The idea is not about letting go of controls but relaxing the normal business obsession with efficiency. Rather than being obsessed with cutting costs senior managers should focus more on achieving the organisations strategic aims. Aims which are increasingly broader than simply making a profit but aims which get pushed to the margins in the overwhelming drive for efficiency.
So ease off on the cost cutting much like gardeners are asked to ease off on the grass cutting and let the creativity grow and blossom in the longer grass. Gardeners are urged to creat a pond as it will provide drinking and bathing water for birds and hedgehogs a habitat for threatened species and food for other species. In much the same way organisations are encouraged to recognise their corporate social responsibility, to manage the business in such away as to take account of their social, economic and environmental impact.
To work in partnership with Local Authorities to improve the local environment, job market, quality of life. To pool budgets to creat new possibilities. To link with and support local community groups, offer small pump priming grants and loan out expertise in areas like marketing or finance. Just as gardeners are asked to replace fences with hedges to encourage hedgehogs , field mice and voles and protection for birds; organisations are asked to examine the boundaries between them, to creat the gaps and spaces for joint work, to resist the temptation to with draw into core business and cost shunt.
An organisation that has been rewilded will look and be different to the traditional organisation. It may appear a little chaotic, there will not be the neat and tidy clear lines of demarcation that we are use to seeing in organisation but it will be a more attractive place to work, an organisation that cares about its environmental impact, one that is giving something back to the local community and one that is more effective.
