Three years ago, during the COVID-19 pandemic, I purchased the Cliff House nested in rock formations – thus the name – by the edge of the water on the island of Bornholm. It needed much work in terms of modernizing. Despite having no prior experience in house renovation or living in a remote location like the northern coast of Bornholm, I felt a deep soul yearning guiding me onto this journey. I never once felt afraid or uncertain, even as I embarked on a vastly different path. This intuitive knowing and enthusiasm were fueled by the feeling that the house and grounds were calling me home. I’ve come to call this process ‘self-seeding,’ inspired by the columbine flowers that self-distribute… Read more »

In order to integrate sustainability into the core of a business, it has to be a part of the company’s culture. For this to happen, a top leader must be willing and ready to go first and evolve, according to leadership advisor Sandja Brügmann. Published January 10, 2020 on SustainableBrands.com, originally written in Danish by Tine Brødegaard Hansen, and published in SustainReport 29. Sandja Brügmann is a sought-after leadership advisor who, among other services, has helped top leaders from Grundfos, The Body Shop, and Chr. Hansen CEO Mauricio Graber integrate sustainability into core business practices. Whereas CSR is an extremely narrow term, often associated with CO2 reduction, compliance and risk management, to actually become regenerative — meaning to contribute more than we extract from the world — we need… Read more »

These 5 Tips to create a Strong Sustainability and Purpose Culture from Sandja Brügmann, CEO The Passion Institute, was originally published alongside an interview in SustainReport, the full article (in Danish) is accessible here: 5 råd til lederen, der vil skabe en stærk sustainability kultur.   1. Move from being Change-ready to Change-driven  In order to solve the sustainability challenges we are faced with, as a leader you need to be able to bring other people to life, to flourish, such that they experience and are able to access their innate passion, innovation and creativity. This require leadership development on the personal development plane to know what motivates and drive others, beneath the obvious and spoken. This is why you… Read more »

  Tiden for CSR og langsigtede strategier er forbi; den etiske og bæredygtige forståelse skal helt ind i kernen af os som ledere og i vores virksomheder. På det grundlag vil et nyt netværk for bæredygtig ledelse få os til se sandheden i øjnene og skabe reel forandring. Chr. Hansen og Ørsted er blandt deltagerne. “Sustainability is an integral part of Chr. Hansen. Currently 82% of Chr. Hansen’s product portfolio have a direct positive contribution to the UN Global Goals for Sustainable Development no. 2, 3 and 12. We work to continuously understand, monitor, and improve our performance on the issues that are most material to our stakeholders and thereby to the future success of our business. With our Nature’s… Read more »

  by SANDJA BRÜGMANN, Originally published in Conscious Company Media. “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” – R. Buckminster Fuller The future of work encourages whole human beings to move toward their highest soulful potential. This requires a drastic redesign of organizations, how we work, and what we recognize as success. It calls on us to move away from control, manipulation, and fear toward cultures that support and foster personal growth, freedom, autonomy, and blossoming of the individual. Leaders operate their businesses within an increasingly complex context of VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity). They must navigate resource scarcity, economic polarity, the speed of technological… Read more »

It’s not what you learn, but what you unlearn that matters. Sometimes, success comes not from what you learn to do but what you learn to stop doing. That bit of wisdom comes from Sandja Brügmann, a serial entrepreneur and founder of the Passion Institute, a conscious leadership, strategic purpose, and sustainable business consultancy for executives and entrepreneurs. “Once we have developed understanding of how we interfere with our visions and goals, then comes the challenging process of unlearning and changing specific behaviors,” she explains. Unlearning is hard work. “It requires one to move out of automatic behaviors and into conscious understanding, where we take control of our own actions and lives,” Brügmann says. “It requires confronting uncomfortable feelings and an… Read more »

by leadinghumans | Sep 21, 2017 | Interview   Sandja Brügmann is one of the leading voices within sustainable social-impact change and conscious leadership. Aside from this conversation, Sandja is also sharing her perspectives with us as part of Leading Human’s brain trust.  What is the core of conscious capitalism? – Humans are destroying themselves by how we are consuming, a big part of this is founded in how business is being conducted. – The economic model builds on homo economicus, the rational man. But mankind is not rational. We are driven by our feelings, often unconsciously driven by fear. Our world is currently built on a foundation which is untrue. – As long as we are at a lower… Read more »

“If everyone had to think outside the box, maybe it was the box that needed fixing” – Malcolm Gladwell, What the Dog Saw Holacracy is a new management system for a rapidly changing world, where power is re-destributed, each member on a team has autonomy and can contribute and bring value to the organization based on a new organizational model. Currently more than 500+ organizations run with Holacracy including Zappos, Pantheon Enterprises and Socialsquare is the first Danish company to adopt Holacracy. Holacracy began with a question: What gets in the way of people working together as effectively as possible? In the most efficient way possible? It completely replaces the conventional management hierarchy with a tested, customizable self-management practice that empowers… Read more »

Leaders who can navigate across at least two, preferably more, specializations – sustainability, communication, leadership, business strategy, systemic perception, R&D, innovation, new product development, economics – are being called to the forefront to drive the new brand activism using story doing in creative ways to raise awareness of social and environmental issues. Here’s an excellent example. These popsicles might look like the sort of thing you’d expect to find being served from a quirky organic artisanal food truck, but one bite could leave you very ill indeed, because they’re actually made from sewage found in the polluted waters of Taiwan. They were made by three design students for the Polluted Water Popsicles project, which aims to raise awareness about rising water… Read more »

Skrevet af Eva Vestrheim. Udgivet af K1.   Conscious Business er det nye sort ”overthere” og det må nødvendigvis inkorporeres i de danske forretningsmodeller, hvis vi vil overleve på et globalt marked. Basalt set handler Corporate Social Responsibility blot om simpelhed, ærlighed, transparens, ydmyghed, og at handle bevidst og ansvarligt. Hvor svært kan det være! Kim Rahbek, medstifter af Sticks’ n’ Sushi og Sandja Brügmann, grundlægger af Refresh Agency undrer sig over vores konforme måde at tænke på. Kan det tænkes at CSR kamoufleres under ord som Conscious Business, almindelige dyder som ordentlighed og respekt? Show it, don’t tell it Det ironiske er, at mange virksomheder bestræber sig på at profilere transparens, profilere troværdighed. Et subjekt taler om et objekt…. Read more »