Dr Josie McLean

23/06/2026

"Old ways don't open new doors." 🚪

One of the teams I work with carried that line through a whole year of change.
It's true of every team I meet. We want new results, but we keep walking in with the old habits, the old assumptions, the old ways of talking over each other.
Maturing a team means learning to notice all of that, and gently change it.

Together. 🌱

That's the work I love most.

18/06/2026

What if change work could actually rejuvenate you instead of draining you? ✨

That's the question at the heart of my Systemic Change program. Across six months you'll work on a real initiative from your own context, applying living systems thinking, adaptive leadership and reflective practice to something that genuinely matters to you. 🌿

You won't leave with a folder of theory. You'll leave with progress. 🙌

📅 Registrations close end of June. Have a read here: https://buff.ly/MTctUvT

17/06/2026

Some of the best work I do is invisible from the outside. 🌿

For several years I've walked alongside two leadership teams as they matured. One began by building a shared vision. The other began by working out what an effective team even is.

There's no shortcut for this. You can't download a stronger team. You grow one, season by season, experiment by experiment.

The deepest shift was always the same for both: real transformation starts with us, not with the org chart.

If you lead a team that's ready for the real work, I'd love to hear from you. 💬

https://buff.ly/Wg1OhfH

16/06/2026

Burnout in the climate and sustainability sector isn't a personal failing. 💚 It's a sign that the way we've been taught to do change work doesn't match the complexity we're working in.

🌱 My Systemic Change program offers a different way. Eight half-day workshops over six months, starting in July, for people who want to work with living systems rather than against them.

📅 Registrations close at the end of June. Come and find out more 👇 https://www.drjosiemclean.com/systemic-change-public-program

13/06/2026

"I don't have the authority to change any of this."

A Sustainability Manager said that to me recently. It's the most reasonable thing in the world to say. And it's the thing that keeps the most capable people stuck, and keeps the status quo firmly in place.

Over the last week I've written about the quiet line we draw around our roles, and about turning our influence inward, toward our own organisations and ourselves.

This is the belief that sits underneath both. That real change needs a mandate. A title. Someone senior signing it off. And until that arrives, the best we can do is wait and work around the edges.

I understand why it feels true. Most of us were trained inside systems that run on permission.

But authority and influence are not the same thing.

Authority is the scope handed to each of us in a job description. A set of expectations built on the past, and on a natural desire to manage and control.

Influence is something else entirely. It's what I'd call exercising leadership, and it has nothing to do with whether anyone put you in charge. You influence every meeting by the questions you ask and the ones you don't. You influence what becomes thinkable by what you're willing to name. You influence the culture every day, whether or not anyone gave you a mandate to.

I keep coming back to what I found in my own PhD research. The change that actually took hold inside that council didn't come from the people with the authority, the ones we usually call "leaders."

It came from a small group with curiosity and existing relationships. People just doing their jobs, who chose to use the influence they already had. They didn't wait for permission. They gave themselves permission. And they changed the system anyway.

The hard part isn't the lack of authority. It's learning to work with influence instead, in systems that are complex, political and very much alive.

That's a different craft. And it can be learned. It isn't a threat to senior leadership either. Done well, it helps them reach what they're reaching for too.

Which brings me to why I'm writing.

I'm offering an 8-session program for climate, sustainability and change practitioners doing exactly this work, learning to shift systems from the inside, without waiting for the authority to do it. We'll also explore ways to shift systems beyond your own organisation. It begins in July, and there are 3 seats left.

If something in these posts has had you quietly nodding along, the link's in the first comment to see if it's a fit.

And whether or not the program is for you, the question stands.

Where are you waiting for authority you don't actually need? 🌱

12/06/2026

If you work in climate or sustainability, you probably think your job is to change the world out there.

What if the bigger opportunity is inside your own organisation?

A while back I wrote about the quiet line we draw around our roles. The point where we tell ourselves "that's not mine to influence." So many of you recognised yourselves in it.

Here's what I've noticed since.

When people in this work do let themselves imagine having influence, they almost always point outward, toward the people "out there" who need to change. And of course that matters.

But the system that most shapes whether your work succeeds isn't out there. It's the one you walk into every morning. The priorities your organisation sets. The questions your leadership asks. What gets resourced, what gets shelved, what's even allowed to be discussed in the meeting.

That's a system too. And you're inside it.

A People and Culture director in a global climate organisation said something to me recently that stuck. She could see straight away that influencing her own organisation was every bit as real as influencing the world beyond it. Maybe more so. Because if the inside isn't moving, the outside work runs on empty.

She's right. And I have the research to back her up.

My PhD tracked a culture change process inside a local council over several years. The aim was to shape what we'd now call a regenerative organisation.

The shift that actually took hold didn't come from senior management. It came from a small group of passionate volunteers. People with no formal authority to change anything. People who, on paper, were just doing their jobs.

They changed the council from the inside. Not by waiting for permission. By directing their influence consciously, inside the system they were already part of.

But here's the part that's easy to skip past.

Before you can change the system around you, something has to change in you. Change moves from the inside out. The way you hold a meeting. The question you're willing to ask. Whether you stay silent or speak.

For the system to change, first I must change.

So here's my question for you. If you turned even a little of your influence inward, toward your own organisation and toward yourself, what would you start with?

I'd genuinely love to know. 🌱

05/06/2026

At a recent gathering, I watched a group of people map out a beautiful, ambitious plan for change.

Everyone in the room was genuinely committed.
Everyone wanted the work to succeed.

And yet, there was this subtle tension underneath it all — the kind you can feel even when nobody says it out loud. The plan sounded clear on paper, but the real world outside the room felt much less cooperative. Different stakeholders. Shifting priorities. Unpredictable energy. A lot more complexity than the chart on the wall could hold.

It reminded me of watching children play.

They don’t begin with a blueprint. They pay attention. They respond. They try something, notice what happens, and change course without any drama. The “plan” is alive because it’s connected to reality.

That, to me, is the point of this article. Some kinds of work need less certainty and more orientation. Less “here’s the whole route” and more “here’s the direction we’re heading, now let’s learn as we go.”

The shift sounds small, but it changes everything — including how much energy it takes to keep going.

Read more here: https://buff.ly/8GvhFDX

03/06/2026

I’ve been thinking a lot about why so many people I know in sustainability and systems change seem quietly exhausted lately.

Not just busy. Not just stretched.
Properly worn down.

And I don’t think it’s because people care too much. If anything, it’s the opposite. It feels like we keep asking deeply committed people to do living, messy, relational work with tools that were designed for something far more predictable.

That’s what this piece is really sitting with for me: the difference between a roadmap and a sense of direction.

A roadmap can be useful when the ground is stable and the system is well understood. But so much of the work many of us are doing now — climate action, community resilience, organisational change, regeneration — doesn’t behave like a machine. It behaves like life. It responds, adapts, resists, surprises us.

And when we keep trying to force that kind of work into fixed milestones and rigid plans, it drains people.

I’ve felt that strain myself. The relief, too, when I’ve stopped trying to defend a plan and started paying closer attention to what’s actually emerging.

That’s why I wrote this.

If this resonates, I’d love for you to read it here:

Discover why roadmap thinking burns people out in complex change, and how direction, experiments and learning can create more resilient impact.

28/05/2026

Tomorrow at 12pm AEST. Free 60-minute webinar for sustainability and climate practitioners.

If you've been doing complex change work with tools that don't quite fit, this is for you.

Not a sales pitch. A conversation worth having.

Register: https://buff.ly/BtPUmBR

27/05/2026

I've spent the last few days preparing for this Friday's webinar on my new Systemic Change Program, and the preparation itself has taught me something.

The webinar introduces an 8-session program for people working on climate, sustainability and change inside complex systems. Government and agencies, NRM's and Landscape Boards, local councils, water utilities, community organisations. The kind of work where the methods we were trained in don't quite fit the systems we're trying to shift.

What's surprised me in the preparation is how much of it has been about unlearning the standard "sell the program" approach.

Most webinars like this teach you something, then offer you something. The teaching is the hook. The selling is the point.

This one is shaped differently. The audience already knows the work. They're already inside complexity. They don't need me to teach them that linear approaches fail — they live that every day. What they need is language, peers, and a practice space that matches the nature of what they're trying to do.

So instead of teaching, the webinar names what people are already navigating. The contrast between a mechanistic worldview and a complexity worldview. The mismatch between how we've been taught to solve problems and the nature of the systems we work inside. The quiet exhaustion of doing complex work with tools designed for something else.

And then it invites people into a space where that work gets easier. Not because the problems get smaller, but because you stop working alone and you stop using the wrong tools.

If that resonates, Friday's webinar is the place to start.

Friday 29 May, 12pm-1pm AEST. Free. 60 minutes. Q&A at the end.

Link to register in the first comment. Or message me if you'd like to talk it through first.