Typically, innovations happen at the intersection of multiple domains. St. Michael’s House fits that pattern.

In my case, St. Michael’s was formed at the intersection of (1) my childhood faith upbringing, (2) training in complexity, network, and cognitive sciences, and (3) a confluence of clients and friends from across industries who shared with me ambitious growth goals and tough-nut problems that were not solvable by addressing them in a business-as-usual sort of way.

I will briefly roll out each domain strand and its impact, and then you will see how St. Michael’s House emerged to create breakthroughs in business and mental models and in action.

The Inspiration Behind St. Michael’s House

Some of my earliest and fondest childhood memories are from the Catholic church and school I attended as a kid, Holy Angels. The huge, stained-glass windows of the church were filled with the most popular images of the most popular angels, familiar to many people, regardless of their religion.

There was the Guardian Angel standing by children to help them cross a bridge on a stormy evening. There was the angel Gabriel, as portrayed in the 1440 Fra Angelico painting, announcing God’s message and asking the young Mary if she would be the mother of Jesus. There were groups of angels singing, commonly known as choirs of angels. The list continues.

But there was one angel that drew my attention the most and left me a little in awe. That was the Archangel Michael.

The window depicted the 17th-century painting by Reni, featuring Michael with sword in hand, foot on Satan’s head, defeating him, and presumably throwing him out of Heaven. While the picture (and window) is dramatic and action-packed, Michael’s demeanor is calm, strong, confident, and peaceful.

Over time, those qualities became less about the religious figure himself and more about what they represented to me as a model for leadership: the ability to face difficult challenges with strength while remaining calm, curious, and grounded.

That idea became one of the inspirations for St. Michael’s House.

Complexity, Network, and Cognitive Sciences

One of the things these three sciences have in common, especially when applied to business, is the non-linear connectivity and impact of dynamic systems of information, information encoded in words, numbers, behaviors, technologies, symbols, even natural systems.

These sciences, to me, in their simplest form, are about two things: (1) learning to read stories being formed and told to drive decisions and behaviors and (2) using human wisdom, along with material affordances (things like technologies and finances), to co-author even better stories. Better in terms of creating financial and other types of value that empower businesses and people to grow to their potential and deepen their roots for continued growth and resiliency.

What often trips up the stories, and lands them unfinished or with unhappy endings, is treating narrow strands of knowledge, experience, expertise, fears, and ego as little “gods” and not reading and weaving the web of connections that hold these systems together and make them healthy and able to grow.

Breaking Through Business-as-Usual Thinking

In real-life, practical experiences, the best leaders I know don’t act like little gods with all the answers, but as major explorers with many questions and connections that cross people, functions, companies, industries, and domains.

What can NASA learn from a regenerative farmer? What can ExxonMobil learn from heart surgeons? What can Amazon learn from a moat metaphor? What can a physicist learn from a priest?

The answer to all these questions is, “A lot!”

They even learn to see and think differently, to the point of breaking through mindsets, unquestioned processes or practices, and questions, problems, or goals framed too narrowly.

But it goes beyond breakthrough. Through the St. Michael’s House Experience, participants come up with innovations, and they innovate ways to execute and weave those innovations into the business, the place where most innovation and new growth fall off.

The St. Michael’s House Experience

The convergence of these three threads: (1) icons from childhood, (2) sciences that represent complex systems, and (3) practical friends and clients with unmet potential and tough-nut problems, has led me to create the St. Michael’s House Experience.

The Experience is designed to surface, utilize, and weave together new value from usual and unusual places, for example, childhood passions, getting our hands dirty and helping something in nature grow, reframing business model assumptions from multiple industries (e.g., risk-sharing looks very different in energy than it does in pharma), cooking meals together, and cooking up action plans with committed follow-up and reinforcement from myself and the group.

Beyond a Traditional Business Retreat

St. Michael’s is time away from business-as-usual, but it is not a usual retreat that leaves the learning and entertainment at the door once Monday rolls around.

The St. Michael’s House Experience is deep, creative, fun, practical, thought-provoking, and builds a guild of like-minded, innovative leaders from across domains, along with tools to apply.

It’s for people who know that business-as-usual is no longer enough and who are looking for a way for business-as-unusual to work in their worlds.

Leading With Humility, Curiosity, and Purpose

Back to the original St. Michael: successful participation and value from the St. Michael’s House Experience requires humility and the capacity to learn to be in awe.

It requires the willingness to do little things on a daily basis, not just big things, in order to lead your business, and the people invested in it, to new growth, while keeping the soul of your business and yourself calm, strong, peaceful, and in order.

If you're curious to learn more, schedule a call with the me and the Third Angle team.

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