From Corporate Leadership to Mediterranean Gardens: A Lesson in Distributed Intelligence

From Boardrooms to Gardens

Until a few years ago, I spent my days in conference rooms. As the head of an engineering branch, I sat through long strategic calls, annual planning sessions, projections. But inside, something had begun to crack. I no longer shared corporate objectives. I didn’t believe that “more bridges, more roads” was the right path—neither for me, nor for the world. I felt that my time, my energy, needed to serve something different. And so, I started to look outward. First metaphorically, then literally. Toward nature. Toward plants.

Today, I design sustainable Mediterranean gardens in Italy. And the more I study the plant world, the more I realize how much it has to teach us—not just about plants, but about life, relationships, and how we humans can organize ourselves.

Intelligence Without Hierarchies

The insight came from two books, which at first seemed completely unrelated. One was Plant Revolution by Stefano Mancuso, a plant neurobiologist. The other was Reinventing Organizations by Frederic Laloux, about evolutionary “Teal” leadership in human organizations. Both explore intelligent systems—but systems without a central leader.

Mancuso shows that plants have no brain, no heart, no “boss” organ. Everything in them is modular, distributed: each bud, each root, has its own autonomy, yet acts in deep connection with the whole. This makes plants resilient: if one part is damaged, the rest continues to live and respond.

Laloux speaks similarly about Teal organizations: human groups without rigid hierarchies, where people don’t follow orders but purposes. Each member is free, responsible, guided by an inner compass. No boss decides. Intelligence emerges from the interactions themselves. Like an ecosystem.

Like a Tree, Like a Team

In my corporate life, I had seen how self-organized teams could work—if there was trust, patience, and real motivation. People moved with more sense, more energy, more care. The challenge, though, was cultural: we are taught that there must always be someone in charge. Plants tell us something different.

A tree is made of millions of autonomous units: buds, leaves, root tips. Each part seeks what it needs—light, water, nutrients—and in doing so, supports the entire system. No one commands. Everyone cooperates.

This is what biology calls distributed intelligence: a kind of intelligence that doesn’t come from the center, but from the network itself. Simple, flexible, effective. And it underlies many human innovations: Wikipedia, for example, grew like a plant ecosystem. Millions collaborate, without hierarchy, without incentives, guided only by trust and responsibility.

From Management to the Garden

When I design a Mediterranean garden, I realize I am doing the same thing. I choose plants that suit the climate, that can thrive in that soil, that can coexist and support each other. I study the ecosystem, the spontaneous alliances between species. After a year of careful watering and attention, the garden begins to live on its own. It doesn’t need me anymore. And it is perfect that way.

This has taught me something profound: the right design is the one that makes control unnecessary. In teams, in relationships, in life.

What Really Matters

Time, trust, vision. In the plant world, there is no hurry. Solutions are rarely immediate, but they endure. Plants don’t avoid problems—they face them, slowly, together, until they are solved.

In the corporate world, we still see the opposite: centralization, urgency, constant pressure. Yet anyone who has experienced a horizontal, self-organized way of working knows something changes. A spark ignites. We feel alive.

Who I Speak To

I write this not just for those who have left the corporate world, like me. But for anyone who feels that another way is possible, and is still searching for the words to explain it to themselves. For anyone carrying a seed of intuition, of restlessness, of curiosity.

And sometimes, all it takes is a little: a garden, a book, a root reaching for water—to make that seed sprout.