collaborativism

You know the world needs to change

And you’re not here to pretend that the current best alternatives are enough.

do the real work

You’ve followed the experts.
You’ve done the courses. Tried a few “solutions.” Maybe even joined a group or two.
But underneath it all, you know:We need to think differently, act differently, and be different — or nothing real will change.And because you know we’re part of a living world, you get that we need to think and act in ways that are coherent with that — with the complex dynamics of life itself.You simply haven’t had the opportunity to do that yet.
That’s where I come in as your coach — to walk with you as you learn to live, lead, and act from life’s fundamental intelligence.

• Let's talk!

• Learn more

mark kroening

"Our economic system can't produce human flourishing because it simply doesn't have the required attributes"

In 2020, while working on a national resiliency project in Aotearoa New Zealand, I had a clear realization:
our economic system is structurally incapable of supporting life.This clicked when I contrasted its logic with nRhythm’s living systems framework. It confirmed what I had long suspected — during my time at a startup that offshored production, through MBA recruiting that felt soulless, and as I burned out post-MBA in consulting.The problem wasn’t effort. It was worldview.Because this knowledge wasn’t readily available, I began PhD research to build a usable, academically grounded living systems framework. But academia, too, rejected the ontology and epistemology that life requires.So I returned to coaching — to work with people who are ready to develop the consciousness and capabilities to act from life’s logic.Not just to do more.
But to become coherent with life — and propagate that coherence into the world.

• Mark bio

• Learn how

what this is in practice

This is about learning to act from the intelligence of life itself.Not fixing.
Not performing.
Not packaging yourself to fit a broken system.This is different from what you’ve encountered before — and what you’ll find elsewhere.
It combines guidance rooted in the body of knowledge that matters, and coaching to do hard things:
things you haven’t done before, that people around you aren’t doing yet, and that the market doesn’t currently incentivize.When we work together, we create space for something deeper to emerge — for you to become more coherent with the living world, and more able to act from that coherence.We’ll develop:
- A grounded understanding of living systems logic — what life actually requires to thrive
- A felt sense of when something is aligned, generative, and coherent
- The internal shift from diagnosing problems to participating in generation
- Your ability to translate insight into aligned, creative, real-world actionCoaching with me is through dialogue - conversational, reflective, and alive.
It’s not formulaic.
It’s not performative.
It’s a space for deep re-patterning, and for the clarity and capability that emerge from it. I will invite the required difference in how you know yourself, your context, and the systems you are a part of. You will become a seed, that nurtures, and propagates context changing difference informed by the source of life out into the world definitionally in the direction of flourishing.1:1 Sessions are 1+ hours in duration and hosted on Zoom (or in-person when possible).
They are offered on a sliding scale — accessible for individuals with low income and appropriate for corporate organizations.
Cadence and duration are matched to the intensity of your project and development, with weekly sessions over three-month periods being typical.

• Learn what

foundational awareness

Before we can act differently, we have to see differently.
The work begins by developing a new awareness — of what’s really happening, why our systems can’t deliver what life needs, and what it means to become coherent with the logic of living systems.
As we begin work together, the following are the kinds of shifts in perception we’ll invite. They aren’t abstract beliefs — they’re material recognitions.

1. Awareness of Widespread Degeneration 🧨:
- The world is not flourishing; it is in fact degenerating, as evidenced by ecological, social, and systemic breakdowns.
- Most humans aspire for flourishing as they define it, but the dominant systems are not enabling it.

2. Reframing Flourishing 🌱:
- Flourishing, definitionally, means humans living in sufficient, reciprocal relationship with the living world.
- Most humans’ development hasn’t included the practical knowledge or consciousness of how to live in this way.

3. Recognition of Current Contribution to Degeneration 🪞:
- I am contributing to degeneration in some way through my actions, work, or participation in current systems.

4. Understanding the Knowledge Gap 🧠:
- The knowledge needed for regeneration is not common. It is largely absent from mainstream education, cultural narratives, and economic structures.
- This knowledge is fundamentally about universal patterns that bring forth flourishing in living systems, which are overlooked or misunderstood in conventional thinking.

5. Limitations of Current Systems 🚧:
- Current economic and social systems cannot be regenerative because they lack the foundational knowledge of living systems' patterns and principles.
- The mainstream human world, as currently structured, cannot be changed to be regenerative without significant transformation in underlying paradigms.

6. Locating the Knowledge of Living Systems 🧬:
- Humans have living systems consciousness in their biology, just like all other species and all levels of life.
- Humans are animals with nervous systems, capable of sophisticated abstract thinking. However, our thinking has predominantly emerged as mechanistic consciousness rather than living systems consciousness.

7. The Necessity of Living Systems Consciousness 💡:
- A thinking tool is needed to support the development of living systems consciousness — such as the Living Systems Framework, or a similar tool that itself embodies living systems principles.

8. Action: Seeding Pockets of Generation 🌾:
- The mainstream human world is resistant to fundamental change; thus, pockets of generation need to be seeded, nurtured, and propagated in and from open spaces.
- These efforts must be informed by living systems consciousness and savvy human systems consciousness, and follow principles of Life Emergence.

9. Organizing for Generation 🧩:
- Any group aiming to seed generation must be composed of individuals with sufficient living systems consciousness.
- The group itself must be structured to embody living systems principles:
   * Internally effective (Self-organization, Autonomy, Self-maintenance)
   * Internally healthy (Interdependence, Co-evolution, Self-production)
   * Externally impactful (Exchange, Contribution, Membrane integrity)

10. Five Example Implications for Human Systems (Derived from Living Systems Consciousness) ⚖️:
- Orientation: The fundamental orientation must be to life (Life-affirmation).
- Action and Evolution: Action informs the next moment and systems change (Co-evolution, Contribution, Nested Structures).
- Development Focus: Emphasis must be placed on developing consciousness and action-taking (Cognition, Self-production).
- Truth-Seeking: Truth-seeking must be specific to self, specific context, and systemic fundamentals (Interdependence, Self, Environment).
- Decentralized Autonomy: Decision-making and action-taking must be decentralized and autonomous (Autonomy, Cognition, Contribution).

• The framework

• More writing

schedule a call

Use Calendly to book a call with me, whether it's your first introductory call (gratis) or your twelfth weekly session. We’ll start with a conversation to get clear on what you’re sensing, what you’re up against, and whether this kind of work is right for you.