TSL: SFN - Organizational Ecology w/ Chris Lee
Chris Lee co-hosts the Parks and Restoration podcast and runs a county conservation department in Iowa, with 20 years in parks and natural resource management. His whole thing is 'leadership through the lens of ecology' — he's built a framework called Organizational Ecology that takes lessons from how healthy natural systems function and applies them to building healthy teams and workplace cultures. He speaks and consults on this outside his day job too. Basically: instead of asking how nature can change how we live as individuals, he asks how nature can change how we lead people.
Healthy ecosystems don't run on hustle — they run on balance, interdependence, and long-term thinking. Chris Lee, a county conservation director and co-host of the Parks and Restoration podcast, has spent two decades studying that balance in the field — and built a framework called Organizational Ecology to bring those same principles into how we lead teams and build workplace culture. In this episode, we talk about the tension between short-term productivity and long-term stewardship, what leadership without ego actually looks like, and how thinking like an ecologist might be exactly what burned-out organizations need.
Find Chris Lee and Parks and Restoration Podcast online:
Find me online:
- This Sustainable Life: Solve For Nature Podcast: https://shows.acast.com/solvefornature
- Blog: https://verdantgrowth.blog/
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/verdantgrowth
- Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/verdantgrowth.bsky.social
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/realverdantgrowth
- Instagram: http://instagram.com/verdant.growth or http://instagram.com/verdantgrowthofficial
