IDG is growing up – Call 1 🌱 · InnerDevelopment@Work

IDG is growing up – Call 1 🌱

In the first of a 3-session Learning Journey, Erik Fernholm shared honestly about where IDG is right now – and why a transformation is needed if we want this movement to stay alive, regenerative and truly owned by all of us.

A few years ago, IDG started as a small initiative exploring inner development for systems change. None of us expected it to grow into a global movement with 800+ hubs and so many committed people around the world.

From the outside, the website and big partner logos can make IDG look like a large, well-funded organization with dozens of people in a big Stockholm office. In reality, it’s a tiny team doing what they can with very limited time and resources.

That mismatch has created a real bottleneck.

Erik named a few pieces of this:

The founding group has been quite homogenous (Northern European, mostly male and white).
The current, centralized “startup” structure is now slowing the movement down instead of enabling it.
Too many initiatives wait in a “permission queue” – especially those without funding.

The shift: from “IDG does this for us” to “WE are IDG”

Erik’s proposal is bold and very aligned with inner development:

The board will give away its central mandate rather than hold onto it.
Decision-making and agency move closer to where the work is actually happening – in hubs, circles, projects, local contexts.
People get clear mandates to act in coherence with IDG principles, without needing to constantly ask for permission.

***

Unfortunately I couldn't stay for the breakout rooms, but the question that was proposed was this:

"How do we together cultivate the conditions for agency, learning and practise within the movement?"

Let's have this conversation here - in the comments.

And

@Denise Pang

@Sibylle Breiner

@Maria Niermann

@Veronique Sikora Gasser

@Mark Vandeneijdne

who were at the call, please share what was discussed in your breakout rooms.

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