Golegã · Food & Agriculture · Strategic development
Casa Mendes Gonçalves
Regenerating leadership and culture for more effective impact.
The more we explored their vision for what a responsible company in the 21st century should be, the more fascinated we became with the work. We were equally humbled by what it takes to stay true to the path.
This was our first engagement, back in 2021. We hold it quite dearly in our hearts for a few reasons. Casa Mendes Gonçalves is a food manufacturer in central Portugal. Its core business is the development and production of condiments & culinary sauces. We were initially asked to support them in thinking more systemically about their social and environmental impact initiatives and their effect in the region, in particular that of a flagship project called “Vila Feliz Cidade”.
At that time, Vila Feliz Cidade was a project mostly envisioned by the founder that was transforming an adjacent land to the factory aimed at supporting holistic education through nature connection and syntropic agriculture - first for the company’s collaborators and their families, but also open to the wider region, in particular other farmers.
Although the project was seen as commendable, it was not always clear internally how it was supporting the company’s core business. This understanding was crucial given we were going through COVID and this company, as with many others, was under great pressure to perform efficiently.
It became apparent that this was the larger aim of our collaboration i.e. to bring more clarity on how Vila Feliz Cidade and other linked initiatives were supporting the company to thrive, not just society, and what was required for this mutuality to be more visible and harmonized internally.
Our approach had two streams to see and transform the invisible patterns of doing and being that were either amplifying or hindering what mattered to the company as a whole. The first stream was to deep dive into the essence of the company and its founding energy, and that of its place - Golegã - given how intertwined they are.
The second stream was to work with the executive leadership to bring forth a long-term vision and regenerative purpose for the company that they could all stand behind and embody. We later worked with the sustainability, education, and financing teams to bring regenerative capacity to specific projects.
We come back to why this engagement stayed in our hearts. The first reason is that we are still humbled by Casa Mendes Gonçalves’ courage to embark on a transformative process of this nature amidst COVID. It also really showed us how to “walk our talk”, by experiencing both the complexity and joy of regenerative work. The second reason is that we are truly proud of having been part of an extended family of a company that has become a beacon of regeneration “from Golegã to the world”, as they would say. Don’t take our word for it. Just google it!