I’ve designed an immersive experiential method that bridges the Inner Development Goals (IDGs) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through lived experience, connecting leadership vision and decisions to what truly matters. From drawing the Inner Alchemy Cards to awakening the senses by literally tasting the sea, and using the Collective Compass ™, I help leaders and teams Go Inward, to discover and integrate values and vision into their compass, and Go Forward with clarity in courageous action with measurable societal and ecological impact.

Country: The Netherlands
IDG HUB: IDG Hub Utrecht (Healthy Cultures Hub)
Link to website: https://groenegenen.com/collective-compass
Link to presentation: Go Inward, Go Forward.

Over the past two years, I have created and refined the Inner Alchemy Cards and the Collective Compass ™: a method that combines the IDGs’ inner work with the SDGs’ outer change. Since launching, over 300 card decks have been sold worldwide, and the method has been facilitated with leadership teams in diverse sectors, including construction, healthcare, supply chain logistics and cooperative entrepreneurship.

One example is the regional leadership team of Dura Vermeer, the largest Dutch infra and construction company. Through the Collective Compass session, the team shifted from focusing solely on Net Zero targets to initiating biodiversity and climate adaptation measures that were not required by clients but aligned with their own values. Such as planting mature trees in urban projects to reduce heat stress, increase mental wellbeing, and restore ecosystems.

As part of the session, I invited them to taste sea water: a simple act to awaken the senses and bring them fully into the present. In transitions, we often forget the body, the senses, and the heart. This moment anchored their decisions in a deeply felt connection to nature and personal childhood memories.

Through the sensory experience of tasting the sea, the team connected viscerally to the urgency of climate adaptation, making choices that went beyond compliance.

As their regional director later said: “This process changed how we lead our projects, it connected us to why we do what we do, and the impact has been bigger than we imagined.”

I have learned that when leaders connect their personal stories and make sense of them in the context of global challenges, and then bring the experiences back to concrete daily work, polarities dissolve into possibilities. This is the essence of my promise: Go Inward, Go Forward. The method consistently works across sectors, creating not only awareness but a culture of action rooted in purpose.

SDG’s divide us. Read any headline and you are for or against war, flying, farmers, vegeratians, immigrants. IDG’s unite us. On a smaller scale this is also what leadership teams encounter. My method bridges polarities by uniting what often remains separate: hard business realities and soft human values, short-term efficiency and long-term regeneration, project deliverables and planetary wellbeing. In practice, it allows leaders in sectors like construction to honour both the “hardhats”, like budgets, timelines, contracts and the “heartbeats”, such as empathy, vision, and responsibility for future generations. By engaging both the mind and the senses through ritual, we invite all forms of intelligence into decision-making: cognitive, emotional, embodied, and collective. When vision, inner compass with outer commitments align, teams make decisions that serve both business and the planet. That is the Collective Compass keeping them on course. This is the heart of my promise: Go Inward, Go Forward. When leaders reconnect to what truly matters within themselves, they can move forward with courage and clarity — and bridge polarities in ways that spreadsheets alone never could.