🪵 🪚 Vertical Development could use a chainsaw!

On a recent visit with my brother, I unexpectedly found myself spending the day collecting firewood on his farm.

So, there I was, surrounded by chopped-up trees, looking at the logs and growth rings… and thinking... well, this is a bit of a coincidence!!!

I’ve been thinking a lot about growth rings lately. They’re my favourite way of thinking about Vertical Development - how we expand our capacity to make sense of an increasingly complex world.

A tree doesn’t discard its previous rings when it grows. It builds around them. Each ring carries something of what came before — good seasons, difficult seasons, stress, adaptation, growth — while creating the capacity for another layer.

We are the same. We don’t become a completely different person as we develop - we expand around what we already know.

There is real benefit from sawing through our thinking and making the unconscious conscious. Cutting through layers of assumptions, habits and stories that have built up over time and exposing what’s really shaping how we see the world.

Once we can see it, we have a choice. We can think more intentionally about the circumstances we’re in, and which growth ring is most useful - rather than reacting unconsciously.

I didn’t expect to spend the day collecting firewood – but then, anything can happen on my brother's farm.

I certainly didn’t expect it to give me a new way of thinking about Vertical Development!

🪚 Are you or your team ready to cut through some thinking? Get in touch. I’ll bring the chainsaw!