"Wherever you put your attention as a leader, as an innovator, as a changer maker, as a teacher, or as a parent, that is where the energy of the system will go, including your own energy." - Otto Scharmer
With a shared passion in the psyche of human beings, we found one another as team members. Even though our primary interests concerning psychology and thought processes might differ, we had a lot of overlapping ideas. This made it relatively easy for us as a team to agree on the direction we wanted to take for our Value Creators journey. Aside from this, arising from our love for nature, we all regularly enjoyed going on nature hikes. Combining all these interests, we decided to focus on the relationship between psychology, physical activity, and decision-making.
We started our journey by discussing potential interviewees and immediately started reaching out to people we considered as stakeholders. Luckily, we got many positive and enthusiastic replies to our invitation for an interview. Our first interview was with Jackie Kuang from the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy Guides and Programs. Kuang provided us with many new insights on the implementation and benefits of nature walks and inspired us with her knowledge throughout our journey. It is safe to say that this interview was a key moment for the development of our product. Nevertheless, along the way, we have conducted many more interviews from which we gained valuable insights. As all our interviewees had different expertise, we obtained many different perspectives on the relation between psychology, physical activity, and decision-making. Some of these were, for example, human resource management, governance, biology, and philosophy. Each of these perspectives was a critical part for us to proceed our journey as value creators.
Of course, we also did our literary studies and incorporated our findings into our end product. As for this part, we all investigated the direction that was the closest to us personally. So, Luuk focused on decision-making, Philipp focused on psychology and human resource management, and Vera concentrated on physical activity and nutrition. Even though we did the literary study individually, we kept each other up to date on our findings and our progress. Thus, we were still well-engaged with one another. This is one of the reasons why we did not struggle to work together as much. Yes, we were a team, and we did almost all interviews together, but we also gave one another room to explore on their own. If needed, we were always there to support each other.
Of course, the big question is: ‘what is your end product?’. We are proud to say that, in co- creation with all our interviewees and the Resiliency Lab, we have created a framework for workshops on ‘the interconnectedness of psychology, physical activity, and decision-making’. Combining all knowledge from the interviews and our desk research, we hosted two workshops for the students of the Resiliency Labs. After this, we requested feedback from the participants, adapted our content/approach and developed a draft version of our format. This draft was sent out to all our interviewees, and we asked for their feedback. Once the feedback was implemented, we had the final version of our framework. What makes this workshop so valuable and unique is the co-creation between our stakeholders and us. The combination of different academic backgrounds, organizational perspectives, and students makes this workshop comprehensive and adaptable to multiple corporate settings. Ideally, this workshop will be provided/implemented within many organizations worldwide. However, big dreams are realized by taking small steps. So, for now, we aim to implement the workshop in the curriculum of WHC.
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