Inner Development for Outer Change
Who We Are
Inner Development Goals (IDG) is a non-profit, decentralized, and open-source initiative that began taking shape in 2020 and connects an ecosystem encompassing academic, corporate, and non-profit sectors as well as public institutions from around the world. We are a global, ever-expanding learning collective that includes the IDG Foundation (philanthropy and pro-bono projects, etc.), IDG Company (forums, business partnerships, etc.), and more than 800 hubs, networks, centers, interest groups, and research teams in 95+ countries that promote inner development and enable its integration into society.
Our Vision
The goal of our Czechia Center is to create a society that is resilient, inclusive, caring and compassionate, supporting flourishing, prosperity, vitality and well-being. We believe that people, teams and institutions with higher levels of self-awareness, empathy, and resilience naturally make better decisions and choose behaviors that benefit relationships, organizations and natural ecosystems in the long-term.
Legacy
for Future Generations
Inner development is an investment in the future. The competencies we cultivate today are the heritage we pass on to future generations: the ability to collaborate, care for the whole, manage uncertainty and create meaningful innovations. IDGs therefore fulfill intergenerational responsibility -- enabling our future generations to inherit not only material, cultural and natural heritage, but also spiritual heritage and a culture of wisdom.
Our Purpose
To harness the potential of inner development and embed transformational leadership practices in communities, organizations, institutions, and larger social systems. We want them to become driving forces of change that will have a positive impact and contribute to addressing the root causes of global challenges facing humanity. We trust in human potential to overcome these challenges.
Our Approach
We are convinced that there is an urgent need to increase our collective capacity to face complex challenges and collaborate effectively on them. Without a fundamental shift in mindset and behavior, solutions to our global challenges will be difficult to achieve, very limited, too slow, or only temporary.
Inner development is inherently multi-dimensional, non-linear, emergent, chaotic and complex. A common misconception is that our inner "world" equals individual and "closed," even though it often relates to the external environment, how we influence this "outer world," and is therefore rather collective and systemic.
While inner development cannot be fully controlled, it can be supported and facilitated by offering people more opportunities for reflection and growth, especially through organizations, various institutions, in creating rules and policy measures and the style in which these organizations and systems are led.
More at: https://innerdevelopmentgoals.org/
Inner Development Guide
The Inner Development Guide was created to better integrate inner competencies and sustainable development. The framework is a skills and values map consisting of 5 dimensions and 25 areas of human inner growth and development.
What We Do with the "Guide"
Within the IDG Czechia Center, we collect, examine, and share scientifically-based knowledge, skills and approaches. We integrate these into the Inner Development Guide along with supporting tools and open resources. It is a "living" tool that we will continue to develop across a global community of practice.
The Guide was developed with input from 22,000 experts across 165 countries to serve as a "roadmap" that can help us navigate today's turbulent, unclear and fragile world.
How to Work with the "Guide"
Some knowledge and approaches that we considered useful in the past need to be forgotten. Learning in the spirit of IDGs is holistic and transformative: it connects the cognitive, emotional, and physical dimensions with our purpose and values. It's not just about "knowing more," but "behaving differently." IDG practice combines reflection, dialogue, somatic, and relational learning, safe experiments and service to the whole, along with many other approaches. This creates a "lived" adaptive capacity, beyond what can be found in manuals or procedures.
Guide Development
The first version of the Inner Development Goals Framework was published in 2021, and about 3,000 experts from many countries participated in its creation.
In 2025, it was revised, content was added, a new interpretation of individual areas and renamed to Inner Development Guide. This research involved 22,000 experts from academia, business and non-profit organizations from 165 countries, who contributed more than 100,000+ unique insights and proposals. The effort was to find consensus across different cultures and continents and include the widest spectrum of perspectives.
IDG Czechia Center
Discussions around bringing the IDG’s to Czechia started in 2022. In 2023, we quickly progressed from establishing a basic group (a Hub) to organizing our first activities. In 2024, we became part of the "Změna k lepšímu" (Change for the Better) ecosystem, an established network of organizations that strive towards a sustainable future for Czechia.
Our History
In September 2025, we obtained IDG Czechia Center status. IDG Centers are created as a main contact and collaboration point in countries where there is a clear need to coordinate work in the field of inner development. Centers include a broader group of organizations from various interest groups: public sector, private sector, academic sphere, civil society.
Current Status
Under the auspices of "Změna k lepšímu," we collaborate with the global IDG team and other IDG Centers worldwide. Our goal is to:
Our Activities
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Share examples of good practice
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Co-create knowledge
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Create tools and programs
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Organize events
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Develop public policies
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Transform social narratives in a national or regional context
Our aim is to create the systemic changes that support the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.
Why Are Inner Development Goals Needed Right Now?
"The greatest failure in leadership is treating adaptive challenges as technical problems and applying technical solutions to them."
— Ronald Heifetz
Founder Center for Public Leadership, Harvard Kennedy School
We live in a dynamic, unclear, unpredictable and unstable period full of uncertainty, risks and crises. In a world that is often incomprehensible, confusing, exhausting, and information-oversaturated.
We live in a period of multiple simultaneous and interconnected crises -- often referred to as the "polycrisis."
What kind of world are we living in?
In 2015, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) gave us a comprehensive plan for creating a sustainable world by 2030. Although we have accumulated a lot of knowledge about the climate crisis, poverty, public health, and the other challenges outlined in the SDGs, we seem to lack the inner competencies to fulfill the goals, and continue to collectively produce outcomes and results that are ultimately bad for people and planet.
We cannot cope with our increasingly complex environment, the new challenges that threaten our socio-economic and social stability, and even our very existence. Today it is clear that we will not achieve the Sustainable Development Goals in 2030. Is it because we failed to act? Are we in denial? Or is the reality of our situation simply too big to acknowledge?
Limits of Current Approach
Adaptive vs. Technical Problems
Over the past 15 years, it has become apparent that humanity's challenges run very deep. We live in an era of "metacrisis" - not just a period of multiple interconnected crises (polycrisis), but a deep crisis in our civilizational paradigm. It's a crisis of the very way we understand and solve problems. We are unable to solve these challenges with existing procedures because they are not technical challenges, but adaptive in nature.
Technical problems have clearly defined causes and solutions that are usually known or easily traceable. They can be solved using expertise, standard procedures, rules, or technologies and often fall within the competence of one department or institution. Typically these are tasks where we are able to apply proven solutions from the past -- such as fix a machine, set up a process, or implement technology.
Unlike technical problems that can be solved by applying known procedures and or expert knowledge, adaptive problems are much more complex. Adaptive challenges require us to behave, think and see the world differently.
What has been significantly missing from current strategies, is insight into which qualities, knowledge, skills, abilities, attitudes, beliefs and values we need to develop.
We live in a world where the problem is not lack of information or technologies, but the lack of inner capabilities to handle the adaptive challenges we face together, and fulfill the Sustainable Development Goals.
Simply put, we believe the solution is to turn attention "inward" -- and develop the adaptive capabilities needed to navigate complexity within individuals, groups, organizations or larger systems.
The Missing Link
It's not just about WHAT you do, but also HOW you do it and what capabilities you need for it.
New Perspective on Solutions
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While Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) ask: "What needs to be done?"
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The Inner Development Goals (IDGs) ask: "Who do we need to be and what capacities do we need to do it?"
This was the starting point for the Inner Development Goals (IDG) initiative when it launched research into precisely what these capabilities, skills and qualities are.
Despite the depth of current crises, we believe that humanity carries enormous potential for renewal and creativity. History shows again and again that in the most difficult moments, new forms of solidarity, cooperation and innovation are born. Inner development opens the way for us to better understand, support and inspire each other. It brings confidence that every person can be a carrier of positive change -- and that if we combine these forces, we can create a future that will not only be sustainable, but also meaningful, just and beautiful.
Hope and Trust in Human Potential
Why Does Czechia Need the Inner Development Goals (IDGs)
and Why Do the Inner Development Goals Need Czechia?
Czechia is the heart and crossroads of Europe. It has been the center of historical conflicts, cultural evolution, human knowledge and innovation for more than a thousand years. This gives it a strong "voice" of experience in integrating these shifts.
Inner Development Goals provide a platform to amplify the values, strengths and ideals of our culture and society.
By integrating inner development in 5 dimensions (Being, Thinking, Relating, Collaborating and Acting), our country will only build on its incredible history of cultural, political and scientific leadership. It will grow in its ability to be a seat of wisdom, prosperity and wealth not only today, but also for future generations.
Development Opportunity
Constitutional Foundation
A significant "supporting value pillar" of our society that we can rely on is the preamble of the Constitution of the Czech Republic:
"We, citizens of the Czech Republic, in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia, at the time of renewal of the independent Czech state, faithful to all good traditions of the ancient statehood of the lands of the Bohemian Crown and Czechoslovak statehood, determined to build, protect and develop the Czech Republic in the spirit of the inviolable values of human dignity and freedom as a homeland of equal, free citizens who are aware of their duties to others and responsibility to the whole, as a free and democratic state based on respect for human rights and on the principles of civil society, as part of the family of European and world democracies, determined together to guard and develop the inherited natural and cultural, material and spiritual wealth, determined to be guided by all proven principles of the rule of law..."
How Can You Get Involved
If you are interested in our activities, we would be happy if you would get involved - whether by participating in events, sharing experiences, or supporting our projects.
Petr Fridrich
Initiator of IDG activities in Czechia
IDG Czechia Center, Co-Founder and Co-Ordinator
IDG Ambasador
Lukáš Rolf
Ecosystem Director
Change for the Better
Nina Bressler
IDG Global, Strategic Advisor
IDG Czechia Center, Co-Founder
Reimagined Value and Inner Landscape, Co-Founder
Maie Crumpton
Reimagined Value, Partner
Zdenka Rabi
IDG Czechia Center, Co-Ordinator
Reimagined Value, Co-Founder