We share the Tipu Ake ki te Ora Lifecycle - an easily applied, and action focused leadership model that exploits Kiwi style teamwork. It provides new self-help tools for organisations that wish to grow into dynamic living entities, rather than just behaving like machines.


Tipu Ake is an organic project model that helps us operate in a world of complexity, chaos, interdependency and ambiguity. It embraces international leadership model thinking and Living Systems Thinking - see supporting stories, feedback from users and Tipu Ake blogs. It supports best practices for sustainability and management.

It is a cyclic behavioural model that can help any innovative organisation, community, project, group, team, or even a family or individual that needs to make new things happen. It is at the the roots of lifelong learning.

It was inspired by the self-transformation stories of Te Whaiti School in New Zealand. Here a pro-active underemployed Maori community called on its own internal strength and traditional wisdom to grow its school from failure and imminent closure to the top of its class.

Their unique processes were captured after the event, as the Tipu Ake Lifecycle, by a team of volunteers from Te Whaiti, the Auckland University of Technology (AUT) and other New Zealand organisations. Student teams at AUT and other volunteers around the world continued to work together on a range of innovative projects to help them share it. The model was prototyped on pioneering workshops at AUT and is now delivered as a part of Leading Projects and Innovation in your Organisation in New Zealand.

The use of Tipu Ake is supported by stories, podcast interviews and blogsite, a downloadable videoclip library here, application case studies, introductory seminars, unique leadership retreats at Te Whaiti, application workshops, an organisational self-assessment tool, links - connectioNZ with partner organisations around the world, a videotape / DVD presentation (held in many Libraries internationally) and the Tipu Ake book collection held by the AUT library. 

Its full name is Tipu Ake ki te Ora which means growing from within, ever upwards towards wellbeing. It is generously shared with the world, dedicated to the wellbeing of all its future grandchildrens. Anyone can download it.

All intellectual property associated with Tipu Ake will continue to remain for all time at the place of its origin, Te Whaiti Nui-a-Toi. The children and people there are its Kaitiaki (Guardians). Acknowledgement is by koha (a gift in return based on its value to you). 

If you are interested in organisational or community development, living organisations, visioning, program / portfolio management, project offices and organic program leadership, then see how the Te Whaiti school and Community are connecting with others internationally to share and apply radical Tipu Ake thinking on their Kaitiakitanga (Sustainability) Program at www.kaitiakitanga.org, protecting their culture and rainforest.

Members of the Kaitiakitanga network presenting Tipu Ake at overseas conferences in 2004-5 established important international links. This resulted in them bringing sustainable development guru Hunter Lovins to New Zealand in 2006 to facilitate public forums where many young New Zealanders shared the stage with her, reflecting on: Learning from Nature, Smart Environments, Smart Agriculture, Smart Communities, Smart Cities, Smart Buusiness, Smart Economy, Smart Learning. Download video on each. See also what young Kiwi's found on their 2007 learning journey to the US.

© 2001 onwards Te Whaiti Nui-a-Toi. All intellectual property protected under the provisions of the Treaty of Waitangi 1840 and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (Adopted by General Assembly 13 Sept 2007).