The Generative Canvas

Architecting Context, Unlocking Leverage, Generating Results

Linear Tools Can’t Solve Exponential Problems

Until you shift how you see, you’ll keep repeating what you do.

Most leaders aren’t failing because they lack skill or intelligence. They’re failing because they’re trying to solve exponential problems with linear tools. They’re reacting to the noise, complexity, and pressure—without seeing that the real leverage isn’t in better strategy or faster execution.

It’s in the context they’re operating from.

Whether you’re leading a company, navigating a career shift, or guiding a team through transformation, you’ve likely sensed that surface-level tools are no longer enough. You need a framework that lets you design from a different order of reality.

That’s what the Generative Canvas delivers.

You Can’t Redesign the Game from Inside the Old Rules

Every breakthrough begins with challenging the invisible assumptions.

Most change initiatives fail not because people resist change—but because the context doesn’t shift. As Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey noted in Immunity to Change, individuals and organisations can unconsciously protect their existing worldviews even when they’re working to change behaviours (Kegan & Lahey, 2009).

In other words, without a generative shift in being, doing more of the same just reinforces the same results. Otto Scharmer, in his work on Theory U, explains this as the inability to access deeper levels of awareness and presence (Scharmer, 2009).

Organisations are running at high speed in the wrong direction—not because of bad intentions, but because of invisible defaults. These defaults are constructed mental maps and meaning-making patterns that shape not just strategy, but perception itself.

The issue is not the absence of will or intelligence. It’s that leaders are trying to create breakthrough outcomes within inherited structures of thinking, identity, and worldview.

Context is Decisive

Don’t Solve the Problem—Shift the Frame That Creates It
When context shifts, what seems impossible becomes actionable. 

Developed by Alan Froggatt and the Genratec team in 2004, the Generative Canvas is a transformational leadership model that helps individuals and organisations shift from reactive problem-solving to authorship of new futures.

The core distinction is this: You don’t solve problems at the level they were created. You shift the context from which problems, possibilities, and actions arise.

Drawing from ontological coaching (Echeverria, 1997), integral theory (Wilber, 2000), developmental psychology (Loevinger, 1976; Cook-Greuter, 2005), and systems theory (Meadows, 2008), the Canvas helps leaders:

• Identify the Default Context that limits possibility
• Generate a new Designed Future and way of being, thinking and acting
• Identify Moments of Leverage where real transformation can occur (no hacks or tricks)
• Design coordinated Practices and Structures that sustain and deepen change over time

This orientation recognises that the way of being we operate from either inhibits or enables everything that follows: decisions, relationships, innovations, and results.

“We do not act from the world as it is, but from the world as it occurs to us.”
— Werner Erhard

Therefore, our mental models and maps either inhibit or enable powerful action and the resulting impact.

Neuroscience research supports this. Studies on predictive processing suggest that our brains construct reality based on prior models (Friston, 2010). To change action, we must change the narrative. To change the narrative, we must shift context.

One well-placed shift can rewire an entire system: Transformation That Lasts

Leverage Isn’t About Force—It’s About Knowledge and Precision

Since its inception, the Generative Canvas has been applied in over 16 countries, with thousands of individuals, executives, and organisations achieving measurable transformation.

This isn’t improvement. It’s reinvention.

Clients report:

• Strategic clarity
• Organisational coherence
• Enhanced personal agency
• Sustained performance gains

The Generative Canvas provides a structured sequence of inquiry and articulation through the following seven interrelated domains:

1. Now – A clear-eyed inventory of current conditions, patterns, resources and lived reality
2. Designed Future – A vision not based on prediction or improvement, but on authorship and declaration
3. Default – Identification of the automatic patterns, assumptions, and inherited meanings that sustain the status quo and thwart change
4. Generated Context – A new lens or stand that reorganises who we are, how we see and understand, and therefore enables new choices
5. Moments of Leverage – Specific points within the system or situation where well-placed effort can produce exponential impact
6. Threshold – Key commitments, reason why change must happen, and a stand to move forward
7. Results – Clear, measurable outcomes and deliverables that occur from the designed future and the generated context

At the centre of the canvas are ongoing Practices and Structures, which sustain the new context and translate commitment into repeatable action.

Once the key Moments of Leverage are identified, they become focal points for:

• Strategy alignment
• Team collaboration
• Leadership engagement
• Execution planning

Rather than relying solely on linear planning or predictive control, the Generative Canvas enables leaders to navigate complexity, ambiguity, and systemic entanglements with precision and authorship.

If… What We’re Really Capable Of…

When the map of what is possible becomes clear, you stop reacting to the world—and start generating it 

What if you could shift from reacting to your circumstances to generating them?

That’s not a slogan. It’s a developmental move.

Drawing from vertical development research, the Canvas integrates the transition into later stages of meaning-making (O’Fallon, 2020; Torbert, 2004). This shift enables leaders to act from a broader field of awareness—what Wilber calls “integral consciousness.”

For leaders operating at Strategist and Alchemist stages, the Canvas offers a practical method to bring their worldview into coordinated, effective expression. It moves beyond insight into embodiment—turning complexity into clarity and fragmentation into generative design.

When leaders shift their frame of reference, they no longer rely on willpower alone. They operate from a different source of intelligence: authorship, alignment, and intentional design. This is what it means to lead from a different order of being.

It’s Not just a Tool—It’s a Technology of Transformation

The Generative Canvas isn’t something you just use. It reconnects you to who you can be as a leader.

If you want new results, don’t start with new goals. Start with a new context.

The Genratec Generative Canvas offers a proven, repeatable, and transformational pathway to:

• Reveal unconscious limits
• Architect new futures
• Align teams and systems
• Lead from a deeper order of being

It’s not a tool. It’s a technology of transformation.

To learn more about how to apply the Generative Canvas in your leadership, team, or organisation, visit Genratec.com or contact a accrediated Genratec coach.