Maria Grazia Testa 5/28/19 Maria Grazia Testa 5/28/19

It all begins with an idea.

Organisational Ecologies

How Living Systems Connect the Inner Development Goals and the Sustainable Development Goals

1. Introduction — From Mechanisms to Living Systems

Most companies today are still built on an industrial logic: control, efficiency, and specialization. These principles served a mechanistic world — but in a time of disruption, interdependence, and ecological limits, they are no longer enough.

The organizations that will thrive in the coming decades are those that behave not like machines, but like ecologies — living, adaptive systems capable of sensing, learning, and regenerating.

An Organisational Ecology is the invisible network of relationships, values, and practices that determine how a company evolves. It is the pattern that connects — between people and purpose, between leadership and learning, between what the organization is and what it enables in the world.

This concept sits at the heart of Ecologies®, Testa’s systemic framework that translates the Inner Development Goals (IDGs) into participatory practices for organizational transformation, and anchors them in measurable outcomes aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

What Is an Organisational Ecology?

In the Ecologies Blueprint, every organization is seen as an ecosystem of three interdependent layers:

Culture – how people think, feel, and behave in their daily roles.
Structures – how processes, governance, and incentives are designed to support or block collaboration.
Impact – how the organization affects human, economic, and planetary systems around it.

When these layers are aligned, the organization behaves like a regenerative ecosystem: creative, adaptive, and self-correcting. When they are misaligned, the result is entropy — burnout, fragmentation, or performative sustainability.

As Testa explains, the goal is to move from “reactionary, past-oriented ecosystems producing more of the same” to regenerative environments where people work without fear, collaboratively, and oriented toward the future through continuous learning and solidarity.

An Organisational Ecology is therefore not a structure — it’s a state of coherence: between purpose and practice, between the inner capacities of people and the outer actions of the system.

The Evolutionary Spectrum

The Ecologies Blueprint maps organizational evolution across seven stages — from Exploitative and Depleting systems that extract value, to Regenerative systems that circulate and create it.
At each stage, new forms of learning, leadership, and collaboration emerge.

This evolution mirrors the inner development journey of individuals — from fear and compliance toward awareness, creativity, and stewardship.
A regenerative organization doesn’t just do sustainability — it embodies it.

The Bridge Between the Inner and the Outer

The Inner Development Goals (IDGs) identify the personal and interpersonal capacities needed to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) — qualities like awareness, empathy, collaboration, and critical thinking.

But while IDGs describe what humans need to cultivate, they don’t show how these capacities can take root inside organizations. This is where Ecologies provides the missing bridge.

As Testa explains:

“When we start trying to understand how to implement the IDGs, the first question we need to ask ourselves is: how do we implement them as an accelerator of sustainable impact?”

The answer is not in more frameworks, but in new forms of collaboration. True sustainability is not achieved through compliance — it is embodied through relationships.

Ecologies operationalizes this embodiment by asking entire organizations — not just leadership teams — to participate in collective sense-making.
Through guided reflection, employees become active agents in identifying where their culture supports or hinders sustainability, and which capabilities are needed to regenerate their systems.

This participatory approach transforms Inner Development into Organisational Development, and Organisational Development into Systemic Impact.

The Ecologies Method — From Inner Insight to Collective Intelligence

The Ecologies Assessments (Organisational and Impact) make this bridge tangible. They invite everyone in the organization — from executives to frontline workers — to contribute to a diagnostic process that integrates ESG, SDG, and IDG dimensions.

Each participant answers carefully designed questions that explore how courage, collaboration, innovation, and care are supported (or blocked) in daily work. These are not standard surveys — they are mirrors for consciousness.

Participants often describe the process as meditative: it demands presence, attention, and intention. By slowing down to reflect, people begin to think systemically — to perceive how their individual actions and collective culture shape the organization’s overall impact.

From Inner Capacities to Operating Principles

When seen through the lens of the Inner Development Goals, these dynamics become concrete.
The five IDG dimensions — Being, Thinking, Relating, Collaborating, and Acting — are not abstract virtues but operational principles. In an Organisational Ecology, they show up as real features of governance, structure, and practice.

Being shows up in governance.
Ecological organizations embed purpose into the way decisions are made. Purpose is reviewed alongside profit; impact sits on the same dashboard as performance. Boards include the voices of those affected by the company’s footprint. Integrity is designed into oversight, not left to chance.

Thinking lives in structure.
Instead of static hierarchies, ecological organizations use transversal working cells — temporary, cross-functional groups that connect strategy, culture, and operations around shared challenges. Scenario labs replace rigid planning cycles. People are trained to ask, what system am I influencing when I act?

Relating shapes policies and supply chains.
Equity and empathy are operationalised. The organization measures wellbeing, fairness, and inclusion across all stakeholders — employees, suppliers, and communities. Procurement policies carry moral weight: if a supplier’s people suffer, the system fails.

Collaborating drives leadership design.
Authority flows where the knowledge is. Decision rights move closer to the people impacted by them. Performance reviews value those who generate trust and cross-boundary learning. Change becomes continuous because leadership is distributed.

Acting becomes rhythm.
Quarterly goals are paired with evolution goals — shifts in behaviours and system health. Teams measure what they repaired, simplified, or learned, not only what they delivered. Success is measured by the courage to experiment and the maturity to adapt.

Through these mechanisms, the five dimensions of inner development become the architecture of sustainable performance — the invisible operating model that allows organizations to evolve with awareness and coherence.

From Reflection to Regeneration

When all five dimensions converge, the organization becomes an adaptive system — capable of both self-reflection and self-renewal.

Ecologies captures this through its four-step process: Realize, Reconnect, Reciprocate, and Regenerate.

Realize: The system sees itself.
Reconnect: It identifies leverage points and relationships.
Reciprocate: It transforms insight into collective action.
Regenerate: It embeds learning into continuous evolution.

In practice, this means culture and structure evolve together — people and processes co-design the conditions for sustainable impact.

Each cycle brings the organization closer to what Testa calls “sustainable leadership” — the point where impact is generated thanks to people, not at their cost.

What Happens When a System Sees Itself

The moment an organization learns to see itself as a living system, something extraordinary happens:
the boundaries between personal and organizational transformation dissolve.

Employees rediscover meaning. Leaders regain humility. Data becomes dialogue.

When organizations reach this state, the Inner Development Goals and Sustainable Development Goals stop being separate agendas — they become a single process of evolution.
The inner and the outer meet in practice.

Conclusion — From Sustainability to Aliveness

An Organisational Ecology is not a new department or framework.
It is a shift in ontology — from seeing the organization as a machine to experiencing it as a living being.

This shift changes everything: how we lead, how we measure, how we grow.

As Testa writes:

“We can see, measure, and share change — not at the cost of our people and economy, but thanks to them.”

When organizations evolve as ecologies, sustainability is no longer a strategy.
It becomes a property of life itself — the aliveness that flows when systems remember they are part of the world they’re trying to change.

Maria Grazia Testa 5/28/19 Maria Grazia Testa 5/28/19

Blog Post Title Two

It all begins with an idea.

It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

Don’t worry about sounding professional. Sound like you. There are over 1.5 billion websites out there, but your story is what’s going to separate this one from the rest. If you read the words back and don’t hear your own voice in your head, that’s a good sign you still have more work to do.

Be clear, be confident and don’t overthink it. The beauty of your story is that it’s going to continue to evolve and your site can evolve with it. Your goal should be to make it feel right for right now. Later will take care of itself. It always does.