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

Until a few years ago, my days were spent in conference rooms. As a branch manager in an engineering firm, I attended long strategic calls, annual planning meetings, and projections. But inside, something had cracked. I no longer shared the objectives I was asked to pursue. I didn’t believe that building “more bridges and more roads” was the right path—neither for me, nor for the world. I felt my time and energy should serve something more real, more alive. That’s when I began to look outward. First metaphorically, then literally. Toward nature. Toward plants.

Today, I design Mediterranean gardens in Italy. And the more I study the plant world, the more I realize how much it has to teach us. Even—or perhaps especially—about how we humans could organize ourselves better.

Intelligence Without Hierarchies

The insight came from reading two seemingly unrelated books. One was Plant Revolution by Stefano Mancuso, a plant neurobiologist. The other was Reinventing Organizations by Frederic Laloux, focused on new models of evolutionary leadership, known as “Teal” organizations. Both discuss intelligent systems—but without a central leader.

Mancuso explains that plants have no central brain, no heart, no hierarchically superior organs. Everything in them is modular and distributed: each bud, each root, has its own autonomy, yet acts in deep connection with the whole. This makes the plant resilient: if one part is damaged, the rest continues to live and respond.

Laloux describes something similar in Teal organizations: human groups without rigid hierarchies, where people don’t follow orders, but purpose. Each member is free and responsible, guided by an internal compass. There is no “boss” deciding; instead, a collective intelligence emerges from interaction. Like an ecosystem.

Like a Tree, Like a Team

In the corporate world, I had seen how self-organized teams could function—if there was trust, time, and real motivation. People moved with more sense, energy, and care. The biggest challenge, however, was cultural: we are conditioned to believe there must always be someone in command. Plants tell us otherwise.

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

This is what biologists call distributed intelligence: a form of intelligence that emerges not from a center, but from the network itself. Simple, flexible, effective. It underpins many human innovations, too: Wikipedia, for example, grew like a plant ecosystem. Millions of people collaborate, without hierarchy, without financial incentives, guided only by trust and responsibility.

From Management to the Garden

When I design a Mediterranean garden, I am essentially applying the same principles. I select plants that can thrive in the climate, in that type of soil, that can coexist and support each other. I study the natural ecosystem, the spontaneous alliances among species. After a first year of careful care and irrigation, the garden begins to live independently. It no longer needs me. And it is beautiful that way.

This taught me something important: the best design is the one that makes control unnecessary. In gardens, in teams, in relationships.

What Really Matters

Time, trust, vision. In the plant world, there is no hurry. Solutions are not immediate, but often enduring. Plants do not avoid problems—they face them, slowly, until they are solved. And they do it together.

In the corporate world, we often see the opposite: centralization, urgency, extreme performance pressure. Yet anyone who has tried even once to work horizontally knows that something shifts. A spark ignites. You feel alive.

Who I Speak To

I write this not only for those who have left corporate life, like me, but for anyone who senses that another way is possible, and may still be searching for words to explain it to themselves. For those who carry a seed of intuition, a restlessness, a kernel of possibility within.

And sometimes, it takes so little: a garden, a book, a root reaching for water—to make it sprout.