The Mare and the Foal
By John Rainford
When someone deeply understands people's motivation, they don’t just see what people do. They see what they are holding inside🙏🏽
Emotional ecosystems
The image of the mare and the foal demonstrates high systems intelligence. How so?
The Mother instinctively understands her foal:
what they’re holding inside
what they’re trying to resolve
what they’re becoming through that process - they feel safe
People with strong emotional intelligence (very often women - though not exclusively) are already operating in that space without needing a framework to explain it.
This is innate systems intelligence.
They sit with it, shape it, and help others to understand it.
And here’s the profound insight...
The future of understanding human behaviour isn’t just better data, that is limiting on its own. It’s integrating analytical insight with emotional attunement or systems intelligence.
Emotional intelligence has often been more unconsciously developed in women - not as a biological certainty, but as a result of lived experience, expectation, and necessity. Though in many of our leadership courses, it seems suppressed in some men. This is often through societal conditioning, which can be reversed. Yet the capacity itself belongs to all of us. The most effective leaders, regardless of gender, are those who have cultivated this innate humility and intelligence deliberately. We have been privileged to mentor many great leaders, both women and men.
Leadership, at its highest level, is not the elimination of tension. It is the ability to hold it. We have seen this in recent weeks, on the political scene, where the loudest voice doesn't necessarily win - rather, a calm demeanour can win the day.
To create a space where complexity can breathe, where opposing forces are not prematurely resolved or suppressed, but allowed to reorganise into something more coherent, that requires a particular kind of strength - one that is quiet, steady, and deeply self-aware.
We have demonstrated deep self-awareness in our corporate executive classes, and this has been passed down to recruits - one of the reasons I believe that young learners can embrace complexity with ease by adopting systems thinking. This is about giving children the ability to understand complexity without fear, and to navigate systems without losing their humanity.
Meaningful alignment - Long-term societal Evolution.🙏🏽
Women leaders already practise systems thinking. Not the performative kind, but the kind that loosens the grip of ego. Seasoned Leaders are grounded in the understanding that control is often an illusion, and that real influence comes from creating conditions where better outcomes can emerge - not from forcing them. Better leaders and smarter educators recognise this. The most effective research institutions have already evolved around it - just as corporations working on 50- to 100-year horizons have done. Five-year government cycles, by comparison, are fundamentally inadequate.
Applied systems intelligence understands social dynamics as living systems - integrating emotional intelligence while balancing immediate pressures with long-term well-being. Ultimately, the question is not just how we decide, but what kind of society we are shaping. Including women more fully in decision-making is fundamental to restoring that balance and creating a brighter future for the next generation of leaders.
When organisations move towards a genuine balance - where both men and women are not just present, but equally heard and valued - something shifts. Decision-making becomes less reactive, more responsible. The system begins to see more of itself. Economic systems are emotional ecosystems shaped by human behaviour, values, and perception.
And better perception leads, almost inevitably, to better choices.
The Mare and the Foal - what it represents
The adult horse is a regulated state - the foal is an emerging unregulated state. The adult isn't controlling; it is creating a safe environment for the foal to grow. This is psychological safety - we have created these conditions for many scientists and business leaders at Shell Research and Unilever, and at the London Business School, to name a few. We are also working with enlightened Universities and Governments across the world, including Europe, Singapore, Canada, the U.S., China, and the United Nations.
The foal represents curiosity, vulnerability and evolution.
The adult represents: calmness, non-reactivity and presence.
Transformation doesn’t happen through pressure. It happens through safe proximity that helps to foster self-regulation and calm.
Systemic innovation is about transforming whole interconnected systems, technologies, institutions, culture, and behaviours so they coevolve toward new, more sustainable futures. It is preparation for technological and cultural adaptation.
All systems are based on relationships, good or bad. A mare and foal embody a living ecosystem: survival and growth depend on continual interaction (nurturing, learning, protection) just as systemic innovation depends on ongoing collaboration.
Governments and Organizations of all sizes - including start-ups - take note. The many communities that wing it - or rely on control alone - will find that their systems will evolve whether they dictate outcomes or not.
Regeneration and continuity. The generational link (adult–young) evokes how systemic innovation is about renewing systems across time -designing conditions so future “generations” of solutions, organizations, and practices can keep evolving.
Using this image in practice, all the executives and mature students know this metaphor as a reminder to spend time on relationships. They use the horse-foal motif in presentations or videos to signal that their work is about nurturing whole ecosystems for change: caring for relationships, enabling learning, and designing contexts where innovations can grow safely into maturity. As we discovered in Shell Research and Birmingham Business School, psychological safety yields more patents and healthier business models - through investigations like the 'Innovation matrix.'
SHELL GLOBAL INNOVATION AND RESEARCH "The Innovation Matrix Systems process helped enormously with our Ambitious Business Challenge and launch of Shell Global Solutions, the process is genius and provokes new solutions, finding hidden, previously unseen, strategies. " Dr Allan Samuel. Shell.
It is flexible in that it can take on challenges, but sees the bigger picture. Once practitioners have used it over a period of time, it becomes second nature. Executives become adept at Entrepreneurship or Intrapreneurship. Either way, it is a career enhancement process - it is strategic training of thought - that leads towards competitive advantage. That is why we have worked with Executive Teams at the government level, particularly in places like Singapore, the UAE, and of course in Leeds MBA Executive and the University of Birmingham Business School on the Main MBA course. The reason the Mare and Foal is appropriate is that Governments are seeing the importance of intergenerational applications - not confined just to Executives and Mature Students. Unfortunately, some Governments are still slow on the uptake. So, largely, I am focusing on progressive Institutions.
John Rainford led the Entrepreneurship MBA at the University of Birmingham, where his Innovation Matrix for Competitive Advantage course was mandatory for all MBA students. He also delivered a keynote presentation at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit. His work was recognised by Professor Jonathan Michie, then Director of the Business School and now Pro-Vice-Chancellor of Kellogg College, University of Oxford. Earlier in his academic career, John studied Global Marketing under the Emeritus Philip Kotler at the Kellogg School of Management, Illinois.
Kotler says... Applied systems intelligence navigates social dynamics by integrating emotional intelligence with structured decision-making, balancing immediate demands with long-term societal well-being. Markets, in this view, are not merely economic systems but emotional ecosystems shaped by human behaviour, values, and perception.
This perspective aligns with the work of Philip Kotler, Professor Emeritus of Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management, who helped redefine marketing as a human-centred and systems-oriented discipline. At its core, this approach is grounded in systems thinking, emotional intelligence, and long-term societal evolution.
My Dream - When the top engineers and scientists at Shell asked me to develop a way for new recruits to understand my approach to Systems Intelligence, something became immediately clear: this way of thinking shouldn’t be confined to industry. It belongs in our schools. 🙏🏽🙏🏽
From that realisation, I began designing workshops that integrate Emotional Intelligence with Systems Thinking - equipping young minds not just to analyse systems, but to navigate them with awareness, balance, and humanity.
Working alongside institutions shaping 50–80 year horizons, you begin to notice a strange contradiction. We speak of evolution - of ecosystems, innovation, long-term futures -yet we often attempt to build that future using the mental frameworks of a world that no longer exists. It’s like trying to grow a forest in soil that has already been exhausted.
True evolution - biological, societal, or technological - doesn’t happen by repeating inherited patterns. It happens when new conditions allow new forms of intelligence to emerge. Let that sink in.
If we are serious about the future, then empowering women and children is not a moral gesture - it’s a structural necessity. Because they don’t just represent “groups” within society, they carry perspectives, sensitivities, and ways of relating that are essential for systems to become more intelligent, adaptive, more humane, more whole.
The tragedy of the past century is not just what it built, but what it silenced.
So the question is not whether we include these voices - it’s whether we are willing to let go of the frameworks that excluded them in the first place. Evolution doesn’t ask for permission from the past. It asks whether we are ready to become something new.
If you are a healing and progressive inovative organization or University or Government, and need help, let me know. We have teams ready to help all around the world.
This is about giving children the ability to understand complexity without fear, and to navigate systems without losing their sense of humanity.
We need to move from control to understanding, from operating at speed to insight and depth - from a fixed culture to holding space for growth.
If enough women leaders adopt systems thinking (systems intelligence) and we apply this process in education, then our children will be able to perceive emotions as systems, not as problems, and perhaps see conflict as a form of interaction rather than a threat. Like the Mare and the foal - seeing the big picture in terms of evolution may help us to see society as evolving systems and communities. The future is about balance, equity, emotional intelligence and non-ego. Leadership is our greatest asset; let us use these attributes strategically and inform the next generation and our future leaders with this new way of thinking.
Systems Intelligence Impact on Deprived Foster Children
Our Impact as Foster carers supporting children with complex emotional needs - many of whom arrived distressed, reactive, and struggling within school environments - we introduced our Systems Intelligence approach to help them better understand and regulate their inner world. Over time, we witnessed a meaningful shift. Behaviour that had once been expressed through aggression or disruption began to settle as the children developed greater Emotional Awareness, Emotional Intelligence, Confidence, and a sense of inner stability.
Their progress was reflected not only in improved school outcomes, but in how they related to themselves and others. One headmistress specifically recognised the impact of our confidence-building process, noting the transformation in children who had previously found it difficult to engage, regulate, or feel secure. Most interventions try to control behaviour from the outset “Sit still.”“Be quiet.”“Follow the rules.” We didn't fix the behaviour, we changed the conditions and the environment that produced it - if only more schools could learn from these processes.
We need to think generational, not just organizational. We need to integrate a generation of Systems Thinkers, Emotional Intelligence, Creative Intelligence - all in preperation to how we use Artificial Intelligence.
“The Innovation Matrix is theThe work of leadership, creativity, and innovation is to reshape the relationships so a different future becomes possible.reshape the relationships so a different future becomes possible. most powerful process that could help our young people out of poverty and ignorance and so create a better world.” Sir Tim Smit, Founder and Creator of the Eden Project
We had the honour of meeting Sir Ken Robinson in person, who spoke about the Innovation Matrix. "This highly creative process can make a real difference to our young people's future.” Sir Ken Robinson.
Health Sector
"...medicine and public health are in desperate need of returning to theidea of person-centered care, not care based on population averages. This will require an ability to view patients and each community as a unique system where well-being may be achieved through different mechanisms. One size won’t fit all and a nimbleness of mind and safety to be creative in the process of research and practice is essential. We can’t keep doing the wrong thing “right........” Patti Gravitt . Advocating for systems approaches to achieve global health equity
We can create psychological safety in the classroom, in the workspace, in government and mega organisations. Wherever possible, we will work for free for charities and for children's education, teachers and women's groups. The painting of the Mare and Foal I have called Systems Intelligence - The Foundation. I have sold copies to raise money for well-deserved charities and ecosystem groups. We are working with Healing Institutions and Mental Health Charities, including MIND.
"Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished." - Lao Tzu (A systems thinker). Ancient Wisdom
Let me know if you need any help.
This article is dedicated to my mum, Winnie Rainford, who raised my sister and me with strength and resilience in very difficult circumstances.
Emotional ecosystems
The image of the mare and the foal demonstrates high systems intelligence. How so?
The Mother instinctively understands her foal:
what they’re holding inside
what they’re trying to resolve
what they’re becoming through that process - they feel safe
People with strong emotional intelligence (very often women - though not exclusively) are already operating in that space without needing a framework to explain it.
This is innate systems intelligence.
They sit with it, shape it, and help others to understand it.
- Motivational Research maps reveal hidden tension through the Innovation Matrix
- Neuroscience measures its biological traces and inheritance
- Emotional intelligence feels and transforms it in real time - Acquire for Wisdom 🙏🏽
And here’s the profound insight...
The future of understanding human behaviour isn’t just better data, that is limiting on its own. It’s integrating analytical insight with emotional attunement or systems intelligence.
Emotional intelligence has often been more unconsciously developed in women - not as a biological certainty, but as a result of lived experience, expectation, and necessity. Though in many of our leadership courses, it seems suppressed in some men. This is often through societal conditioning, which can be reversed. Yet the capacity itself belongs to all of us. The most effective leaders, regardless of gender, are those who have cultivated this innate humility and intelligence deliberately. We have been privileged to mentor many great leaders, both women and men.
Leadership, at its highest level, is not the elimination of tension. It is the ability to hold it. We have seen this in recent weeks, on the political scene, where the loudest voice doesn't necessarily win - rather, a calm demeanour can win the day.
To create a space where complexity can breathe, where opposing forces are not prematurely resolved or suppressed, but allowed to reorganise into something more coherent, that requires a particular kind of strength - one that is quiet, steady, and deeply self-aware.
We have demonstrated deep self-awareness in our corporate executive classes, and this has been passed down to recruits - one of the reasons I believe that young learners can embrace complexity with ease by adopting systems thinking. This is about giving children the ability to understand complexity without fear, and to navigate systems without losing their humanity.
Meaningful alignment - Long-term societal Evolution.🙏🏽
Women leaders already practise systems thinking. Not the performative kind, but the kind that loosens the grip of ego. Seasoned Leaders are grounded in the understanding that control is often an illusion, and that real influence comes from creating conditions where better outcomes can emerge - not from forcing them. Better leaders and smarter educators recognise this. The most effective research institutions have already evolved around it - just as corporations working on 50- to 100-year horizons have done. Five-year government cycles, by comparison, are fundamentally inadequate.
Applied systems intelligence understands social dynamics as living systems - integrating emotional intelligence while balancing immediate pressures with long-term well-being. Ultimately, the question is not just how we decide, but what kind of society we are shaping. Including women more fully in decision-making is fundamental to restoring that balance and creating a brighter future for the next generation of leaders.
When organisations move towards a genuine balance - where both men and women are not just present, but equally heard and valued - something shifts. Decision-making becomes less reactive, more responsible. The system begins to see more of itself. Economic systems are emotional ecosystems shaped by human behaviour, values, and perception.
And better perception leads, almost inevitably, to better choices.
The Mare and the Foal - what it represents
The adult horse is a regulated state - the foal is an emerging unregulated state. The adult isn't controlling; it is creating a safe environment for the foal to grow. This is psychological safety - we have created these conditions for many scientists and business leaders at Shell Research and Unilever, and at the London Business School, to name a few. We are also working with enlightened Universities and Governments across the world, including Europe, Singapore, Canada, the U.S., China, and the United Nations.
The foal represents curiosity, vulnerability and evolution.
The adult represents: calmness, non-reactivity and presence.
Transformation doesn’t happen through pressure. It happens through safe proximity that helps to foster self-regulation and calm.
Systemic innovation is about transforming whole interconnected systems, technologies, institutions, culture, and behaviours so they coevolve toward new, more sustainable futures. It is preparation for technological and cultural adaptation.
All systems are based on relationships, good or bad. A mare and foal embody a living ecosystem: survival and growth depend on continual interaction (nurturing, learning, protection) just as systemic innovation depends on ongoing collaboration.
Governments and Organizations of all sizes - including start-ups - take note. The many communities that wing it - or rely on control alone - will find that their systems will evolve whether they dictate outcomes or not.
Regeneration and continuity. The generational link (adult–young) evokes how systemic innovation is about renewing systems across time -designing conditions so future “generations” of solutions, organizations, and practices can keep evolving.
Using this image in practice, all the executives and mature students know this metaphor as a reminder to spend time on relationships. They use the horse-foal motif in presentations or videos to signal that their work is about nurturing whole ecosystems for change: caring for relationships, enabling learning, and designing contexts where innovations can grow safely into maturity. As we discovered in Shell Research and Birmingham Business School, psychological safety yields more patents and healthier business models - through investigations like the 'Innovation matrix.'
SHELL GLOBAL INNOVATION AND RESEARCH "The Innovation Matrix Systems process helped enormously with our Ambitious Business Challenge and launch of Shell Global Solutions, the process is genius and provokes new solutions, finding hidden, previously unseen, strategies. " Dr Allan Samuel. Shell.
It is flexible in that it can take on challenges, but sees the bigger picture. Once practitioners have used it over a period of time, it becomes second nature. Executives become adept at Entrepreneurship or Intrapreneurship. Either way, it is a career enhancement process - it is strategic training of thought - that leads towards competitive advantage. That is why we have worked with Executive Teams at the government level, particularly in places like Singapore, the UAE, and of course in Leeds MBA Executive and the University of Birmingham Business School on the Main MBA course. The reason the Mare and Foal is appropriate is that Governments are seeing the importance of intergenerational applications - not confined just to Executives and Mature Students. Unfortunately, some Governments are still slow on the uptake. So, largely, I am focusing on progressive Institutions.
John Rainford led the Entrepreneurship MBA at the University of Birmingham, where his Innovation Matrix for Competitive Advantage course was mandatory for all MBA students. He also delivered a keynote presentation at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit. His work was recognised by Professor Jonathan Michie, then Director of the Business School and now Pro-Vice-Chancellor of Kellogg College, University of Oxford. Earlier in his academic career, John studied Global Marketing under the Emeritus Philip Kotler at the Kellogg School of Management, Illinois.
Kotler says... Applied systems intelligence navigates social dynamics by integrating emotional intelligence with structured decision-making, balancing immediate demands with long-term societal well-being. Markets, in this view, are not merely economic systems but emotional ecosystems shaped by human behaviour, values, and perception.
This perspective aligns with the work of Philip Kotler, Professor Emeritus of Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management, who helped redefine marketing as a human-centred and systems-oriented discipline. At its core, this approach is grounded in systems thinking, emotional intelligence, and long-term societal evolution.
My Dream - When the top engineers and scientists at Shell asked me to develop a way for new recruits to understand my approach to Systems Intelligence, something became immediately clear: this way of thinking shouldn’t be confined to industry. It belongs in our schools. 🙏🏽🙏🏽
From that realisation, I began designing workshops that integrate Emotional Intelligence with Systems Thinking - equipping young minds not just to analyse systems, but to navigate them with awareness, balance, and humanity.
Working alongside institutions shaping 50–80 year horizons, you begin to notice a strange contradiction. We speak of evolution - of ecosystems, innovation, long-term futures -yet we often attempt to build that future using the mental frameworks of a world that no longer exists. It’s like trying to grow a forest in soil that has already been exhausted.
True evolution - biological, societal, or technological - doesn’t happen by repeating inherited patterns. It happens when new conditions allow new forms of intelligence to emerge. Let that sink in.
If we are serious about the future, then empowering women and children is not a moral gesture - it’s a structural necessity. Because they don’t just represent “groups” within society, they carry perspectives, sensitivities, and ways of relating that are essential for systems to become more intelligent, adaptive, more humane, more whole.
The tragedy of the past century is not just what it built, but what it silenced.
So the question is not whether we include these voices - it’s whether we are willing to let go of the frameworks that excluded them in the first place. Evolution doesn’t ask for permission from the past. It asks whether we are ready to become something new.
If you are a healing and progressive inovative organization or University or Government, and need help, let me know. We have teams ready to help all around the world.
This is about giving children the ability to understand complexity without fear, and to navigate systems without losing their sense of humanity.
We need to move from control to understanding, from operating at speed to insight and depth - from a fixed culture to holding space for growth.
If enough women leaders adopt systems thinking (systems intelligence) and we apply this process in education, then our children will be able to perceive emotions as systems, not as problems, and perhaps see conflict as a form of interaction rather than a threat. Like the Mare and the foal - seeing the big picture in terms of evolution may help us to see society as evolving systems and communities. The future is about balance, equity, emotional intelligence and non-ego. Leadership is our greatest asset; let us use these attributes strategically and inform the next generation and our future leaders with this new way of thinking.
Systems Intelligence Impact on Deprived Foster Children
Our Impact as Foster carers supporting children with complex emotional needs - many of whom arrived distressed, reactive, and struggling within school environments - we introduced our Systems Intelligence approach to help them better understand and regulate their inner world. Over time, we witnessed a meaningful shift. Behaviour that had once been expressed through aggression or disruption began to settle as the children developed greater Emotional Awareness, Emotional Intelligence, Confidence, and a sense of inner stability.
Their progress was reflected not only in improved school outcomes, but in how they related to themselves and others. One headmistress specifically recognised the impact of our confidence-building process, noting the transformation in children who had previously found it difficult to engage, regulate, or feel secure. Most interventions try to control behaviour from the outset “Sit still.”“Be quiet.”“Follow the rules.” We didn't fix the behaviour, we changed the conditions and the environment that produced it - if only more schools could learn from these processes.
We need to think generational, not just organizational. We need to integrate a generation of Systems Thinkers, Emotional Intelligence, Creative Intelligence - all in preperation to how we use Artificial Intelligence.
“The Innovation Matrix is theThe work of leadership, creativity, and innovation is to reshape the relationships so a different future becomes possible.reshape the relationships so a different future becomes possible. most powerful process that could help our young people out of poverty and ignorance and so create a better world.” Sir Tim Smit, Founder and Creator of the Eden Project
We had the honour of meeting Sir Ken Robinson in person, who spoke about the Innovation Matrix. "This highly creative process can make a real difference to our young people's future.” Sir Ken Robinson.
Health Sector
"...medicine and public health are in desperate need of returning to theidea of person-centered care, not care based on population averages. This will require an ability to view patients and each community as a unique system where well-being may be achieved through different mechanisms. One size won’t fit all and a nimbleness of mind and safety to be creative in the process of research and practice is essential. We can’t keep doing the wrong thing “right........” Patti Gravitt . Advocating for systems approaches to achieve global health equity
We can create psychological safety in the classroom, in the workspace, in government and mega organisations. Wherever possible, we will work for free for charities and for children's education, teachers and women's groups. The painting of the Mare and Foal I have called Systems Intelligence - The Foundation. I have sold copies to raise money for well-deserved charities and ecosystem groups. We are working with Healing Institutions and Mental Health Charities, including MIND.
"Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished." - Lao Tzu (A systems thinker). Ancient Wisdom
Let me know if you need any help.
This article is dedicated to my mum, Winnie Rainford, who raised my sister and me with strength and resilience in very difficult circumstances.