Our Story
TimeZero was created to help individuals, organizations, and communities flourish as living systems.
What does it mean to “flourish”?
Flourishing organizations are creative, innovative, productive, profitable, and healthy. Why? Because their people show up whole, connected to themselves, each other, the world, and the planet.
Flourishing organizations tend to their bottom line, but are not slaves to it. They know that achieving a healthy bottom line requires healthy people and a healthy place.
All of us, and all organizations, are capable of flourishing when conditions are conducive. Creating those conditions is our most crucial work.
Reimagining organizations
Many business and leadership consultants treat organizations as if they were machines. When machines aren’t working, repair requires parts, methods, and expertise from outside the machine.
These consultants are so confident that they can bring the change needed to their clients’ organizations that the clients begin to think that there must be a silver bullet or magic pill outside their organizations that must be applied to every problem. It also makes them believe that change is a big deal.
But this mechanistic approach drives an over-focus on stability, control, and predictability. This typically leads to business strategy and operating models that are shaped (and constrained) by power dynamics. They also lack agility, and easily become brittle, stuck or polarized, self-contradictory, and ultimately, irrelevant.
At TimeZero, we know that the wisdom is already IN your organization.
We believe that nature’s wisdom – including innate human wisdom – is an excellent guide for developing and leading organizations to operate as healthy and prosperous ecosystems. Organizations are living systems! Living systems innately know how to create conditions for flourishing – that is, how to structure themselves to ensure the flow of ideas, resources, and energy, so that they can grow and thrive.
We know that there is so much potential in you and your people.
TimeZero is not here to point out your deficits and apply corrections. We are not here to push you to work harder. Nor are we going to drive yet another process or facilitate toward an agenda.
Instead, we’re here to help you discern how your system may be interrupting its own natural flow. We help you see your organization more expansively, to find where the work is that needs support, and discover what is already present and flowing that can be tapped and developed, to build upon that potential.
We bring open hearts and deep respect. We bring the ability to hold the tensions that are inherent in and required for your success. We bring an invitation to you to look at those tensions through new lenses that will assist your natural, healthy evolution.
Most of all, we offer you relief – from overwhelm, from the need for control, from the self-talk and conditioning that keeps you from seeing yourself and your organization as whole, capable and visionary.
How did this (way) of looking at organizations come about?
TimeZero founder Sally Breyley Parker began her career as a cultural anthropologist. After getting an additional degree in design, she co-founded The Arris Group, an award-winning commercial interior architectural and design firm in Northeast Ohio.
During her tenure, she led cross-disciplinary and cross-functional teams for Fortune 100 and 500 companies as they worked to assess changing organizational and physical space needs and develop plans to optimize organizational and facility effectiveness.
It was during this work that Sally began to study the use of the human body as a design model. The human body doesn’t waste energy! It makes the most of discretionary energy, and designs-out things that waste energy, don’t serve overall function, and makes you work harder than necessary to do what you need to do.
The wisdom that allows for flourishing is innate. Our body’s systems – circulatory, skeletal, muscular, nervous, excretory, etc. – naturally interact, coordinate, and collaborate to support our health. And when something is off track, we can rely on our bodies to let us know.
It’s similar with organizations!
No system can exist without hierarchy. But “top-down” organization is not natural hierarchy. When purpose is clear and shared, sub-systems self-organize to serve to the health of the whole system. Then, when things go off the rails and feel stuck, all we have to do is pay attention to where there are congestion and pain points interrupting the natural flow, so we know where to start the work.
Sally got so excited about the energy that this design model brought to the table for her design firm and their clients, that she hasn’t been able to put it down since.
So she founded TimeZero. Today, the focus of all her work is on supporting people to create the conditions that will enable them to unleash the life force in their organizations – that innate energy that will lead to flourishing.
“I still get chills when I talk about this essential way of thinking about what is possible for organizations! My experience as a cultural anthropologist opened my eyes and my heart – helping me SEE and FEEL our inter-connectedness as humans and as “life” in general. It continues to ground and inspire my work, and reminds me to always consider context – the broader and ever-changing environment in which we all exist. And it enables me to enter a system and see with fresh eyes the often-invisible patterns and dynamics that continuously create the language of the system.”
~ Sally B. Parker
Sally has guided organizations in all sectors, helping leaders to envision new futures and to develop the strategies and designs to accomplish those futures. Her Flourishing Living Systems approach integrates lessons from nature, and translates them into strategies that can create healthy and productive organizational and community ecosystems.
Sally speaks and teaches across the globe on the Flourishing Living Systems approach to organizational thriving. She has authored numerous case studies and articles on living systems, sustainability and polarity management. She has also co-authored chapters for several organizational development masterworks.
Her passion: social process innovations that release the authentic power of the human spirit.
The outcomes: inventive strategies, innovative designs, and transformed businesses grounded in a deep sense of purpose.
How is the work done?
Everything we do together is design to help you build capability in your organization, from strengthening your strategizing muscles, to getting really good at sensing and responding to the environment within and outside. Learn more about our process here.
It’s your time.
Your organization is capable of flourishing. Are you ready to tap into its innate wisdom? Contact us today to learn more.