Beyond solutions — our story problem: Interview with Dr. Dominique Hes

Beyond solutions — our story problem: Interview with Dr. Dominique Hes

I had the honor of interviewing Dr. Dominique Hes — regenerative design pioneer, educator, co-author of Designing for Hope, and one of the biggest influences on my own thinking over the past two decades. “We have become very good at changing the stuff. We have paid far less attention to changing the story.” — Dr. Dominique Hes That distinction (and how it came to matter to Dominique) framed almost everything we discussed. For years, Dominique has worked across science, engineering, architecture, and regenerative development. Yet she increasingly believes that: Our greatest challenges are no longer technical. They are narrative. Because economics is a story. Planning is a story. And so is law. organizations. and markets. Even many of the systems we experience as fixed are, ultimately, stories we collectively agreed to live inside. Stories are infrastructure. That conversation led somewhere neither of us expected: the regenerative brain. The possibility that our collective excellence in analytical, literate, reductionist thinking has left us less practiced at noticing, relationships, presence, and seeing wholes. Perhaps regeneration requires a different way of paying attention. “Listen with the intent to learn.” — Dr. Dominique Hes Listen not to reply, persuade, or defend, but to understand. That feels rare. And vital. Another lovely moment came from me asking Dominique, What kind of changemaker do you consider yourself to be? “I’m mycelium.” — Dr. Dominique Hes Not a profession. Invisible infrastructure in healthy forests. Connecting ideas, people, and places. Moving nutrients where they are needed. It struck me because invisible work was one of the themes of my Field Notes for Q1 2026. Perhaps some of the most important changemaking resembles mycelium far more than the visible leadership we tend to celebrate. Nature on the Board We also explored one of Dominique’s newest experiments: serving as the Voice of Nature on the board of Regen Melbourne. Not symbolically. Practically. She reads every board paper twice: once as Dominique (the left-hand page in her notebook) and then again as Nature (the right-hand page). Her description of the moments when the two disagree—and how that practice has changed the board’s governance — was one of the most thought-provoking parts of our conversation. What is hope? We finished on hope, which is in the title of Dominique’s book and at the heart of her work. Not hope as optimism, but hope as a practice of contribution, one relationship at a time. If you’ve been following the recent conversations here — from Laura Mae Lindo, Whitney Austin Gray, Andrew MacLeod, and now Dominique Hes — you may notice a thread emerging. Again and again, the work comes back to the same question: How do we create the conditions in which better futures become not merely imaginable — but normal? Dominique’s answer is both deceptively simple and profoundly challenging: Perhaps to expand what is possible, we must change our stories. References * Designing for Hope (2015) by Dr. Dominique Hes & Dr. Chrisna du Plessis: https://www.booktopia.com.au/designing-for-hope-dominique-hes/book/9781763874909.html?srsltid=AfmBOor4mU4litT-1fW7VPrEDuHkx_CPiZ2G5tqNjOQq8isD1fYkTstd [https://www.booktopia.com.au/designing-for-hope-dominique-hes/book/9781763874909.html?srsltid=AfmBOor4mU4litT-1fW7VPrEDuHkx_CPiZ2G5tqNjOQq8isD1fYkTstd] * Mycelium Seed, Dominique’s Substack: https://myceliumseed.substack.com [https://myceliumseed.substack.com] * Regen Melbourne: Nature on the Board https://regen.melbourne/gazette/dominique-hes-nature-on-the-board * Change the Story, Change the Future: A Living Economy for a Living Earth (2015) by David Korten. https://www.amazon.com/Change-Story-Future-Living-Economy/dp/1626562903 [https://www.amazon.com/Change-Story-Future-Living-Economy/dp/1626562903] * Right Story, Wrong Story (2023) by Tyson Yunkaporta. https://www.amazon.com/Right-Story-Wrong-Tyson-Yunkaporta/dp/1922790958 ▶️ Watch or listen to Changemakers Handbook on Substack, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/changemakers-handbook-with-elena-bondareva/id1828981728 [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/changemakers-handbook-with-elena-bondareva/id1828981728] https://open.spotify.com/show/4MGxEQM72DhSvpURHo7IQS?si=e6cef2e629474b12 [https://open.spotify.com/show/4MGxEQM72DhSvpURHo7IQS?si=e6cef2e629474b12] https://changemakershandbook.substack.com/about [https://changemakershandbook.substack.com/about] Thank you to Susan Kain [https://open.substack.com/pub/susankain1], Regina Pistilli [https://substack.com/profile/4747169-regina-pistilli], Fiona Gray [https://substack.com/profile/194699914-fiona-gray], Luke Middleton [https://substack.com/profile/147714644-luke-middleton], Tim McIntosh-Hannah [https://substack.com/profile/107395590-tim-mcintosh-hannah], Sarah Patterson [https://open.substack.com/pub/seepatts], Fiona Gray [https://substack.com/profile/194699914-fiona-gray], Dawna Jones [https://substack.com/profile/8346336-dawna-jones], Laurie McGinley [https://substack.com/profile/16488806-laurie-mcginley] and all others who joined us live because conversations like these are always richer for our shared curiosity in real time. If this conversation resonates, please subscribe, share it with someone who thinks deeply about change, and join us for the next LIVE conversation to help build a shared body of practice for changemakers. Changemakers’ Handbook is an audience-supported publication focused on professionalizing chaangemaking in a post-solutions world. Consider subscribing to join future live conversations and to access all posts. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit changemakershandbook.substack.com/subscribe [https://changemakershandbook.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

What are fathers for?

I thought that writing something that went beyond biology and stereotypes for Mothers’ Day was hard. Then I started thinking about fathering. For Mother’s Day, I found myself writing about mothering as a choice: a way of caring for what is vulnerable. It felt surprisingly coherent. Fatherhood felt different. More contested. More uneven. More shaped by personal experience. What are fathers for? In a moment when many men seem increasingly uncertain about masculinity, fatherhood, and their place in society, I wasn’t sure I knew how to answer. Partly because my own experience refuses to fit neatly into any story I know how to tell. So I asked my audience: What is something a father or father figure gave you that would have been difficult to receive elsewhere? More than fifty responses arrived from around the world. Some people answered immediately. Others took days. A surprising number struggled to answer at all, and that, too, felt significant. One person responded: “A longing for a father… If I had my father, I wouldn’t long for one in others.” Another wrote: “There is something uniquely painful about being hurt the most by the person who was supposed to love you the most. Whatever fathering is, people seem to notice both its presence and its absence. Your answers were remarkably varied Some named values: “Integrity. Work ethic.” — Sujatha “Humility.” — Jeff “Patience.” — Rick “Counsel.” — Jim “Compassion.” — Alex “High standards as a man, father, leader.” — H.G. "Discipline." - Gunther Others described confidence: “Belief — my Dad always believed in me, sometimes when I didn’t.” — Davina “Confidence in life.” — Mukt “Confidence in my abilities.” — Andrea One respondent described learning to build and repair almost anything alongside her father before concluding: “That confidence in turn birthed resilience.” Others spoke about safety: “A safe place. Acceptance. Reassurance. Rescue.” — Sara “The space to make my own decisions (and mistakes) without fear of judgement... the room to grow.” — Anthony “Security.” — Nick, Jennifer “A grounding presence.” — Paul “Unconditional support and always a safe place to land.” — Lynn “Unconditional love and support in all my decisions, even the ones he disagreed with.” — Eric One surprising answer stayed with me: “To know what it feels like to be delighted in.” — Tiffany Interestingly, this question is attracting attention far beyond my inbox. Dr. Sanjay Gupta (CNN’s Chief Medical Correspondent) has just interviewed the author of the new book Dad Brain, exploring the growing body of research on how fatherhood changes men’s brains and behavior. Who fathers us? What struck me was not just the variety of answers, but who people were talking about. Fathers, certainly. But also grandfathers. Professors. Mentors. Advisors. Stepfathers. Coaches. People who were not necessarily related to them at all. One responded opened with, “I don’t think these things are inherently masculine.” He then proceeded to describe a grandfather who taught him generosity, courage, emotional openness, humor, advocacy, and how to love with his whole heart. That response helped clarify something for me. Perhaps fathering is less about who performs it than what is contributed. Our parenting norms aren’t universal Nature itself seems remarkably unconcerned with our assumptions. Male seahorses carry pregnancies. Emu fathers incubate eggs and raise chicks. Across the animal kingdom, parenting responsibilities are distributed in countless ways. Perhaps humans are not so different. Perhaps fathering is not a category of person but a category of care. Again and again, people described fathering as modeling a way of being in the world. Sometimes that meant trust in themselves: confidence, self-reliance, resilience, ambition, a sense of worth or the room to grow. Sometimes it meant trust in how the world works: how to build, fix, compete, endure, recover, or make sense of things. And sometimes it meant trust in how to participate with integrity: how to love, how to treat others, how to stay calm, how to stand for something, how to be strong without becoming hard. And perhaps the strongest evidence that it matters is that people notice when it is there — and when it is not. So this Father’s Day, consider thanking or honoring the father figures who helped you trust yourself a little more, understand the world a little better, and participate in it a little more wisely. And to every single person who chooses to father the world: Happy Father’s Day! May you know that your care mattered, often in ways you may never fully see. Changemakers’ Handbook is an audience-supported publication focused on professionalizing chaangemaking in a post-solutions world. Consider subscribing to join future live conversations and to access all posts. Image credit: Leo Lachnit [https://pixabay.com/users/lehoooo-10987317/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=3872809] and Lisa Yount [https://pixabay.com/users/lisaleo-3220940/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=9140074] from Pixabay [https://pixabay.com//?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=3872809] This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit changemakershandbook.substack.com/subscribe [https://changemakershandbook.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

Why I Care

Almost two years ago, I published a piece called Why I Care. Change-maker’s Handbook (the book) came out in late 2023. I was starting to mine my twenty years of changemaking experience for patterns and lessons that may benefit others, interviewing practitioners, and shaping my PhD research. Re-reading this piece now, I am struck by how many of the themes that would later emerge in my research were already present within it — not as theory or findings, but as lived experience. Most of you would have never seen this essay, so I thought I would share it again. After the original piece, I’d like to tell you what I now see differently. _ _ _ Why I Care (2024) The baby in the photo, I was born and raised in Moscow. Now Russia, then the traumatically imploding Soviet Union and the West’s sandbox for crude experimentation in forging a democracy and a market economy from scratch. Unlike many other countries — including those of the former Soviet Union — Russia had no history of either. This was like teaching a child to swim by throwing them into the deep end: there was no muscle memory to trigger. Raised by two university professors and a veteran of one of WWII’s all-female front-line battalions, I witnessed what it meant to strip a society of its value system without meaningfully replacing it. Once-respected professionals, my mom and dad were now paid in towel fabric, plates, and promises because anybody who relied on the government was, well, instantaneously overboard without a life raft. Surgeons, police officers, and scientists were bartering on street corners. In shame, nobody was making eye contact. I was not yet seven when I — clad in layers that kept us somewhat warm via sheer bulk, not smarts — first held my parents’ spot in lines for bread, sugar, or butter in the pitch black of winter mornings. Those were, indeed, separate lines with none of the efficiency of Western food banks. As it relegated people to shuffling huddles, I looked Need in the eye before I could recognize its power over everybody in my world. It would be years before I understood the meaning of eating pancakes for dinner every night of the week. By the age of eleven or twelve, I was responsible for growing (often to be canned) our annual supply of vegetables, fruit, and berries during the summer. I still can’t throw food away. At school, we routinely sat for hours on end without teachers, who were forced out into the fickle market economy to make ends meet. There were no extracurricular activities. Playgrounds got dismembered for parts. All the parents were so preoccupied with surviving that as children, we were raising ourselves. I remember acknowledging that change was non-negotiable. Still, I knew in my gut that it need not callously decimate people’s lives. Before even hitting my teens, I remember the Moscow intersection where I first committed to finding better ways to do it; ways that did not pull the rug from under people’s feet; ways that protected the environment as well as human dignity; ways that reinvigorated rather than decimated; that unlocked possibility rather than entrenched despair. My postgraduate research at Cornell University allowed me to delve into broad-spectrum change, and I have not stopped since. I was in my 20s when, on a flight, I first wrote down my purpose, “To mobilize people to imagine and create realities far better than they have experienced.” Curiously, this has not changed for me. I don’t know if this is atypical. I accept that one’s purpose may change with time, and I wish we knew more about this; one of my standing invitation for social sciences research. Even if it took me years to see it clearly, my purpose has been my compass for over three decades. May I suggest that you have a lot to gain and nothing to lose by giving a go at distilling yours. Section 1 of my book, Change-maker’s Handbook [https://www.amazon.com/Change-makers-Handbook-Everything-meaningful-business/dp/B0CP8T4Z6F/ref=sr_1_1?crid=27J3JJ7GUB8J5&keywords=elena%20bondareva&qid=1701565531&sprefix=elena%20bondareva%2Caps%2C150&sr=8-1], focuses on purpose and can guide you. It may mean all the difference in the impact and contentment you experience as a changemaker, and I would love to hear from you whether it does! https://open.substack.com/pub/changemakershandbook/p/playlist-purpose-is-fuel-for-changemaking?r=1i4aw7&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web [https://open.substack.com/pub/changemakershandbook/p/playlist-purpose-is-fuel-for-changemaking?r=1i4aw7&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web] _ _ _ When I wrote this piece, I was trying to explain myself and my commitment to better equip changemakers for their vital work. Today, I find myself asking a different question. Not why I care but why some people repeatedly find themselves caring in this particular way. The distinguishing feature is not compassion. Many people are compassionate. It is not intelligence. It is not idealism. It is not even a desire to help. What keeps catching my attention is something more specific: an inability to fully look away once certain forms of harm, contradiction, or unrealized possibility become visible. A tendency to keep asking: * Why is it like this? * Why do we accept this? * Could this work differently? * What would it take to change it? Those questions have followed me for most of my life. Increasingly, I wonder whether they have followed some of you as well. I’ve been working on something that explores that possibility. More soon. Changemakers’ Handbook is an audience-supported publication focused on professionalizing chaangemaking in a post-solutions world. Consider subscribing to join future live conversations and to access all posts. Are you a changemaker? https://open.substack.com/pub/changemakershandbook/p/how-to-spot-a-change-maker-signs?r=1i4aw7&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web [https://open.substack.com/pub/changemakershandbook/p/how-to-spot-a-change-maker-signs?r=1i4aw7&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web] Most are not changemakers https://open.substack.com/pub/changemakershandbook/p/most-people-are-not-changemakers?r=1i4aw7&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web [https://open.substack.com/pub/changemakershandbook/p/most-people-are-not-changemakers?r=1i4aw7&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web] What are changemakers for? https://open.substack.com/pub/changemakershandbook/p/what-are-changemakers-for?r=1i4aw7&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web [https://open.substack.com/pub/changemakershandbook/p/how-to-spot-a-change-maker-signs?r=1i4aw7&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web] Purpose as fuel for changemaking https://open.substack.com/pub/changemakershandbook/p/playlist-purpose-is-fuel-for-changemaking?r=1i4aw7&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web [https://open.substack.com/pub/changemakershandbook/p/playlist-purpose-is-fuel-for-changemaking?r=1i4aw7&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web] This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit changemakershandbook.substack.com/subscribe [https://changemakershandbook.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

What are changemakers for?

I have repeatedly spoken and written about purpose. Across earlier posts, I have argued that purpose is fuel for changemaking; explored the idea that each of us possesses gifts, experiences, and motivations that point toward particular forms of contribution; and written about superpowers, mandates, and the strange experience of feeling repeatedly drawn toward work that is neither convenient nor obviously rewarded. Those ideas remain central to my thinking. Yet the deeper I go into this work, the more they seem to point toward another question entirely: What are changemakers for? This may sound obvious, odd, or both. We tend to think of changemakers as individuals with causes, ideas, wounds, gifts, convictions, and projects. We ask what drives them, what problems they are solving, and how we can help. All useful questions. But if changemakers are real — more than a corporate buzzword or aspirational LinkedIn identity, but as people predisposed toward transformation — then another question becomes unavoidable. Why do changemakers exist? Across countries, sectors, professions, ideologies, and generations, some people seem persistently drawn to changemaking. They notice problems others normalize. They imagine alternatives others dismiss. They struggle to disengage from harms they did not create. They continue engaging long after exhaustion, cynicism, self-interest, or social pressure would have persuaded many others to stop. Not all changemakers agree. Not all succeed. Not all are even pursuing the same future. Still, they are everywhere. What if societies require transformation in the same way they require continuity? What if human communities need people who are unusually sensitive to unrealized possibility? People who repeatedly question inevitability. People who become uncomfortable when preventable harm is normalized. People willing to move toward uncertainty in pursuit of a future that does not yet exist. Goodness knows we need them now. Perhaps we always have — whether anybody, changemakers included — recognized the function clearly or not. Human beings are astonishingly capable of normalizing the unbearable. We adapt to institutions that degrade us, incentives that distort reason, technologies that outpace our ethics, economies that drain us, and narratives that shrink our hopes. This capacity to adapt can protect us. But at times, it can also trap us. Changemakers, at their best, disrupt that trap. They are not the whole answer. They are not saviors. They are not automatically wise, ethical, effective, or right. But they may perform a necessary function inside human systems: noticing where reality no longer fits the frame, where harm has been normalized, where possibility has been declared impossible too soon. Studying changemakers reminds me of immune systems Healthy immune systems do not dominate the body. They detect threats, respond to harm, support repair, and help living organisms survive what might otherwise overwhelm them. Without an immune system, the body becomes dangerously vulnerable. With an overactive or misdirected one, the body can self-sabotage. This feels increasingly useful to me as a metaphor for changemakers. A society without changemakers would likely struggle to adapt. A society composed entirely of changemakers would likely implode. The work, then, is not to romanticize changemakers. Nor is it to dilute, silence, or punish them for picking at what others would rather leave alone. The work is to understand what function they perform, what conditions allow that function to become regenerative rather than destructive, and what kinds of support, ethics, relationships, competencies, and institutions might help changemakers serve transformation well. This matters because changemakers are often treated as anomalies. Too disruptive. Too intense. Too idealistic. Too impatient. Too difficult. Too unwilling to accept “that’s just how things are.” Sometimes, all of that is fair. Yet perhaps some of what makes changemakers difficult is inseparable from what makes them useful. The person who cannot stop asking whether the system is solving the wrong problem may prevent pseudo-consensus. The person who balks at existing constraints may chip away until unrealized possibility comes into view. The person who feels responsible for harms they did not create may help an entire society take responsibility. Without changemakers, many necessary transformations may never happen. Purpose, in this sense, is not only personal. It is ecological. The question is not simply, What gives my life meaning? It may also be, What kind of contribution does the world seem to need of me? Changemakers’ contribution seems to be helping systems change before their failures become irreversible. What if that is their function? And if changemakers perform a function within transformation, the next question follows naturally: Do all changemakers play the same role? I no longer think they do. And that realization may prove just as important as discovering changemakers themselves. References: https://changemakershandbook.substack.com/p/how-to-spot-a-change-maker-signs [https://changemakershandbook.substack.com/p/how-to-spot-a-change-maker-signs] https://changemakershandbook.substack.com/p/playlist-purpose-is-fuel-for-changemaking [https://changemakershandbook.substack.com/p/playlist-purpose-is-fuel-for-changemaking] https://changemakershandbook.substack.com/p/most-people-are-not-changemakers [https://changemakershandbook.substack.com/p/most-people-are-not-changemakers] Changemakers’ Handbook is an audience-supported publication focused on professionalizing changemaking in a post-solutions world. Consider subscribing to join future live conversations and to access all posts. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit changemakershandbook.substack.com/subscribe [https://changemakershandbook.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

Most people are not changemakers

Modern “change” culture may create an impression that those oriented toward continuity, care, craft, mastery, preservation, relationship, beauty, stability, or stewardship are somehow less vital — or even less committed to humanity’s future — than those oriented toward disruption and reinvention. I do not believe this for a second. In fact, the more I practice changemaking, the more reverence I feel for people whose primary contribution to the world may not be transformation at all. My last post introduced the 6 attributes of changemakers. Now, I turn to the people whose contributions let changemakers do their thing. Theirs is not secondary work. It is civilization. I am increasingly aware that my changemaking has been made possible by countless people who are probably not changemakers themselves. The teachers who honed my potential. The people who ensured my scholarships were credited correctly to my university tuition accounts. Those who made sure I ate something wholesome. The friends who tethered me back to reality when I became a hot air balloon buoyed too far upward by causes and ideas. I owe everything I have accomplished — and likely much of what I still will — to people who built the roads I travel on, ensured fresh water and air, grew my food, tended to my health, and created art that kept weaving me back into humanity while I wrestled with how it might need to change. What studying changemakers has shown me * Changemaking is real. Not merely as a buzzword or aspirational personal brand, but as a recognizable practice of transformation. * Some individuals — I refer to them as changemakers — appear uniquely predisposed toward changemaking. They persistently ask: Why is it like this? Why do we accept this? Could this work differently? What would it take to change it? Goodness knows we need people willing to question inevitability, challenge harmful systems, imagine and build alternatives, and continue long after exhaustion, cynicism, self-interest, or social pressure would convince many others to stop. For more, see my last post: https://changemakershandbook.substack.com/p/how-to-spot-a-change-maker-signs [https://changemakershandbook.substack.com/p/how-to-spot-a-change-maker-signs] * Our future equally depends on the people whose contributions take entirely different forms. I have become equally convinced that changemakers depend on people oriented toward many other equally vital forms of human contribution. * Importantly, changemakers do not have exclusive dibs on creating change. Nor does it mean that changemakers cannot care deeply about continuity, ethics, beauty, relationship, or stewardship. The more I study changemakers, the more I think of them as something like a society’s immune system. At their best, changemakers help societies detect harm, aim higher, adapt, and regenerate. At their worst, they are destabilizing, reckless, and destructive. Weak immune systems are dangerous, but so are overactive ones. Left entirely to themselves, changemakers might redesign civilization incessantly. Some of those redesigns would be extraordinary. Some would be catastrophic. All would be exhausting. Human flourishing has probably always depended on many different forms of devotion existing alongside one another. Which may be one reason changemakers need not only to hone their own strengths, but to cherish the countless contributions that keep us alive, connected, nourished, honest, safe, or sane long enough to do our thing at all. A future worth building takes both Perhaps maturity — especially for changemakers — involves finally recognizing that people who do not share our particular fixation on transformation are not necessarily barriers to the future we want. They may be part of the reason we survive long enough to build it. Are you a changemaker? I have been building a survey (stay tuned) to help explore that question, based on six recurring attributes my research increasingly points toward, to better understand one particular orientation toward change — and how it exists alongside many other equally vital forms of human contribution. _ _ _ Changemakers’ Handbook is an audience-supported publication focused on professionalizing changemaking in a post-solutions world. Consider subscribing to join future live conversations and to access all posts. Image credit: Eleanor Smith [https://pixabay.com/users/elephantsoup-35028633/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=8608983] from Pixabay [https://pixabay.com//?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=8608983] This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit changemakershandbook.substack.com/subscribe [https://changemakershandbook.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]