The New Paradigm is Inspired by Nature

The economic, social and environmental volatility in our midst means organisations have to operate in a dynamically transforming landscape. Here is a repost of a guest blog I wrote for Akasha Innovation that can be found here

The nature of change itself is transforming. Organisations are now increasingly exposed to dynamic change: change upon change upon change – while dealing with one change, another affects us, then another, and so on. This dynamic change upsets the traditional mechanistic business paradigm we have been working to over the last few decades.

Paradoxically, inspiration for the current pressing challenges is all around us in nature. Nature has been dealing with dynamic change for over 3.8bn years, and the more we explore nature’s ways the more we find inspiration for operating in a dynamically changing business environment.

Our understanding of nature has evolved over the last few decades, from viewing it as a battleground of competition to one of dynamic non-equilibrium, where an order within chaos prevails due to unwritten natural patterns, feedback loops, behavioural qualities, interdependencies and collaboration within and throughout ecosystems. The more we grapple with the challenges our businesses now face, the more we realize that nature’s patterns and qualities inspire approaches and qualities for our own evolutionary success in business and beyond.

Organisations inspired by nature are resilient, optimising, adaptive, systems-based, values-based, and life-supporting.

The ‘New Paradigm’ is actually ancient, yet flowing with fresh spontaneity; whether it be sustainable business inspired by nature, organisational transformation inspired by nature, societal evolution inspired by nature or ‘human nature’ inspired by and in harmony with nature through an awakened heart-felt empathetic relation with life.

While there are many noble endeavours to transform within as well as revolutionise beyond our collective paradigm, many of today’s ‘solutions’ largely overlook the root cause: our human-nature relation. Any vision that overlooks the root cause of our multiple crises will be doomed from the get-go.

It is time to transform, and that transformation is within, through and all around us: to see more clearly the way of nature, remembering our destiny as conscious co-creating participants – a community of subjects. As Hunter Lovins says, look to nature, and the deeper we look the more we realise far from nature being about dog-eat-dog competition or individualistic selfish genes, it is much richer, more relational and diverse, it is transformation itself. We are beginning to realise the wave is very much part of the ocean, and the ocean is Nature.

For more on this visit the Facebook page of ‘The Nature of Business’.