Agile Alliance Logo | PMI
Search
Log in
Agile Alliance Logo | PMI
Agile Sustainability Initiative

Inner Development Goals

  • Authors: David Barnholdt and Ines Garcia

Three Key Takeaways

  • The world is struggling to achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals  
  • The Inner Development Guide is a framework for developing better abilities and skills
  • The intersection of our work as Agile practitioners.

As part of the “Agile Sustainability Manifesto: Learning From Peers series” we mentioned in a couple of these conversations the Inner Development Goals, in this entry we explore further the relevancy and intersection with Agile

In essence, the Inner Development Goals (IDG, recently renamed as Inner Development Guide) is a non-profit, open-source organization for inner development–meaning a light framework for personal and collective growth that emphasizes developing emotional, cognitive, and interpersonal skills to address global challenges and drive sustainable change.

By the time of this writing, IDGs is a global movement, with 650+ Hubs worldwide, that advocates for inner development and enables its integration into society.

“What qualities, abilities, or skills do you believe are essential to develop, individually and collectively, in order to get us significantly closer to fulfilling the Sustainable Development Goals?“

This is the One Question Survey that the IDGs were built from. The survey went out to 1000’s of respondents all over the world, and the answer was compiled into 23 skills in 5 dimensions.

Inner Development Goals Chart

The Need for Inner Development Goals

In 2015, the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provided a comprehensive plan for a sustainable world by 2030. However, progress is not happening fast enough, and we urgently need to increase our collective abilities to face and work effectively with complex challenges.

This is the reason the Inner Development Goals (IDGs) were co-created – a non-profit initiative committed to fostering inner development towards more sustainable futures. We research, collect, and communicate science-based skills and qualities that help us to live purposeful, sustainable, and productive lives.

Over a number of years, many different organisations interested in the connection between inner development and outer sustainability have been on a learning journey together. This has included a few public events like the MindShift Digital Conference in April 2020 at the Stockholm School of Economics, where the IDG initiative was first introduced. On the 12th of May 2021, the IDG framework, co-created by 1000+ scientists, experts, and HR & Sustainability professionals, was made available for the world.

After a few organisational iterations, in November 2023, the IDG Foundation was initiated by the 29k Foundation, Ekskaret Foundation, IMD Business School for Management, LUCSUS Center for Sustainability Studies | Lund University, Stockholm Resilience Center | Stockholm University, The New Division, Flourishing Network at Harvard University, and World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD).

The Inner Development Goals is a not-for-profit and open source initiative. The initiative’s IP and economy is placed within and managed by IDG Inner Development Goals AB (svb), a dividend limited subsidiary of Inner Development Goals Foundation.

The framework is described in detail on the IDG website. And by coincidence, many of the skills overlap with the skills we value in Agile ways of working.

The Inner Work Ahead

The IDG framework is helpful to investigate for any organisation that wants to increase its impact on sustainability and strive to become regenerative.

As Agile practitioners, we are uniquely positioned to engage with the IDG framework. We pursue the skills and practices of self-awareness, systems thinking, empathy, co-creation, and the courage to act under uncertainty are central to both. In our minds, this is not coincidental, as in a sense both Agile and IDG emerged from an honest reckoning with the limits of command-and-control thinking in complex environments.

For Agile professionals, this means the skills you have already been cultivating (facilitation, retrospection, psychological safety, servant leadership, etc) are directly transferable to sustainability work. And equally, IDG can help Agile practitioners grow in dimensions sometimes underdeveloped in delivery-focused environments, such as long-term thinking and a deeper connection to purpose beyond “the sprint”.

If you are an Agile professional wondering how to contribute to a more sustainable world, the IDG framework will likely show you that you are already closer than you think and point to the growth still ahead.

Agile Sustainability Initiative

We are stronger together! Let’s increase the awareness of the challenges we face and also of the Agile community’s possibilities to make a difference. Learn more about the Agile Sustainability Initiative!

Ready to join Agile Alliance?

Unlock members-only access to online learning sessions, Agile resources, annual conference discounts, and more! And when you join, you’ll be supporting our member initiatives, regional events, and global community groups.

Log in now
Learn more

Privacy Preference Center

Consent Management

  • Please read first

IMPORTANT: We have transitioned to a new membership platform. If you have not already done so, you will need to SET UP AN ACCOUNT on the new platform to establish your user profile. Your previous login credentials will not work until you do this set up.

When you see the login screen, choose “Set up Account” and follow the prompts to create your new account. You can choose to log in using your social credentials for either Google or Linkedin (recommended), or you can set up your account using an email address.

Set Up Account
Log in Now
  • Membership Links