Preparing the Soil: Burnout, Growth & the Year Ahead

As we close this year, many people in healthcare are not thinking about goals or growth.

They are thinking about how exhausted they are.

Burnout is no longer an exception or a weakness. It is a signal. And next year, we want to respond to that signal in a way that is practical, humane, and grounded in how real systems and real people actually grow.

In 2026, our work will focus explicitly on burnout in healthcare settings, explored through the rhythm of the seasons:

• Winter:  preparing the soil

• Spring:  early growth and direction

• Summer: sustaining energy and impact

• Autumn: harvesting learning and letting go

Each season, we will focus on one specific aspect of burnout, pairing:

• a practical webinar with an expert, and

• grounded tools drawn from our three-stage model: Soil, Tree, Forest.

Winter: nutrients, not resilience

We begin in winter.

Anyone who owns a plant, tends a garden, or even looks out of the window knows this: you can see when something is flourishing, and you can see when it is not.

Yet very few people tell us to add the nutrients we need in order to keep growing.

Even when they do, many of us carry deep internal beliefs shaped by healthcare culture:

• Do more.

• Push through.

• Look after others first.

• Don’t stop.

Healthcare is full of purpose-led people. And that purpose is often used quietly, relentlessly to justify exhaustion.

We are told to be resilient. But resilience, on its own, is a poor idea when taken out of context. A rose will not grow on the Arctic tundra. Plants that survive in harsh environments do not grow larger they become smaller.

Many healthcare leaders are currently working in harsh environments, while the systems around them are moving far too slowly to change. In fact, many systems are designed to set like concrete. And it is very hard to grow in concrete.

Cracks, life, and organising images for 2026

Yet when cracks appear in concrete, as they are now, something remarkable happens.

Tiny green life emerges.

A blade of grass.

A single leaf.

Small, determined growth seeking the sun.

This is our organising image for 2026:

the break in the concrete, and the tiny plant.

Change does not always arrive as a revolution. Sometimes it arrives as something fragile, persistent, and quietly alive.

What we’ll be doing next year

Next year, we will be working more deeply with individual leaders in healthcare systems who want to be long-term sustainable, not just operationally functional.

Our work will focus on:

• reducing and avoiding burnout through one-to-one coaching

• supporting leaders who are already changing systems

• helping those leaders communicate their work through thoughtful storytelling and narrative clarity

We often see a pattern among people doing truly meaningful work:

• a reluctance to speak about it

• a discomfort with visibility

• a belief that communicating impact is “boasting”

This work is not about ego.

It is about eco-leadership, making sure that regenerative work is seen, shared, and allowed to spread.

That is urgent.

Join us

Our first seasonal webinar will take place in early March, focusing on winter: soil, nutrients, and burnout.

If you would like to:

• join the webinar

• explore one-to-one work next year

• or simply stay connected as this work unfolds please let us know here.

We are now opening a sign-up list for the March session.

As we move into winter, may this be a season not of pushing through but of tending what makes growth possible.

Warm regards,

Mark