I have a book coming out on August 3rd called Our Ancestors Want Us to Be Mushrooms, and I have spent the last couple of years deep in the wisdom of mushrooms. I could talk about them all day. Some days I do. So letting the mushroom go wild in this context, where I don’t usually get to apply it, feels like a gift.

Mushrooms are having a moment. There’s this real surge of interest in them, and at the same time they weird some people out, which I understand. They’ve been tangled up with plagues and witches for so much of our history. But here’s what keeps pulling me back to them as it relates to the work we all do: mushrooms do so much work that nobody sees.

They do the underground work. They build the connections. They’re like the conversations that happen before the convening starts, the trust that gets built at the water cooler or in the hallway. They do the unglamorous, essential labor of breaking down what’s no longer working so something new can grow. They compost, they connect, they build. Mushrooms do the work beneath the work. Not to get too meta, but that’s exactly what our community-driven, story-driven strategy work does too.

So often when we see a mushroom, we think that’s the whole organism. But the mushroom, the fruiting body, is only the visible part. The real organism is the mycelium, this vast underground network of threads that connects root systems, shares nutrients, and sends chemical signals across the forest floor. A lot of the communication that moves through a forest is carried through mushrooms. They support every species on Earth. When all of life was still in that primordial goo in the water, fungus is what carried life onto land and made plant and animal life possible. Life here wouldn’t exist without them.

In my research I learned that every single breath we take has some spores in it. Every step we take, we’re walking on mycelial networks. There’s no part of the world, no breath, no part of our day untouched by our interactions with mycelium. Scientists call it the wood wide web. The thing I love to point out is that billions of people don’t have access to reliable internet, and yet we are all breathing in mycelium. It’s more present than any other service or entity on the planet.

The most important things that happen in deep-listening, story-driven strategy are not the things that end up on the slide deck. They’re the sidebar conversations, the trust built over meals, the real attunement to what people need, the staff member who finally builds up the courage to say what’s actually going on. Mycelium represents all those relationships that get tended long before anybody is ready to call a partnership a partnership or an initiative an initiative. That tending is so core to the work we all want to be doing.

How mycelium actually works, and why it matters for us

Mycorrhizal fungi form symbiotic relationships with plant roots. The fungus extends the root system so the plant can reach water and nutrients it never could on its own. In the cedar episode we talked about those deep root systems, and a lot of what lets cedar stay so grounded in otherwise inhospitable soil is its relationships with fungi. In return, the plant shares sugar from photosynthesis. Neither would thrive the same way alone.

That’s what we want in our teams and our organizations. We’re each in our zone of genius, there’s mutual support, there’s symbiosis. And that can only happen through trust, which happens through deep listening, through responding to what’s actually alive for community, for staff, for partner organizations.

This network is also how the forest redistributes. Older, more established trees send nutrients to younger seedlings across the fungal network. The forest communicates and shares through it. That’s what a responsive, community-driven strategy is. It lives and works in response to what the community needs, sharing resources, keeping everybody connected, making sure communication is flowing so resources get used well.

Fungi are also the planet’s decomposers. They break down fallen trees and leaf litter and transform it into nutrients that become new soil. They literally make new soil. Without decomposition, life on Earth wouldn’t be possible. We’d be walking on miles and miles of undecomposed matter. And when part of the forest is under attack from a pest or disease, mycelium sends chemical warning signals through the network so connected plants can mount their own defense. They raise the flag and say, something’s not right here, prepare yourselves.

Some fungi can even break down pollutants. Petroleum, pesticides, heavy metals. They show up after oil spills and digest what we think is undigestible. We look at an oil spill as a stain on the natural world, and mushrooms are what can alchemize it into livable substances and protect the species around them.

The lessons I keep coming back to

The real work is underground. The mushroom is what people see, but the mycelium is what makes the forest function. In organizations, the visible outputs, the campaign, the report, the event, those are the fruiting bodies. The real work is the network of relationships and trust and shared understanding beneath them. When we invest only in the visible outputs and neglect that relational infrastructure, we’re harvesting the mushroom and starving the mycelium.

Honor the harvest. For Indigenous folks, and for my people for sure, there’s this sense of the honorable harvest. You don’t overtake. You don’t take more than you need. Even if you want more, you make sure there are enough mushrooms left for the animals and for the health of that whole patch. If we only invest in the shiny things, plucking and plucking without nourishing what’s underground, it isn’t sustainable. What’s underground is the heart of the work. The relationships, the trust, the listening, the stories. We can’t starve our work of that and still expect good, sustainable, meaningful, true work.

Decomposition is not destruction. Fungi break down what’s dead so it can feed what’s alive. When we’re willing to let go of the narrative that isn’t working, or the extractive practices, or the origin story that no longer reflects who we are, or the comms points that don’t get to our real impact, we can send all of that to the compost. We let it decompose so the energy creates fertile soil for what does work, and we keep all the lessons and nutrients along the way. Always being willing to send things to the compost pile and see what comes back is one of the best lessons there is.

You can’t force the fruiting. Mushrooms appear when conditions are right. Not when they’re scheduled, not when they’re rushed. Last year I did a mushroom foraging apprenticeship, one Saturday a month for seven months. It came after two really rainy years in Vermont that fed the flooding, and then that summer was just dry. We showed up with our cute little baskets ready to forage, and there wasn’t much there. We couldn’t make the mushrooms be there. Even the instructor said, I’m making my best guesses, but I can’t make them appear. I see organizations do this all the time. They say, we just need three good stories for this and this and this. But if you’d built your foundation on listening and on great stories, you’d already have the community wisdom and the trust. You could have a hundred great stories. When we nurture the decomposition and the resource sharing and the trust building and those strong underground networks, we don’t have to worry about fruiting. The fruit is always growing, because we know we’re in a healthy ecosystem.

The network feels the threat first. Mycelium sends signals when part of it is under threat. When the narrative shifts, or misinformation is spreading, or a crisis is brewing, the organization with relational infrastructure in place hears about it first, from the network, and can respond and protect and warn others. If we’re not plugged into that network, we don’t feel the vibration before the threat arrives.

Real symbiosis goes both ways. These mycorrhizal relationships are genuinely mutual. The fungus gets something, the plant gets something. When we sit down to really listen and gather story in a good way, it’s not we’re here to serve you as a one-way transaction, and it’s not we need your story for a grant. It’s a relationship where both parties are improved by the exchange. The listening changes the organization, the storytelling changes the community, and there’s a healthy flow.

Sometimes the work starts with remediation. Fungi break down toxins in contaminated ground and clean the soil. Some of us are working in places where the soil has been poisoned by extractive practices, broken promises, and tokenization. Ethical, deep-listening, story-based strategy means understanding that sometimes you start by acknowledging the contamination and doing the slow, unglamorous work of cleaning the soil before you can get to the trust-building, symbiotic relationship.

Two questions to sit with

What’s the mycelium of your organization? What are the invisible networks that connect everything, and are you tending to them, or are you so focused on producing the forced fruit, that visible mushroom, that the underground network is starving?

And what needs to decompose? What story or practice or habit or approach needs to go? It can be hard to look at, but it can also be freeing. What’s taking up space, and how could it feed new growth if you let it break down? Remember that decomposition isn’t a failure of the organism. It’s how things keep going. It’s the way of life.

If any of this is stirring something, let’s connect. You can book a call and we’ll find what support fits where you are. We’ve got a few Story Lab Sessions open for that real springboard into this work. So grateful for the time you spend with me, and for thinking about mushrooms with me. Stay well, stay safe, and I’ll talk to you soon.

M ☁️

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