold like to explore different lenses and approaches to organisational change and dynamics.
You’ll explore a set of ecological concepts — substrate, rewetting, indicator species, ecotones, succession — and how they translate into practical tools for reading and tending the organisations you work in.
Six principles for thinking ecologically about organisations
In this workshop, we work with six principles drawn from ecology:
- Organisations are complex; outcomes are emergent
- Conditions shape outcomes: we attend to the substrate
- Diversity endows resilience at every scale
- Weak signals tell us more than metrics
- Innovation happens at the interfaces
- Change unfolds through succession: direction matters more than a goal
We treat these as scaffolds for thinking differently about how organisations grow, change, struggle, and recover.
What we'll explore together
We’ll work with three lenses:
Conditions — what we’re standing on
- Substrate — the underlying conditions that determine what can thrive
- Rewetting — restoring the substrate before planting anything new
- Ridge and furrow — diversity as resilience, and the cost of monoculture
Patterns — what we notice
- Indicator species — weak signals of organisational health
- Ecotones — the high-value, high-flux zones where new things emerge
Dynamics — how things change over time
- Succession — how systems recover and develop after disturbance, and why direction matters more than destination
Throughout, we’ll connect concepts to real organisational situations, working with examples from peat bog restoration to Southwest Airlines, from the Wallace Line to the indicator species hiding in your own meetings.
Who this workshop is for
This session is particularly valuable for leaders, change practitioners, consultants, coaches, trainers, and facilitators who:
- are looking for richer frames than the mechanical, project-managed view of change
- work with complexity and want better language and tools for reading and communicating it
- want to bring fresh thinking and concepts into their own practice
- are comfortable with ideas that don’t reduce to neat roadmaps
The work is for those who’d rather attend to the conditions for thriving than impose a target operating model.
What you'll leave with
You’ll leave with:
- a different way of seeing organisations and the change work within them
- six ecological concepts you can apply directly to your own context
- a personal field notebook of reflections from the session
- practical examples and stories you can use in your own conversations and practice
- one ecological question to keep asking in your work
All attendees also receive:
- a Credly badge and certificate of attendance
- all resources from the session and a licence to use them within your organisation
- further reading and workshop materials
- some swag
Pricing is based on affordability as below. Sales tax may be added at checkout if applicable.
£50
Unwaged or Low Income Country Scholarship:
Limited subsidised spaces for those who cannot otherwise afford payment.
£195
Self-funded:
Using your own personal funds.
£295
Organisation-funded:
Paid by your organisation, whether it’s your own business, claiming expenses, or using a training budget.
Practical details
- Cancellations or postponements are fully refundable up to 48 hours before the session
- One fully funded scholarship place is available for each workshop, intended for those for whom payment is genuinely out of reach. Get in touch if you’re interested.
Questions? Email enquiries@psychsafety.com
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