What's Your Company's Ecosystem?

Have your ever looked at your company's structure, people, culture, resources, and environment through the eyes of an aquarium reflecting an ocean's ecosystem?

Ready2ACT celebrated its 10 year anniversary last month by launching its latest meeting facilitation service that customizes off-site activities to gain company insights. The benefit of this new service is that it allows you to maximize the value of company planning meetings by using whole-brain thinking to get better results.

We start with creative "right-brain" activities to augment traditionally "left-brained" business problem-solving. Working with you to understand your business and personal concerns, we design a customized hands-on "retreat" that blends unique and enjoyable activities with work; this allows you to benefit from the relaxation to gain insights, ideas, and actions to improve your bottom-line, productivity, and work environment.

Our first pilot of this offering on Oct. 17 brought together 13 executives from various companies to test market our new service at the Downtown Aquarium. We combined the activity of touring the aquarium with the examination of an organization as an ecosystem, which is defined as "a community and its physical environment treated together for a functional system."

Using the aquarium as a metaphor, we compared the aquarium's ecosystem with a company's ecosystem. Ecosystems only work when there is balance. They each need enough and proper energy, food, the right air and water quality, the correct number of predators, and bio diversity.

Executives worked in smaller groups and discussed the following questions: What can be/is toxic in your environment? What could you do to ensure the right pH and enough oxygen? What would a "cleaner" environment look like?

When the participants evaluated the workshop, they said they gained these benefits:

• "understanding how and why we each need a different environment to thrive in"
• "better communication, recognition of non-motivating and/or harmful traits/actions"
• "a perspective, ideas, and playful imagination of changing what needs to be changed"