How we relate to projects, people, and power

“The success of an intervention depends on the interior condition of the intervenor” Bill O’Brien, former CEO. Hanover Insurance

Showing up differently, with a broader mindset, is where inner work becomes visible. In relationships, in decisions, and in how power is held. It becomes visible the moment we meet a project, a founder, or a fund manager.

It shows up in the questions we ask. In the expectations we set. In when we intervene and when we choose not to. In how much space we leave for uncertainty, learning, and context.

Systemic investing is about how we enter relationships with the people doing the work. How aware we are of the power we bring into the room. The shift is subtle but real: from evaluator to partner, from controller to participant, from transactional logic to relational stewardship.

Capital As A System Actor

As mindset shifts, so does our understanding of capital. Capital acts inside systems, in relationship to the people, histories, and contexts it touches.

Capital does not enter living systems as a neutral tool, but through the bodies, emotions, histories, and inherited relationships of those who hold it. Fear, loyalty, and a sense of safety shape how money moves just as much as analysis or strategy. Recognising this makes capital more accountable to the living systems it touches.

Responsibility then extends beyond outcomes to the conditions capital creates over time: pace, governance, learning capacity, and trust.

This recognition often comes when practising forms of inner and relational work — awareness practices, shadow work, and family or organisational constellations — that help surface inherited patterns and unspoken logics shaping decisions.

From here, as investors we ask other questions, not just does this investmee perform?, but does this align — with our values, our role, and the future we are here to contribute to?

In practice, this partner approach can mean easing pressure to scale and investing instead in governance, trust, and learning capacity — creating conditions for emergence rather than forcing direction.

Less control. More stewardship. Less extraction. More contribution.

This also opens space for a broader range of qualities in how capital is held and deployed. Alongside linear, performance-driven logics, there is growing room for listening, not-knowing, shared sensemaking, and non-linear decision paths — not as a replacement, but as a rebalancing.

Asking other questions

This shift becomes visible in the questions we ask. A systemic investor rarely begins with “What is your strategy?”

• What system are you trying to shift — and what keeps it in place?
• What is emerging that isn’t fully visible yet?
• Where are the feedback loops, constraints, and leverage points?
• Who holds wisdom or lived experience not yet at the table?
• What relationships need to change for progress to last?
• How is power held or shared — and with what effects?
• What do you need from us besides money? And how much is enough?

These questions don’t replace rigour. They deepen it — by surfacing dynamics and relational realities metrics alone rarely capture.

When growth becomes the default

Within the dominant paradigm, growth often functions as an unexamined default. It’s so normalised it rarely gets named.

Over time, growth comes to stand in for safety, responsibility, and success, reinforced by institutions, advisors, and good business.

Many capital holders feel the tension this creates: between their values and how their capital is structured, between what they care about and what their portfolios reward.

That tension can become an entry point — an invitation to rethink what stewardship means.

“Letting go of growth as the main compass didn’t mean letting go of responsibility.

It meant redefining responsible stewardship over time.”

Some describe this shift as moving from growth capital to nourishment capital — capital that strengthens the conditions for life, rather than extracting value from it.

From Ownership to Wholeholdership

Instead of ownership — control, optimisation, accumulation — systemic investors move toward Wholeholdership: rooted in stewardship rather than possession.

Wholeholdership does not remove power or responsibility. It reframes them.

It often involves restraint as much as action — slowing decisions, releasing control, and staying engaged with uncertainty. We treat projects no longer as isolated assets, but as expressions of systems in transition — requiring care, patience, and participation over time. Wholeholdership also invites a shift from managing nature as a resource to relating to living systems as partners, learning with them, rather than acting upon them.

Power, relationship, and trust

In business as has become usual, capital carries power into every relationship. It shapes:

• who speaks first
• how risk is distributed
• how failure is interpreted
• how much space exists for adaptation
• and even the time horizons within which decisions must make sense.

Systemic investors become attentive to these dynamics. This often leads to a shift:

• from evaluation to dialogue
• from power over to empowerment and power with
• from control to common ground
• from proof-seeking to sense making and co-creation

Letting go of control is not only a governance choice but an inner one. Influence and decision-making power often carry identity, safety, and self-worth. When these are shared or released, discomfort, fear, or grief can arise. Staying present with this inner cost is part of systemic responsibility.

Trust is no longer a reward at the end of performance. It becomes an input.

“What changed everything wasn’t the size of the investment.

It was the moment an investor said: ‘We don’t fully understand this system yet — let’s learn together.’

Adaptive governance

As relationships become more relational, governance must evolve. In complex systems, rigid control assumes predictability where there is none. Systemic investing therefore leans toward adaptive governance:

• shared intent rather than fixed control
• distributed decision-making rather than central authority
• feedback loops that enable course correction

Everyone is accountable for their role and remit and shares the responsibility for constant learning and the health of the system as a whole.

Contribution over attribution

In living systems, impact is rarely attributable to a single person. It is emergent, distributed, and relational. Systemic investors therefore prioritise contribution over attribution:

• less focus on who gets credit
• more attention to ecosystem health
• no longer thinking in terms of winners and losers

Over time, many systemic investors start to question the status quo – of their position, their influence and even the financial gains coming their way. Such a realization can trigger an inquiry whether the form of governance should be adapted to a more participatory format, both in decision making power and financial streams. A good example is the growing popularity of the steward owned model in which voting power and mission guardianship. Investors are required to acknowledge the limits of their influence. Not because they are irrelevant, but because they share the main stage with management, employees and other stakeholders.Over time, some investors discover that the deeper shift is about occupying aamore position. This can meansharing or transferring decision-making power, designing commons-based or steward-owned structures, oraccepting limits on one’s own influence. Not because investors are irrelevant — but because systemic changeoften requires responsibility to live elsewhere.

“Rather than building our own empire, we strengthen existing ecosystems and prioritise effect over credit.”

— School of Moral Ambition

What Changes When We Invest Systemically

From → To

• Capital as power → Capital as a system actor
• Evaluator → Co-creator
• Strategy first → Purpose first
• Growth as proof of success→ Growth as means to realise mission
• Shareholdership & control → Wholeholdership & engagement
• Proof & attribution → Contribution & system health
• Rigid governance → Adaptive governance
• Trust as reward → Trust as basis
• Information as power → transparency and empowerment

Systemic investing is not only about where capital flows, but how it enters relationships —from what mindset, and toward which future. For projects or investees, this shift is really enabling.

When how we relate begins to change, the question naturally becomes how we act inside systems that are alive, adaptive, and beyond our control.