Renewal

Has the word renew ever sounded so sweet, or indeed so necessary?

To be new again, may seem fanciful, but it’s baked into nature’s design. It’s as simple as an apple falling off a tree. Renewal is an ongoing aspect of life, available to all of us, even when we feel tired and lacking the energy for yet another change. Indeed tiredness, lacking energy, feeling unmotivated are all signs that it’s time to rest and to renew.

Renewal starts the moment we turn our attention to future possibilities that inspire us. Questions to help us make that mental movement are:

What could be?

What do I need?

What does my community need?

And try going big with:

What does the world need?

For organisations an easy way into this is through the discovery phase of appreciative inquiry. Set up short conversations across your organisation, and critically, outside the organisation asking people what could be? If it sounds simple, that’s because it is.

The power of the approach comes from: as we discover, we learn and as we learn, we change. As we think about what is possible, our energy increases. When we hold discovery conversations with people outside our ‘own ecosystem’, we make new connections that can extend our ecosystem.

The renewal mindset is shaped through curiosity and believing something new is possible. The basic practice is regularly taking some time to listen to others about what could be?

When we treat renewal as ongoing, as a process of renewing again and again, we make ourselves and our organisations adaptable and more resilient.