Regenerative Leadership & Organizational Development = Leading by Nature
It’s a fascinating yet challenging time to be a leader. Multiple and profound shifts affect the way we work, how and why we do things, and the purpose and meaning we bring to our organizations. This new-norm in business is characterised by unceasing transformation. Change upon change upon change is what leaders are now dealing with. There’s a maelstrom of motives contributing to this volatile business terrain: hyper-connectivity, volatile transaction costs, disruptive innovations, shifting societal norms, new ways of working, the search for deeper meaning and purpose through work, fragile supply chains, resource scarcity, rising mental health and wellbeing issues, widespread disenfranchisement across workforces, increasing systemic shocks (COVID, Climate, conflict and more looming on the horizon). No organization is spared.
This new-norm in business demands a new-norm in leadership: a leadership consciousness that cultivates organizational cultures able to adapt and evolve amid unceasing transformation in ways that create flourishing for all. This can seem like a tall-order, in fact it is when we face the challenge with the same level of thinking that created it. Shift the consciousness and the challenge reframes into potentiality for evolution. As the management guru Peter Drucker insightful said, ‘In times of turmoil, the danger lies not in the turmoil itself but in facing it with yesterday’s logic.’ So what is yesterday’s logic?
Yesterday’s Logic
Much of today’s L&OD logic is still rooted in a worldview of mechanistic reductionism originated by the Scientific Revolution of the 16th and 17th century. This view of the world draws upon assumptions of separateness, predictability, replicability and control. Life is assumed to be made up of separate things struggling for survival in a dog-eat-dog world of hyper-competition. It is then assumed that these separate things in life can be compartmentalised, controlled, measured and managed in linear predictable ways through push-pull mechanisms. Relationships between component parts and their wider context are often overlooked or de-emphasised. This view of life informed Frederick Taylor’s Principles of Scientific Management published in 1909. Taylorism became hugely influential in setting the context for viewing the organization as a machine, a view that is still dominant today. Employees are relegated to the role of efficiently performing the duties as defined by management who compartmentalise activities and relationships in an effort to make things easier to control and measure.
As a tool within a broad human-repertoire, this reductive tendency to break things down into parts is useful. Narrowing-down and compartmentalising complexity into binary relationships enables us to create models of cause-effect linearity. For instance, detailed Gantt-charts for project management, quantized KPI measurements, and systematic foresight planning tools are useful to have at our finger-tips, all of which call upon reductive methods of analysis. As long as we also remember that life is not actually like this.
When this machine-logic becomes a dominant worldview, we start to believe that the organization actually is a set of neatly definable parts that can be measured and controlled in isolation. The leadership team controls from the top, cascading commands through layers of management to the workers at the bottom. A narrowed focus is applied to optimizing short-term returns while perceiving stakeholder relations through the threat-tinted lens of hyper-competition. This mentality creates fragile organizations based on control, fear and exploitation which undermines trust, dis-empowers employees, corrupts purpose, and exploits the wider business ecosystem for short-term maximization. This is a recipe for extinction not evolution. While the logic of the machine may pride itself on driving out inefficiencies, what it actually creates is burgeoning bureaucracy and disempowerment inside the organization and widespread externalities and fragilities beyond the organization through its restricted view of life.
Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini’s London Business School research explores how the stratified power structures, specialized roles and standardized tasks of the organization-as-machine create a massive bureaucratic-drag, costing the US economy alone over $3tn annually. Another organization-as-machine inefficiency is what the Harvard Business School professors Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey researched: most leaders and employees are doing a second job no one is paying them for – the job of managing other people’s impressions of themselves, covering up their weaknesses, playing politics, hiding uncertainties, wearing masks at work. Far from the machine-mindset driving out inefficiencies, it actually undermines productivity, resilience, innovation and initiative. People are fed up with working in bureaucratic organizations. We all want to actively participate in creative, passionate and empowering organizations where we feel a meaningful connection with the value we create rather than feeling like corporate cogs enslaved in a machine.
In reality, organizations are relational purposeful evolving systems made up of messy unpredictable human relationships that thrive amid a diverse web of stakeholder relations all intimately interrelated with wider society and the natural world. Organizations display non-linear dynamics and self-organizing behaviours more akin to living-systems. These living-organizations are responsive to continuous change, and continually learn, evolve and thrive amid unceasing transformation. The organization-as-machine, on the other hand, relies on top-down perspectives far-removed from the customer and expensive cumbersome change-management programmes that all-too-often fall woefully short in future-proofing the business.
The Necessary Evolution from Machine to Living-systems L&OD
The L&OD living-systems paradigm is a worldview shift onwards from yesterday’s machine paradigm. A ‘worldview shift’ may sound daunting, especially when many of us experience significant stress, busyness and volatility in the workplace today. The good news is, this worldview shift is actually a return; a revitalization of something innate – a reconnection with our true nature within us, and the rhythms and ways of nature all around us. Woven deep into our human physiology and psychology is the natural capacity to embrace a living-systems worldview. This worldview shift requires us to unlearn habits and behaviours we’ve become educated and acculturated in over the last couple of centuries. It also requires us to open-up in to who we truly are, while welcoming in more of how life really is. Letting-go of old illusory ways while welcoming-in our deeper nature, what could be more invigorating? It is the quest of real leadership. The root of the word ‘leadership’ is the old European word ‘leith’ which means to cross the threshold, to die and be reborn, to let-go of an old way and welcome-in the new.
When, as leaders, we are able to let-go of old mechanistic tendencies, and expand our restricted view of the organization, we open ourselves and our teams to more of how life really works. We learn to work with natural rhythms and ways that encourage the vitality and adaptability of the organization. We learn to lead by nature.
Leading by Nature
I call this regenerative nature-inspired approach to L&OD, Leading by Nature. It is at once completely natural and radically different from today’s dominant leadership narrative. Above all, it is a journey not a destination. This journey has both inner and outer dimensions for the leader and the organization:
For the leader – the inner-dimension is the capacity to connect to our true nature within; tapping into our essence so we lead with authenticity, coherence and purposefulness. The outer-dimension is about attuning with life around us, being open and receptive to the ever-changing nature of life, and creating generative spaces where trust, responsiveness and developmental learning thrive. This inner-outer leadership coherence allows us to create regenerative potential in ourselves and through our relationships with others.
For the organization – the inner-dimension is the mission, culture, values, meeting conventions and decision-making protocols that pervade the organization’s way of being. Creating a more purposeful, adult-adult, entrepreneurial, self-managing, diverse and inclusive way of working unlocks the organization’s regenerative potential. The outer-dimension is the customer value propositions, supply-chain and wider stakeholder relationships that drive how the organization shows-up in the world. This inner-outer organizational coherence allows diverse stakeholder relations to flourish through the products, services, experiences and communities the organization facilitates.
The up-shot of this regenerative L&OD is a working environment where people feel able to bring their whole selves to work, therefore able to unlock more of their natural creative spark. This humanness invites innovation, collaboration and purposefulness into the heart of everyday meetings and decision-making. An adult-adult culture of agility and empowered entrepreneurialism allows failures to be continuously transformed into learnings, and reduces the burden of bureaucracy.
This might sound like fanciful utopia to some. Surely business is about the bottom-line? For sure, every organization needs to survive in order to thrive in today’s world, and there are clear financial benefits in becoming regenerative. Years of detailed research by The Global Lamp Index show that companies embracing this living-systems approach consistently outperform their mechanistic counter-parts. To attract and retain high-quality talent, to innovation, out-perform and adapt amid increasingly volatile times we need to shift the way we lead and operate, especially amid a wider societal shift demanding more meaning, purpose, engagement and creativity in the workplace.
The old machine logic has an inherent control-manage dynamic that subverts and manipulates, whereas the living-systems logic has a sense-respond dynamic that empowers and enables. This shift in relational dynamic from control-manage to sense-respond requires a personal shift in consciousness, from separateness to relational interconnectedness.
As leaders, we’ve become well-heeled in the control-manage dynamic. We can unlearn this dynamic through a developmental journey of learning-in-practice. As we unlearn, we create space for a deeper knowing inside ourselves to be heard. We start to trust our natural inner capacities (non-rational intuitions, hunches, gut-feeling, heart perturbations, etc. as well as rational reasoning). These natural capacities help us sense how dynamics play out across the living-organization. This calls upon a combination of self-awareness and systemic-awareness within side ourselves.
Self-Awareness can be conveyed as containing two dimensions, a horizontal dimension and a vertical dimension.
The horizontal dimension relates to the quality of presence we bring to each evolving moment. This quality of presence depends upon our capacity to notice our own patterns of reactivity, habit, bias, conditioning, triggers and projections. In Otto Scharmer’s Theory U, he refers to the Voice of Judgement, the Voice of Cynicism, and the Voice of Fear. These three voices are in us all the time, keeping us safe from potential danger yet in the process keeping us small, reducing down our capacity to adapt and evolve. As we become more intimate with our own inner-ways, we learn to acknowledge these inner voices, and the habitual patterns of reactivity they create, so they do not hijack us so much. That way, we can keep ourselves as receptive and sensitive to the present moment, along with all its challenges and tensions. Therefore, we improve our ability to sense-and-respond to life, whether that be a difficult conversation down the corridor, a public-speaking engagement or listening to the needs of our team members in unfiltered non-judgmental ways.
The vertical dimension of self-awareness relates to our adult developmental psychology stage-development. All advanced adult developmental psychology models show stages of psychological worldview-development we progress through as we evolve our consciousness as adults. These models point to a significant threshold–crossing that occurs when we reach a certain point in our stage-development. We shift from a worldview of separateness (separate self as performance-achiever maximizing output in a dog-eat-dog world) to a worldview of interconnectedness (relational interconnected self as participator-facilitator helping co-create life-affirming futures). As we advance in our adult developmental psychology – which is more of an inner-deepening than an outer-advancement – we start to open more readily to the systemic and evolutionary nature of life. We are more able to tap in to Nature’s Wisdom, and sense the systemic dynamics at play within the living-organization. And so as our self-awareness deepens, our systemic-awareness naturally arises within us.
Systemic-awareness is the capacity to sense the wider relational system we lead and operate within: to sense its hidden ordering forces, patterns of behaviour, historic conditioning, habituated responses, and energetic networks of participation, learning and evolution. As we begin to realise that life itself is developmental (ever-learning) with emergent patterns of unfolding evolution, so too for our living-organizations.
Systemic leadership coaching can help here. Conventional executive coaching has tended to focus on the leader as an individual actor rather than understanding, and working with, the ever-changing relational field with its relational tensions and developmental dynamics. Systemic coaching can facilitate the L&OD shift by drawing upon systemic tools such as relational system-mapping, structured or unstructured constellations, deep listening, generative dialogue, Way of Council, Holistic Appreciative Inquiry, Theory U, Social Presencing, systemic immersions, and the application of Systemic Enablers (which is explored further in a moment). These, along with other systemic tools help open-up our awareness of the organization-as-living-system and help us learn how to attune with 1) the essence and purposefulness of the living-organization; 2) the systemic learning patterns and emergent-evolutionary dynamics of the system.
This mind-set shift is significant – rather than trying to externally fix the machine, by repairing or operating on it from above, instead we are sensing how the living-system can start to internally heal, renew and evolve itself. There are similarities here with oriental medicine where every system in life including the human body, is understood as being able to heal itself and realise its innate purposefulness when there is the right balance and flow of energy in the system. Blockages, stuckness and imbalance limit and undermine evolutionary potential. Just as we human-beings get stuck on past trauma, bad habits or past-conditioning which can hold us back from realising our potential, so too for our living-organizations. And like acupuncture can help the human-body, small pin-prick interventions can help the organizational-system flow with greater potential. Rather than major invasive surgery we can sense into small systemic interventions that are less costly, less intrusive or destabilising, and more respectfully aligned with the nature of the living-organization. While there may well be times when the future-fitness of the organization would be best served through major surgery (replacing a toxic Board, or carving off a part of the business, for instance) we ought first learn to sense how the living-organization can unlock its innate regenerative powers.
Let’s take the topic of performance reviews as an example to illustrate this shift from mechanistic to living-systems L&OD. Many of today’s performance review processes are based on the premise that performance resides solely in the individual. The reality is, there are systemic factors that affect the performance of every individual and team throughout the organization. In attempting to assess or improve performance, we need to be conscious of what is influencing the way people show-up, the capacity to relate with others, make decisions and work with the purposefulness of the living-organization. Within the organization, no one performs in isolation, therefore understanding systemic dynamics when assessing or improving performance is key.
Rather than trying to suppress or solve system challenges, we learn to acknowledge, attend-to and attune-with the relational dynamics at play in the organization. This process of acknowledging and attending-to involves deep listening, circles of sharing, and open honest feedback across the system. Then we may learn to attune-with the inner-nature of the organization and shift its vitality from survivalist-stressed machine into emergent-evolutionary living-system by re-patterning relational tensions in ways that allow better flow, richer purposefulness, innovative value propositions and greater impact across its wider stakeholder ecosystem. Inner-nature alignment allows the outer-nature of the organization to up-stretch towards life-affirming futures.
Over the years, I have found a few systemic practices to be particularly powerful. One I’d like to share here is the practice of what I call Systemic Enablers and their involvement in facilitating Organizational Acupuncture.
Systemic Enablers & Organizational Acupuncture
A diverse group of people from across different functions in the business are selected. Anything from about 4 to 14 people to start with can work well, regardless of the organization’s overall head-count. This group of people ought to be diverse in terms of the functional business areas they represent. It can be useful to have atleast one member from either the exec or senior leadership team, yet hierarchy is not so important here. What is important is the aptitude, perception and relational-engagement each person has with the organizational system. These Systemic Enablers should have healthy peer-connectivity and diverse networks of sharing and collaborating across the business. Colleagues often seek advice from them or turn to them in times of challenge. They are seen as positive agents of change and have a strong resonance with the purpose and values of the business.
Many of the people I come across in business are not initially well-versed or comfortable in sensing organizational system-dynamics yet if the quality of awareness and general aptitude is there, I have found that it doesn’t take long for people to start perceiving and working this way. Systemic-awareness is natural to every human being, and yet I have noticed that some people find it easier to listen-sense-respond to organizational dynamics. With enough time and dedication there is no reason why everyone in the organization can’t become Systemic Enablers, yet a circle of 4-14 folk is a really great place to start.
This cohort of Systemic Enablers then becomes a community of practice embarking upon a transformational learning journey both for themselves, as a community-group, and for the wider organization. The time requirement need not be any more than a day a month, along with some learning-in-action that only compliments the day-job. When they convene as a community, they are in-service of the organization. Through regular (for instance, monthly) circles the cohort shares their insights on the living-organization.
These circles use an appreciative inquiry method of positive questioning and collaborative inquiry. It is ‘appreciative’ in that the line of inquiry is about recognizing the best in people and seeking the learning potential each context offers; working with where the flow of potential is, rather than getting ensnared on problem areas. I also call upon Theory U practices, deep listening, structured constellations, generative dialogue techniques like Way of Council, mindfulness and somatic-based practices, in-person nature immersions, and on-line meditations. These practices, and more, are all aimed to help create psychologically deep yet safe-spaces for the Systemic Enablers to sense into the systemic dynamics of the organizational living-system. It is not always possible for the cohort to meet in-person and there are techniques that help ensure virtual circles can go deep quickly so that people can sense-in, reflect and share what is often just beneath the surface of the organization. Upon identifying and acknowledging systemic patterns, the cohort learn to discern insights on where and in what way to engage in small systemic interventions that send positive ripples across the system, just like acupuncture pinpricks do in aligning us to our inner healing potential. We re-pattern relational stuckness into better flow, richer purposefulness and increased outer impact.
One example of these Systemic Enablers in-practice is at the global lifestyle brand Vivobarefoot whose goal is to create regenerative footwear and experiences that bring us closer to nature. Early on in their journey towards becoming a regenerative business, I worked with the senior leadership team to identify a dozen Systemic Enablers who I have been journeying with for over 18mths now, through a blend of on-line and in-person sessions. Vivo calls these Systemic Enablers Proprioceptors (the biological name for the sensory neurons that sense and respond to movement in our bodies). These Proprioceptors enliven a culture of regenerative feedback, developmental learning, and self-system evolution by regularly checking-in and sharing feedback across the whole Vivo system. In parallel, the Proprioceptors work alongside a number of silo-busting learning pods, where everyone from across the business comes together in groups of about a dozen to engage in blended-learning journeys: on-line webinars, off-line homework, peer-learning, and in-person nature immersions.
To summarise, there is a necessary evolution in L&OD happening on our watch. Three important aspects of this L&OD evolution are:
- A worldview shift from machine to living-systems. This involves a shift in leadership dynamic from control-manage to sense-respond.
- In invoking this shift, we need look no further than within and all around us. Learning to attune with our inner-nature through self-awareness and with the relational dynamics all around us in the organization through systemic-awareness. This is an inner-outer attunement cultivated through an embodied learning-in-action transformational journey.
- There are powerful yet simple practices we can draw upon to enable this transformational journey. One practice I have experienced working well is Systemic Enablers applying Organizational Acupuncture.
We are in the midst of a civilization-wide transformation of the scale never seen before: halving carbon emission by 2030, reversing nature loss, overhauling social inequality, tackling the mental health and wellbeing pandemic, embracing the digital revolution, and dealing with rising volatility and turbulence. No organization is spared. Leading by Nature welcomes-in a fresh yet timeless wisdom right into the front-line of our everyday conversations, decision-making methods and ways of showing-up. The time has come for Homo Sapiens to live up to their name of ‘wise beings’ by learning to attune with Nature’s Wisdom and cultivating life-affirming organizations.
Giles Hutchins is a pioneering practitioner and senior adviser at the fore-front of the [r]evolution in organizational and leadership consciousness and developmental approaches that enhance personal, organizational and systemic agility and vitality. He is author and co-author of several leadership and organizational development papers, and the books The Nature of Business (2012), The Illusion of Separation (2014), Future Fit (2016), Regenerative Leadership (2019) and Leading by Nature (2022). Chair of The Future Fit Leadership Academy and Founder of Leadership Immersions, co-founder of Biomimicry for Creative Innovation and Regenerators, he runs a 60 acre leadership centre at Springwood Farm, an area of outstanding natural beauty near London, UK. Previously held corporate roles – Head of Transformation Practice for KPMG, Global Director and Head of Sustainability for Atos (150,000 employees, over 40 countries). He provides coaching at individual and organizational levels for those seeking to transform their personal and/or work lives. Giles is a keynote speaker on the future of business and regenerative leadership. He is also a Reiki Master, a certified advanced coach, holds a Master of Science in Business Systems and higher diploma in Advanced Leadership Development, trained in Integral Solonics vertical development, and certified in Harthill vertical development action-logics.
Leading by Nature book and podcast can be found here: https://gileshutchins.com/leadingbynature/
Giles Hutchins’ unique regenerative leadership coaching for leaders and practitioners has been called ‘life changing’, find out more here: https://gileshutchins.com/coaching/
Feel free to join the Leadership Immersions LinkedIN group here: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/13767578/
The Emerging Future of Business – Regenerative Business
We are living through a metamorphic moment, the very point at which a four hundred year old Age is dying and another is struggling to be born. This evolutionary breakdown/breakthrough ushers in a wholesale reconfiguration of commercial life, a new world of work, and a reinvention of the organization. No one really knows how long this metamorphic time will go on for – years, perhaps decades. The only certainty is that things will become increasingly unsettled over the next few years.
Our organizations behave as complex adaptive systems. When complex adaptive systems evolve from one phase-state to the next they begin to flicker between the old and new states before settling into a new-norm. This flickering between old and new behaviours creates anxiety and uncomfortable dissonance in us individually and collectively. Yet with courage and practice the new behaviours start to create new habits and we begin to navigate the uncomfortable uncertainty with a deeper sense of rightness. This challenges us inwardly as we uncover more of who we truly are, and challenges us outwardly as we learn to sense-respond in more authentic, participative and regenerative ways. This sense-respond dynamic provides the developmental-emergent-evolutionary DEE capacity for the leader, leadership team, organization and ecosystem of stakeholders to become agile enough to adapt and even thrive through this flickering phase-change.
The next few years are formative for pioneering organizations seeking to become regenerative businesses. Old machine-like tendencies become more obviously out-of-kilter with the vitality of the living-organization. When we find ourselves flickering backward through old habitual control-manage reactivity, we also notice how this undermines future-fitness around us in our relationality, and also within us as we start to force and push rather than flex and flow. Inner-nature and outer-nature inform each other as we flicker forward into Leading by Nature. When flickering backward, we notice a downward spiral of rising dissonance, reduced ability to listen and sense, more stress and strain, less creativity and adaptability.
This metamorphic moment offers rich chances to place new steps of change by becoming more in-flow inside ourselves while finding flow with the evolutionary potential of the living-organization. Tough times demand true leadership.
In Leading by Nature, we learn to notice how the inner-dimension of self-awareness informs and relates with the outer-dimension of systemic-awareness. Inner-nature and outer-nature inform each other. This cultivation of our inner-outer nature deepens how we participate within the systemic dynamics of the living-organization which too has an inner-dimension (its developmental-emergent-evolutionary DEE culture, relational energy patterns and purposefulness) and outer-dimension (its brand, value propositions, and stakeholder relationships).
In learning to listen to the nature of the living-organization and our own bodymind, we sense our way through this death-rebirth metamorphic moment. Just as an expectant mother in labour can sense when to push through a contraction and when to breathe deep and relax.
Future-Fitness
Because of the ever widening and deepening systemic challenges every organization faces today, organizational future-fitness needs to be life-affirming by seeking futures that enable all interdependent stakeholders to thrive. Does this mean the breadth of focus expands so much to include the entire world and all its myriad challenges? While we intuit the interdependence of everything, we still need to focus on purposefulness of the organization in terms of how it shows-up amid this interdependence. What’s its impact both locally and globally? We can’t do something life-affirming over here to off-set something life-denying over there. Organizational impacts are both ‘inner’ and ‘outer’: inner impacts – people’s wellbeing and developmental growth in the workplace; outer impacts – value propositions, stakeholder relations and value-chain footprints. Future-fitness is not simply about reducing our negative inner-outer impact, it’s about creatively exploring how to enable inner-outer flourishing. One is not born into this world with the self-limiting purpose of solely trying to minimize our negativity, but rather to creatively contribute to life’s flourishing in some way.
This speaks to the important shift from ‘sustainability’ (measuring, monitoring, controlling and reducing negative impacts) to ‘regenerative’ (creating life-affirming outcomes that enhance flourishing for all concerned, including local communities, wider society and the interconnected fabric of life on Earth). While sustainable business is an important part of the leader and organization becoming more conscious, it can often invoke incrementalism in tweaking the existing business model through ‘the business case for sustainability’. Regenerative business invokes a transformational journey across strategy, operations, culture and stakeholder relationships. In this day-and-age we simply can’t be a future-fit business without embarking upon the journey toward regenerative business, as anything less undermines life and the Earth’s capacity to support humanity’s thriveability, and therefore undermines the organization, its customers, employees, suppliers and investors capacity to live into life-affirming futures. The very future of humanity is at stake, not to mention much of the biodiversity of life on Earth. If the organization is not preparing to embark on the inner-outer regenerative journey, then it’s not taking future-fitness seriously enough and its leaders ought to question themselves and their motives.
Future-fitness is not survival-orientated (coping, reacting, holding-on) but thrival-orientated (creating, learning, evolving). Becoming future-fit is a creative and collaborative venture of working on oneself (self-awareness-in-action) and sensing-responding with others (systemic-awareness-in-action) by working with our own deeper-nature within us and the wisdom of living-systems all round us: Leading by Nature through inner-outer nature attunement. This involves us really listening, sensing and sharing with others to creatively explore and empathically understand the tensions of challenges and opportunities. As well as sensing what is arising in the moment, we are also continually scanning the unfolding landscape and learning to ‘read’ the emerging future, responding unfolding systemic dynamics and their patterns of behaviour, while identifying potential opportunities and challenges that may lie ahead. This calls for working in self-organizing, locally-attuning ways continually presencing, prototyping and future-scenario planning without the need for top-down bureaucracy. Rather than today’s all-to-consuming head-based analytic focus on data-upon-data, sliced-and-diced on slide-after-slide of power-point decks first thing on a Monday, which provides insight on past behaviour and of some limited use for future-sensing, instead we transcend-and-include this overly rational-analytic focus with a more rational-intuitive-felt-sense of how the system adapts in-the-moment, while anticipating the future. Yes, the slide-decks and data analytics are still useful, yet we draw-upon a wider repertoire of ‘warm-data’ about how the living-organization is behaving, adapting and evolving amid its ever-changing context.
Metamorphic Shift for Future Fit Business
What is the emerging future of this metamorphic time we are in? No one really knows. Yet we can notice what’s dying – the Industrial/Commodity Age – and what’s birthing – the Internet of Things (IoT) /Collaborative Age. The economist Jeremy Rifkin predicts that within less than three decades the Collaborative Age will be the primary arbiter of economic life in most of the world. For Rifkin, this new Age brings a social entrepreneurialism that is more interactive and participatory, less exploitative of nature and more dedicated to the stewardship of all life on Earth than the commodity-based capitalist entrepreneurialism rife today. This rise in social entrepreneurialism, he suggests, is transforming the human journey from an economy of scarcity to an economy of sustainable abundance. Social producers and community co-creators engage in new types of value creation freed from the constraints of the capitalist marketplace.
In the still dominant yet dying Commodity Age, business is based on the transactional buy-sell exchange. In the newly birthing Collaborative Age business is based on the collaborative exchange itself i.e. the value-proposition becomes embedded within the social exchange. This means business derives from relations rather than transactions.
The rapid proliferation of sharing and bartering platforms is an aspect of this spawning Collaborative Age, as are peer-to-peer sharing schemes like car-sharing, and massive open on-line courses (MOOCs). Platforms for sharing goods and services of all kinds are flourishing around the world at an exponential rate. So are social media communities where people relate through social exchanges rather than buy-sell transactions. More often, the value we attribute to such social exchanges is not limited to the price tag on the good or service. The age-old mindset that people are simply self-interested economic actors is starting to be seen for what it is: a gross oversimplification of human nature.
Over the next few years, while the old Commodity Age and new Collaborative Age live alongside each other, hybrid approaches spawn. Sometimes social sharing is commodified into the capitalist marketplace, an example being Facebook. Sometimes capitalist entrepreneurs work alongside social entrepreneurs in growing for-purpose ventures, such as: B-Corps attracting socially and environmentally conscious investment; breakthroughs in 3D printing and renewable energy systems enabled through a blend of public, private and non-profit forces; sustainable cities engaging consortia of diverse public-private partnerships to deliver a blend of social services, community provision and commercial initiatives. Organizations best able to work with diverse stakeholder drivers will be best able to navigate this in-between-age.
The IoT has significantly lowered market-entry costs as new entrants can provide products and services with relative ease over the internet regardless of brand, heritage or track-record. This means one of two things: either the organization seeks to out-compete lower cost rivals in a race-to-the-bottom on price and commodification, providing ever-cheaper product features to meet consumer needs; or the organization seeks to differentiate and integrate their value proposition in a shift from off-the-shelf product to customised product to service provision to community participation. There is no reason why an organization can’t attend to both these strategies at the same time, racing-to-the-bottom on some product lines while transforming others into services and even participatory communities. Though for many organizations the purpose, brand and customer-base may dictate the pathway.
This morphs the nature of the relationships between the organization and its stakeholder ecosystem of customers, suppliers, partners, wholesalers, social media ambassadors, influencers, subject matter experts, and more. Even the relationship with competitors may morph as communities become entangled, with old-time competitors now collaborating across the same communities. No longer are touchpoints transactional and linear in nature, they become emergent multi-faceted participatory exchanges. Point-of-sale is just another touch-point on the ever-unfolding journey of community participation.
Welcome to the life of the living-organization unshackled from mechanistic linearity. Nature rarely does straight lines for good reason. In nature, complex inter-relationality enables future-fitness. The regenerative (and degenerative) influence the organization may have on community participation is seismic, hence the importance of being-the-change-we-wish-to-see in the world by deepening the inner-outer nature of the living-organization, and ourselves as leaders. The authenticity of the living-organization and its brand becomes increasingly more transparent and important as it informs the trust established across these intertwined networks of relations. This is the future of business being born on our watch across marketplaces, cities, social media communities and local neighbourhoods.
What does this all mean for the leader and organization? Yes, things are more complex, yet this increased connectivity across diverse stakeholder communities brings anti-fragility and opportunity as well as greater purposeful impact. The focus shifts from controlling the linear value-chain to sensing the relationality of the value-web and ever-evolving community. This requires openness to partnering with a variety of diverse stakeholders with differing drivers. One size can’t fit all. Standardized procurement methods and long-winded contractual agreements constrain rather than enable. Fluidity of connectivity calls for creative partnering where shared intention, purpose and values influence us more than predefined control mechanisms. Again, the sweet-spot of divergence and convergence plays out here – convergence around shared intent and agreed rules of engagement counter-weight the divergence of morphing value-exchanges and the freedom for creativity and participation across the community in unconstrained yet purposefully-aligned ways.
This therefore means:
The leader needs to be more open to learning, adapting and morphing – i.e. more Developmental-Emergent-Evolutionary (DEE)
The organization needs to be more open to learning, adapting and morphing – i.e. more Developmental-Emergent-Evolutionary (DEE)
For more on the 5’E’s of Regenerative Business: Essence, Energy, Emergence, Evolutionary, Enthusiam – see my recent blog article here.
In cultivating DEE conditions we create organizational spaces that can hold these tensions while welcoming-in our whole selves to work, where we learn, grow, explore and experience together. Entrepreneurial energy is focused on aspirations that align individual purpose with organizational purpose and this releases extraordinary creativity and relational energy across the living-organization and its wider ecosystem.
Through playing with divergence-convergence we allow this creative energy to flow into the emergence of initiatives that benefit the wider community of stakeholders. As organizational system scientist Peter Senge notes, ‘The vast changes required for creating a regenerative society will not be achieved just by reacting to crises after they arise. They will require inspiration, aspiration, imagination, patience, perseverance and no small amount of humility. They will require networks of committed people and organizations who not only learn how to see the systems shaping how things are now, but also create alternatives. People creating together work in different ways. They are anchored in the future rather than in the past, drawn-forward by images of what they truly want to see exist in the world. They learn how to work with a distinctive source of energy that animates the creative process, the creative tension that exists whenever a genuine vision exists in concert with people telling the truth about what exists now. They learn how to let-go of having to have everything worked out and in advance and to step forth with boldness into immense uncertainty. And they learn that tapping these capacities cannot be achieved without people being who they truly are and learning how to integrate their own lives…The creative process is part of our common heritage as human beings, and accessing this perennial wisdom will be key to liberating our individual and collective potential in the months and years ahead.’
The creative process is a learning process, a constant dialogue amidst everyday organizational life. This is what DEE enables, a constant noticing, sensing, creating and evolving. The space of divergence-convergence needs to be held not just across the leadership team and organization but across diverse interwoven communities with myriad touch-points as value propositions evolve from product-to-service-to-community.
As the ancient Chinese Book of Changes, the I Ching, notes, ‘whatever is flexible and flowing will continue to evolve, whatever is rigid and blocked will wither and die’.
In this urgent-age, we need patience and trust to forge symbiotic relationships where we evolve in life-affirming ways together. Yet with the emerging IoT we can also form loosely coupled affiliations across social media with diverse communities of interest. While such loose affiliations are easier to pick-up and drop, they still have an impact on the brand, influencing how people might perceive us. Actively sensing across the system with regular dialogue across diverse community groups helps discern which affiliations feel right and which do not. This is a moveable feast, and so regular system-scanning helps sense what’s emerging in this fast-paced, hyper-connective yet often distracting and confusing field of possibilities.
The proliferation of differing and often highly-polarized and politicized perspectives can lead to emotive exchanges. Rather than dialogue, people get ensnared on heated debate and us-versus-them polarity ensues. When, as leaders, we get distracted by social media or whipped-up into polarized right-versus-wrong feelings we undermine our capacity to sense-in to the system and make a wise holistic appraisal of the underlying tensions at play. As leadership specialist Deborah Rowland notes, ‘This trend to exclude the other, to eliminate difference, or ban people whose views you don’t like is not conducive to open inquiry and deeper systemic perception. When we stand in judgement of something, or someone, it breeds wider division as we fail to see the system from which the target of our dislike originates.’
Could the myriad challenges and seemingly conflicting and strongly-held perspectives be signs of a widespread dissonance, a rising social-unease that might be impelling a collective inquiry that helps provide insight for our evolution? Is widespread social tension indicative of impeding social transformation? In-part the answer lies in our own individual leadership development. If we are able to embrace tensions of difference and hold-space for conflicting perspectives in our organizations in ways that transmutes tense-energy into more evolved perspectives rather than fracturing into separateness, then we contribute to evolution-in-the-making. These tense transformative times invite regenerative leaders to step across their own thresholds and personal perspectives to hold-space for facilitating a blend of divergent individual sovereignty and passionate fervour with convergent collective purposefulness and community development. Even strongly charged emotional tensions can act as crucibles for systemic evolution if handled with balance, patience and courage.
This is future-fitness in the making.
Giles Hutchins is a pioneering practitioner and senior adviser at the fore-front of the [r]evolution in organizational and leadership consciousness and developmental approaches that enhance personal, organizational and systemic agility and vitality. He is author and co-author of several leadership and organizational development papers, and the books The Nature of Business (2012), The Illusion of Separation (2014), Future Fit (2016), Regenerative Leadership (2019) and Leading by Nature (2022). Chair of The Future Fit Leadership Academy and Founder of Leadership Immersions, co-founder of Biomimicry for Creative Innovation and Regenerators, he runs a 60 acre leadership centre at Springwood Farm, an area of outstanding natural beauty near London, UK. Previously held corporate roles – Head of Transformation Practice for KPMG, Global Director and Head of Sustainability for Atos (150,000 employees, over 40 countries). He provides coaching at individual and organizational levels for those seeking to transform their personal and/or work lives. Giles is a keynote speaker on the future of business and regenerative leadership. He is also a Reiki Master, a certified advanced coach, holds a Diploma in Senior Leadership Development, a Masters of Science in Business Systems, is trained in advanced Integral Solonics leadership development, Spiral Dynamics, a range of consciousness-raising modalities and is a certified Harthill Leadership Development Practitioner.
The one-day immersion on Regenerative Leadership near London in February 2025 is now fully-booked, but places are still available for the deep-dive overnight immersion in May 2025 – see here for more information: https://thenatureofbusiness.org/2023/10/05/leading-by-nature-embodying-next-stage-regenerative-leadership-consciousness-2/
“Leading by Nature is THE handbook for regenerative leadership. A must-read for every business leader who genuinely cares about the future of humanity.’ Jayn Sterland, CEO of Weleda UK
“Giles Hutchins has for over a decade led the way with his championship of learning through nature. His new book Leading by Nature is a really important evolution of these ideas emerging into a philosophy of systems thinking/being – it’s bang on the money, a really important book” – Sir Tim Smit, KBE, Founder of The Eden Project
Please feel free to join the LinkedIn Leadership Immersions Group here
For the latest episodes on the Leading by Nature podcast see here
The one-day immersion on Regenerative Leadership near London in February 2025 is now fully-booked, but places are still available for the deep-dive overnight immersion in May 2025 – see here for more information: https://thenatureofbusiness.org/2023/10/05/leading-by-nature-embodying-next-stage-regenerative-leadership-consciousness-2/
Crossing the Threshold with Regenerative Leadership Coaching and Immersions, by Giles Hutchins
Times they are a’changin. Even the nature of change itself seems to be changing – ceaseless churning change of the catalytic variety concocts this pregnant moment of seismic breakdown and breakthrough. I foresee the next couple of years as simultaneously challenging, transformative and full of potential.
Those of us engaged with transformational leadership work will know that periods of dysfunction and crisis often precede a step-change in evolutionary advancement. Therefore, these are fertile times for an evolutionary shift in leadership consciousness. Let this epochal hour of breakdown-breakthrough not go to waste, but rather spawn a necessary [r]evolution in consciousness. The future of life on Earth depends on it. The future-fitness of our organisations depends on it. So too does the mental health and wellbeing of our colleagues, friends and families.
This article seeks to explain: firstly, why a ‘threshold-crossing’ is an essential part of the evolutionary advancement for leaders; secondly, what the nature of this ‘threshold crossing’ is; and thirdly, how coaching-based immersions in nature provide a powerful way of holding-space for this threshold crossing.
- Crossing the Threshold: To die before you die
The phrase ‘to cross the threshold’ means to undergo a metamorphic process of ‘dying and being reborn’- to endure a shift in ‘inner’ self-orientation and ‘outer’ worldview. It’s a deep psychological renewal that transforms how we relate to our inner-selves and our outer-world, enabling us to become more in harmony with inner and outer nature. The ancient Greeks used the term ‘metanoia’ to describe such a shift, ‘meta’ like in metamorphosis is to ‘shape-shift’ or ‘move beyond’ and ‘noia’ relates to ‘true understanding’: to transform the understanding of our sense of self and how we relate with the world.
Over many year of coaching senior leaders, experience has shown me that for a leader – or for that matter any adult – to undergo a step-change in psychological evolution, one needs to hold-space for both the ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ dimensions of this threshold-crossing: the worldview shift and the inner access to one’s deeper truer nature. All advanced adult developmental models, ancient wisdom traditions, and depth psychology approaches such as Carl Jung’s Individuation Journey and Parker J Palmer’s Journey Towards Wholeness, speak to this inner reorientation to ‘Know Thy Self’. And systemic change specialists, such as Donella Meadows and Peter Senge, know that shifting the worldview of the outer system is a primary leverage point for systemic transformation.
- Shifting from What to What?
In my latest book Leading by Nature I explore the worldview shift unfolding during this time of breakdown-breakthrough, and how it applies to leadership and organisational development. I explore the dominant yet dying Age of Separation and an emerging Age of Regeneration – where humanity remembers its deep connection with self-other-world. You may have started to sense the word ‘regenerative’ entering the emerging zeitgeist. It’s a word that can be applied to all aspects of life, from regenerative agriculture through to regenerative leadership consciousness, and involves an opening up to life’s evolutionary dynamics of relationality, receptivity, responsiveness, rhythm and renewal.
Regenerative Leadership Consciousness, as defined in Leading by Nature, correlates with developmental psychologist Clare Graves’ work on Tier 2 Consciousness (i.e. Teal/Turquoise in Spiral Dynamics) where an embodied cognition of living-systems is activated in our psyche. It also relates to what organisation specialist Frederic Laloux and integral theorist Ken Wilber refer to as Teal-Evolutionary. It is an ecosystemic awareness that draws upon the Logic of Life, an embodied living-systems way of leading and living that seeks harmony with the way life works. This is not new, it’s timeless. For instance, over 2,500 years ago Lao Tzu noted, ‘Those who flow as life flows know they need no other force’ and Confucius noted, ‘Those in harmony with nature hit the mark without effort and apprehend the truth without thinking.’ Yet this is also cutting-edge contemporary thinking confirmed by scientific findings that show how being in nature, and opening up to Nature’s Wisdom, helps us become more compassionate, creative and connected. The explosion of interest in everything from forest bathing to wild swimming speaks to this rising interest in reconnecting to the rapture of real life. And there is so much wisdom to be gained from both ‘learning from’ nature – its 3.8bn year’s of R&D – think, biomimicry, etc. – and ‘learning with’ nature – we are nature, and in deepening our ecological and ecosystemic consciousness we open into a bio-psycho-spiritual threshold crossing, where we can work with living-systems in an embodied way, not just head-learning but heart-opening. Se this article on Living Systems Awareness and Three Levels of Learning from Living-Systems for more of a dive into this ‘learning from’ and ‘learning with’ nature insight: https://thenatureofbusiness.org/2023/09/16/living-systems-awareness-making-decisions-within-nature-by-giles-hutchins/
Today our dominant leadership awareness is largely mechanistic and reductive, tuning-out the rhythmic and relational dynamics of how life works. The result being: linear chains of production that create ‘outer’ toxicity and silo’ed hierarchies of management that create ‘inner’ toxicity. The vast majority of people today work in organisational cultures that sap people’s creativity, purposefulness, ingenuity, resilience and empathy. Whilst many organisations pride themselves on being efficient and effective the cold reality is that many of our human interactions, decision-making protocols and meeting conventions are woefully inefficient and ineffective. The root problem here is mechanistic leadership logic. Change the underlying consciousness, and the logic shifts. Shift the logic and the culture can transform in inner and outer ways.
To shift from a worldview of separateness and its mechanistic logic into a worldview of interconnectedness and its Logic of Life, requires a threshold crossing. This allows leaders to sense the organisation as a complex adaptive emergent system rather than seeing it as a top-down hierarchic machine. Our understanding of change, systemic interventions and transformation deepens in recognition of how life works. It also helps us perceive the ecosystemic nature of our own presence as a leader, and the presence of the organisation immersed in a sea of stakeholder relations including the wider social and ecological systems which are all interdependent and interwoven in measurable and immeasurable ways. The other side of all this complexity is a beautiful simplicity, found by crossing the threshold.
In terms of the ‘inner’ dimension, regeneration is a return to our true nature through a journey towards wholeness. This journey is as fresh as it is ancient, and it opens us up to living with more presence and purposefulness; exactly what these times invite of us. Through my coaching working in nature, I blend the shamanic and spiritual with the scientific and sensorial so all of our natural intelligences (rational, emotional, intuitive, and somatic) are enlivened. Then we unlock human potential, touch our true nature, and connect more deeply with the world around us. As Ghandi noted, ‘as one changes their own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards them.’
- Why Nature Immersions?
There is now a wealth of scientific evidence showing how being in nature significantly improves our empathy, our ability to reason, to deal with change, cope with stress and listen more effectively to others. These are all basic qualities for 21st century leadership. Yet there is much that science is still only scratching the surface of when it comes to the transformative effects of being in nature.
I have taken hundreds of leaders through nature immersions. Immersions can range from half a day in the woods through to multi-day sessions that include overnight solos or even structured vision quests (you can find out more about the practicalities and science of these leadership immersions here).
Many of the senior executives I coach can have strong aversions to anything that might seem hippy-dippy or woo-woo at first glance. Some fear it might involve tree-hugging or Kum Ba Yah moments. Hence, I have learnt to interweave time in nature with science-based insights about how nature works so the intuitive, emotional, somatic and rational aspects of our knowing are engaged adequately, usually starting with the rational as that is the most dominant in many leaders today. For instance, I might explore the interconnected systemic nature of life through microscopes whilst out in the woods, and by describing how trees communicate through the soil and the air, or how bacteria display highly sophisticated communication and adaptation methods. Or I might draw upon how organisational cultures can learn from nature’s 3.8bn years’ worth of tried and tested R&D by explaining about biomimicry, bio-design thinking, chaordic cultures and regenerative leadership. Or I unpack how ecosystems work by visually explain the shift from mechanistic thinking to ecosystemic awareness in a way that satisfies the rational intellect while providing an embodied experience that the coachee can fondly recall many moons after.
Within an hour any hesitation or resistance a client might have to an immersion in nature usually evaporates to reveal receptivity for inner and outer developmental work. Then, around the camp-fire a deep dialogic space for generative listening is held, as ego-masks and psychological armour melt for true nature to be touched. The client does not easily forget these moments of deep presence and purposefulness, and can call upon them when back in the busy work environment. Thus, both horizontal and vertical development takes place in these immersions, as clients gain a wider capacity for everyday resilience (horizontal) and an invitation into up-stretching their inner and outer orientation (vertical).
What happens in just two hours in nature is – in my experience – of an order of magnitude deeper than a coaching session held either in a comfortable armchair or over zoom. And socially distancing in fresh forest-bathing air is proven to strengthen the immune system, it’s a COVID-mitigated way to do deep work. Now more than ever people crave time in nature, time that is held in a way that gives them permission to be vulnerable, open-up and let-go of masks, while sensing into blind spots, projections and developmental learnings.
For upcoming Leadership Immersions at Springwood Farm’s 60 acres of ancient woodland, see here:
One-day Immersion – Friday 23rd February 2024 9.45am-4pm – price £400 per person
Two-day Deep-dive – Thursday 23rd/Friday 24th May 2024 – price £800 per person
‘Giles Hutchins is fast becoming one of the world’s most influential and authentic guides to regenerative leadership.’ – Professor Chris Laszlo, author of Quantum Leadership
‘Leading by Nature is a masterful guide to the power of regenerative leadership.’ – John Elkington
Giles Hutchins runs nature-based leadership immersions, facilitates deep-space for coaches and their clients, and provides regenerative leadership training for leaders, coaches and advisers both on-line for clients across the globe and in-person amid 60 acres of ancient woodland in an area of outstanding natural beauty with easy connections to London and airports, visit Giles Hutchins. He is also Chair of The Future Fit Leadership Academy. His latest book is Leading by Nature, other books are Regenerative Leadership, Future Fit, The Illusion of Separation and The Nature of Business.
For upcoming regenerative leadership immersions see here
Feel free to join the Leadership Immersions LinkedIn Group here
And you can listen to podcast conversations with leaders on the regenerative journey here on the Leading by Nature podcast
What we learnt in the woods – by Tom Rippin, CEO of On Purpose
This is a guest blog by Tom Rippin, CEO of On Purpose
I went down to the woods a couple of weeks ago. We were a motley crew that set off from the welcome reception and wended our way in double file into the Springwood Forest, an ancient woodland in West Sussex tended by regenerative leadership expert and author Giles Hutchins (I recommend his latest book Leading by Nature)
The group included senior colleagues from sportswear retailers, consumer goods businesses, interior design companies, nonprofits, journalists, and Ashley Pollock, Head of Transformation at Vivobarefoot, the barefoot shoe and lifestyle company.
Conversations wound and circled and deepened as we walked further into the forest, punctuated by occasional inputs from Giles about how the woods we were immersing ourselves in could help us see things differently – new forms of leading, of being and doing.
The woods worked their wonder. In the handful of hours we spent together, the quality of sharing and conversation went well beyond the usual city-based get together. And yet it remained firmly rooted in the real world situations of those present. Not a free floating spiritual experience, divorced from everyday life, but a demonstration of how we can and must “transcend and include”. Go beyond the well-worn patterns of our legacy mindsets to visit new ambitions for how the world can work whilst ALSO acknowledging the realities of our everyday lives and the constraints and ideas by which they are currently still bound.
This was a message repeatedly highlighted by Giles. Whether it’s the balance of new and traditional forms of management (think hierarchy vs. holarchy) or the balance of working locally with stakeholder communities or globally across the wider business ecosystem – it’s not an either-or but a yes-and. It’s going to new ground and then being able to look back and bring with you what is useful from where you have come. It’s enjoying the journey that’s full of tensions, and realising the tensions are what yield the learnings.
The practicality of the day was boosted by Ashley Pollock’s open hearted sharing of Vivobarefoot’s journey towards becoming a regenerative business, which they embarked upon with Giles three-years back, starting in the very same woods at Springwood.
Ashley’s enthusiasm and straightforward openness about Vivo’s journey was inspiring and comforting at the same time. You can do amazing things – but even those who have been doing this for a while haven’t sorted it all out yet! And perhaps it’s not a case of sorting it all out, but rather an ever-learning, ever-deepening journey towards regeneration. Perhaps it’s more about the journey than the destination?!
One particular piece of advice I gleaned from Ashley about finding the balance between the old and the new, between transcending and incorporating was: “Never forget to ask why”. We are not making change happen for the sake of it. Knowing why you are trying to make something happen, and how it relates to the your organisation’s mission, will sharpen your focus and increase the chances of success. It’s a valuable lesson – one I, of all people, should know but I’m glad I was reminded.
Oh, and the picnic that Giles and his team served up in the woods was amazing too! What a wonderful wander into the woods. Thank you Giles & Ashley for your co-facilitation and open-hearted sharing.
For more on Leading by Nature the book and podcast see Giles Hutchins’ website here
And for more on Regenerative Leadership Immersions at Springwood Farm, – see this post here where future dates on immersions are shared https://thenatureofbusiness.org/2023/10/05/leading-by-nature-embodying-next-stage-regenerative-leadership-consciousness-2/
Through over a decade of working on regenerative leadership and nature-based coaching, I have developed a range of practices, coaching-frames and processes that aid the journey of becoming a next-stage regenerative leader, coach and practicioner.
Whilst my main work is providing bespoke regenerative leadership coaching for leaders and practitioners 1-2-1 and with intact leadership teams, I hold two one-off ‘open’ immersions per year, and have been asked by a few people recently to advertise the dates for 2024 to help with planning travel and logistics for those interested in attending.
These two immersions are quite different, yet complementary:
One-day Immersion – Friday 23rd February 9.45am-4pm – price £400 per person
Two-day Deep-dive – Thursday 23rd/Friday 24th May – price £800 per person
The one-day immersion is open to anyone, leader and/or practitioner seeking an embodied experience of regenerative leadership. No previous experience of regenerative leadership is needed, and yet it is also relevant for those immersed and practiced in this work.
The two-day overnight deep-dive is for leaders and practitioners who have already embarked on the regenerative journey, perhaps through reading around the subject, practicing it through work, and/or attending courses and journeys, or perhaps already attending a workshop at Springwood Farm. If you have attended a one-day immersion at Springwood previously, then this two-day immersion is the next-step of embodiment, providing advanced tools and techniques for your own work and working with clients/leaders and the wider organizational-system.
If you wish to attend the one-day immersion on 23rd February, then you may also wish to attend the 2-day immersion on 23rd May, which allows for 3 months processing/integrating from the one-dayer before the two-dayer. For those attending the one-dayer in February you will also receive a £100 discount on the two-day immersion if booked together.
Here are some basic logistics for each of the Immersions:
One-Day 23rd February Immersion Logistics – £400 per person
9.30am Arrivals – refreshments upon arrival. Workshop commences at 9.45am
4pm Departures
By Car – RH17 6HQ Springwood Farm
By Train – Come to Three Bridges station for no later than 9.15am, a cab will meet you there.
Cost: £400 – To confirm your place email giles@ffla.co
Pre-reading or preparation: Once you have paid, you will be sent some preparatory material and guidance. Another email will also be sent near the immersion with further preparatory information.
What can you hope to gain from the experience: You will form part of a small group of like-minded yet diverse leaders and practitioners, and will be facilitated by Giles Hutchins for the entire day. Here are some of the things you can hope to experience:
- An embodied experience of regenerative leadership
- Tools, processes and techniques to aid the journey toward regenerative leadership
- Consciousness-raising practices and modalities
- Peer-sharing and facilitated group dialogue sessions
- Pre-reading material and guidance before the workshop
- A signed copy of Giles Hutchins Leading by Nature book
- Organic lunch and refreshments throughout the day
Some quotes from previous one-day open-day immersion workshops at Springwood with Giles:
‘A powerful experience helping me grow as a citizen, leader and change-maker. Thank you Giles!’ – Danielle Thompson, Lead Ecosystem Facilitator (COO), Greenheart Consulting
‘Feel I’ve had a day with a real master. What beautiful profound lessons’. – Simon Milton, CEO, Pulse Brands
‘Giles is an excellent teacher, facilitator and host – it’s been a tremendous honour to learn with him.’ – Simon Jones, Founder, Thrivemind Body & Whole
Two-Day 23rd May Deep-dive Immersion Logistics – £800 per person
9.45am Arrivals Thursday 23rd May– refreshments upon arrival. Immersion commences at 10am
Overnight camping – either bring own tent (or there are some basic bivvy structures to keep out the rain, if do not wish to use a tent) 14hr solo experience immersed in ancient woodland
Friday 24th May – 3pm Departures
By Car – RH17 6HQ Springwood Farm
By Train – Come to Three Bridges station for no later than 9.30am, a cab will meet you there.
Cost: £800 – To confirm your place email giles@ffla.co (Discounted to £700 if you book with the one-day in February, i.e. total fee £1,100)
Pre-reading or preparation: Once you have paid, you will be sent some preparatory material and guidance. Another email will also be sent near the immersion with further preparatory information.
You will form part of a small group of like-minded yet diverse leaders and practitioners, and will be facilitated by Giles Hutchins for the entire two-days, and the time includes a 14hr solo in nature for intentional work and reflection on your life-work/self & system. Here are some of the things you can hope to experience:
- Specific practices to work with the essence & emergence of your living-system/organization/practice
- Energy cultivation and somatic practices carefully crafted for regenerative leadership
- 14hr solo in private ancient woodlands with pre-and-post reflection processing
- Tools, processes and techniques to aid the journey toward regenerative leadership
- Advanced techniques for working with intention, intuition, insight and Nature’s Wisdom
- Peer-sharing and facilitated group dialogue sessions
- Pre-reading material and guidance before the workshop
- A signed copy of any of Giles Hutchins 5 books
- Organic meals and refreshments throughout the two-days
- Follow-up reading material post immersion
Some quotes from previous deep-dive immersions at Springwood with Giles:
‘Your deep immersion into nature opened our minds, opened our souls, to deeply connect with our place and purpose in life. With love and deep appreciation for your inspiration.’ – Sue Cheshire, Founder of the Global Leaders Academy
‘The nature immersion with Giles exceeded all expectations. This is real space to develop strategies fit for the 21st century.’ – Stephen Passmore, CEO, Resilience Alliance
‘Powerful and provocative. The best leadership event I’ve ever attended!’ – Ian Ayling, Director, The Soil Association
‘Giles’ immersion at Springwood had a profound effect on me as CEO.’ – Galahad Clark, CEO, Vivobarefoot
About Springwood Farm: a mix of semi-ancient and ancient woodland with wildflower meadows, 60 acres in total, private and secluded specially designed for advanced leadership coaching work, see some pictures here: https://www.leadershipimmersions.com/gallery
About Giles Hutchins:
Giles Hutchins is a pioneering practitioner and senior adviser at the fore-front of the [r]evolution in organizational and leadership consciousness and developmental approaches that enhance personal, organizational and systemic agility and vitality. He is author and co-author of several leadership and organizational development papers, and the books The Nature of Business (2012), The Illusion of Separation (2014), Future Fit (2016), Regenerative Leadership (2019) and Leading by Nature (2022). Chair of The Future Fit Leadership Academy and Founder of Leadership Immersions, co-founder of Biomimicry for Creative Innovation and Regenerators, he runs a 60 acre leadership center at Springwood Farm, an area of outstanding natural beauty near London, UK. Previously held corporate roles – Head of Transformation Practice for KPMG, Global Director and Head of Sustainability for Atos (150,000 employees, over 40 countries). He provides coaching at individual and organizational levels for those seeking to transform their personal and/or work lives. He is also a keynote speaker on the future of business and regenerative leadership, certified advanced coach, with Master of Science in Business Systems, higher diploma in senior leadership, certifications in solonics, action-logics, and guest lecturer at international business schools, as well as Master Reiki practitioner and sound healer. He blogs at www.thenatureofbusiness.org
Both the 23rd Feb and 23rd /24th May are one-off open programmes for 2024; places are limited, and treated on a first-come-first-serve basis Email giles@ffla.co if you wish to book a place.
Into the woods, by Carolyn Eddleston
My decision to work with Giles Hutchins was not rational, but heartfelt and rapid. A word-of-mouth recommendation plus a fleeting Google search, and my mind was made up.
The best decisions in my life have always been made in the moment, and from a gut feeling, not a head space.
I signed up for the full package over 6 months, and I purchased and started to read his latest book, Leading by Nature.
Giles has a unique style and nature that holds a safe container for curiosity, humour, honesty, and the invitation to find my own way. The process is a refreshing co-creative relationship, fostering a deep internal inquiry, and discovery of myself, returning home to the magical child-like fascination and understanding of our connection with the natural world. After several monthly 90 minute zoom sessions, I was apparently ready for my day and night immersion in Giles’ 60 acre wood in Sussex, UK.
I didn’t really know what I had signed up for, but dutifully did as I was told, arriving with tent, sleeping bag, mat, and lots of warm and waterproof layers. No phone, No torch, No watch.
Despite loving my work, involving deep connections with other humans, I have always felt nourished in solitude in nature, so I was excited to walk into this oasis of native woodland, with its own Spring water. Giles has literally macheted paths and created sacred clearings and firepits. He describes feeling called to this land, and I can see why. He is the guardian of these trees, and has developed a synergistic relationship with this land, that he does not question. The same symbiotic connection that the tree roots have with the rhizome fungi.
(artist – Jodie Harburt)
The natural world is grieving for humans to walk with it again, to remember our sacred contract with Mother Earth, that has been understandably forgotten with the constant, loud distraction of our material and political external environment.
After some fire-cooked delicious pasta, and a chat/intention-setting around the fire, I was invited to choose my spot for the night. A giant redwood caught my attention immediately, and my mind was made up!
Camping is a great love of mine, as is being outside. However, it was raining by the time the tent was up, and I realised that I had no distractions, not even a notepad!
The Redwood had created a very grand clearing around it, perfect to pitch my little tent. The boundary was a circle of Beech, Birch, Holly, Yew and Rhododendrons, with one younger Redwood standing to attention nearby.
A guided meditation helped settle my somewhat apprehensive nervous system, and then he was gone! It was a 15 minutes walk out, and there was no way I would have been able to navigate the labyrinth of paths. So this was me, and the trees for the next 14 hours or so. On my own, or was I?
I was encouraged to stay up as long as I could, to observe what Giles called “witching hour” when day becomes night, and birdsong becomes owl song.
It took a while to relax and settle, my mind frantically rambling, in an irritating, distracting manner.
The rain was more intense now, but I snuggled into the small hollow in the soft Redwood’s trunk. There was nothing to do. A rare gift of space and solitude in the exquisite arms of my tree. My breathing slowed, my body unfurled a little, and I began to surrender to the experience.
I realised that despite exercising frequently in nature, I was rarely still, and this was a very different experience for my senses. Something began to shift within me. I took off my glasses to sense more, and that magical childlike curiosity started to be with this natural oasis. I felt content, safe, held, awake, open, alert. The blurred perspective allowed me to be more playful with what I perceived. As if more information became available to me, as I slowed my system down.
I saw a clingfilm-like dome created by the canopy, and despite heavy rain and large gaps, no water was coming through. I sensed the privilege of this event, and decided to greet every tree, and sense how each would convert to human form. The upright, formal beech, the serpent-like rhododendrons, and the Redwood, the Guardian. I was having fun. No-one else was within earshot and I started to sing, dance, shout. Quite liberating!
Witching hour was fascinating. Like a light switch. Immediate colour to black and white, my retina switching from cones to rods as the light intensity dimmed. The world became shades of monochrome. A stillness only broken by the hoots of owls. I felt an odd, intimate connection, embraced by this Redwood, as if it too needed to be truly seen as we all do, for the beautiful essence that we all share.
I eventually surrendered to sleep, which was only broken by the amplified pitter patter of rain on canvas.
As promised, a Gong was sounded at 8am, and I packed up my tent and was collected by Giles. We gathered round the fire pit and I was struggling to find words. I felt quite overwhelmed by my experience. With skilled guidance, I began to piece together an experience that has changed me, and the way I now lead my life and my business. Now leading from this connected inner, calmer space that needs constant vigilance and tending to. The action no longer leads. That is the end result of a much more natural, softer process of trust and noticing. The few weeks following this adventure, I had a huge amount of creative ideas and inspiration, and I continue to seek similar experiences in nature, to guide me back to my true essence that is far easier to live with!
Because my senses were heightened by the slowing down, the lack of external stimulus and distraction, and the power of the natural environment, I was able to receive stronger inner knowing, guidance, intuition that was far more advanced than intellect was capable of. Afterall, the mind purely gathers information, evidence. It cannot possibly sense the unseen as well as our hearts can.
I understand that we are intimately connected to the cycles of the earth and sky. My immersion into the stillness of Springwood imbued me with confidence in my knowing and a deep respect for the trees. My work now is to stay awake, and not become a slave to the madness of the mind, but rather follow the quiet whisperings of my heart. The longing has gone. I have everything I need to live an even more delicious, abundant life, leading by nature. Giles has a precious place in guiding me to full, unapologetic expression, no matter what life throws at me!
This is a guest blog written by Carolyn Eddleston who spent 25 years as an NHS GP, more fascinated with those that thrived despite horrific stories, than those that remained unwell and stuck in their illness and life pattern. She found the Daoist philosophy that underpins Traditional Chinese Medicine refreshing in its honouring of the human connection with the natural world. She then immersed herself in a full-time 3-year training in NZ in the late 90’s and has been a Traditional Acupuncturist ever since this transformational adventure. She continues to evolve her curiosity and self-cultivation to be open to the next piece of guidance. She works with humour and softness. Her container is strong, as are her boundaries. She wonders what is possible for herself, and humankind moving forwards. www.cyclesofchange.com
Giles Hutchins is a regenerative leadership coach, adviser and author. His latest book is Leading by Nature.
Living-Systems Awareness – Making Decisions Within Nature, by Giles Hutchins
As the rising interest in regenerative business unfolds, with an increasing number of conferences, consultancies, think tanks and practitioners positioning the journey toward regeneration as vital for the times we are in, it feels timely to explore the essence of becoming ‘regenerative’ in relation to Leadership & Organizational Development (L&OD).
‘Regenerative leadership consciousness’ is what our leaders today need to embrace in order for their organizations to become regenerative – without this shift in consciousness we are unanchored and rudderless, tossed this-way-and-that amid stormy seas. But what does this shift into regenerative leadership consciousness truly entail for the leader?
First, its important to acknowledge what we are moving away from (or ‘letting-go’ of) as a leader.
Today’s mainstream leadership is rooted in Mechanistic Materialism, a reductive perspective of life/nature/world/humanity; from which a mechanistic view of adult development and leadership development is formed. Whether its agile leadership, responsible leadership, sustainable leadership, transformational leadership, etc., often these approaches draw from a Mechanistic Materialistic worldview that prioritizes left hemisphere over right hemisphere thinking, masculine tendencies over feminine, outer-achieving/mechanism over inner-awareness/connection, and humanity as separate from (or trying to ‘save’) nature.
The important first step toward regenerative leadership consciousness is becoming aware of how inured in seeing the world through a materialistic lens we really are. Much of what we are taught at school is Mechanistic Materialism. Seeing nature as a competitive struggle, where random mutation and incremental adaptation fuel evolution. For many decades now, science has shown us that this is a woefully superficial view, yet the inured thinking remains ingrained. Take, for instance, the quest for agile business through agile leadership. Nothing wrong with it, in fact it’s an important aspect of evolving business, yet it’s not necessarily ‘regenerative’ if it isolates ‘adaptation’ and overlooks how essence, purposefulness, coherence, complexity and connectedness play out in living-systems. (For an exploration of ‘essence’ within the process of becoming a regenerative business see this recent article: Activating Regenerative Potential with the 5 E’s – Essence, Energy, Emergence, Evolutionary, Enthusiasm.)
Nature’s emergent evolution is not simply about adaptation. For sure, we can learn a lot about agility from living-systems, copying nature’s design principles and applying these insights to our ways of designing products and running our organizations. Yet what ‘regenerative’ really demands is a far deeper way of perceiving life beyond mere survivalism, adaptation to outer-change, and bio-mimetic design.
For instance, the essence of each living-being impels it to become a more whole manifestation of itself. Whether it’s the acorn becoming the oak tree or the caterpillar the butterfly, there’s much more going on than adaptation to external conditions. There is a metaphysical process of becoming that informs outer forms and designs we measure, categorize and copy. Ignore this ‘inner’ dimension and we superficialize and mechanize life.
What I am highlighting here is a step beyond the mechanistic application of nature’s biological forms, functions and designs and the materialistic quest to colonise nature’s secrets, package them into patents, securitizing assets of ‘natural capital’. The act of packaging and copying nature can be useful, but not necessarily ‘regenerative’ unless it involves a step beyond surface mechanism. This step beyond, is what Albert Einstein points to when he says, ‘Look deep, deep, deep into nature and you will understand everything better.’ There’s good reason the genius repeats ‘deep’ three times. Nor is it a mere coincidence that opening into deeper nature is essential to all wisdom traditions and indigenous peoples the world over.
This ‘opening’ involves an embodied attunement with the essence and energy of living-systems. Living-systems are far more than survival, they show us how to thrive by harmonizing with the sentience of life. This necessarily evokes existential questions for the leader: what is the true essence and purpose of my organization, and how does this impel the value propositions and culture of the living-organization to continuously evolve in life-affirming ways amid increasing volatility? (I explore the key ingredients of the thriving living-organization as DEE – Developmental Emergent & Evolutionary, see Leading by Nature).
This step takes us beyond the short-sight of machine-organizations managed through top-down levers, controlled through P&Ls, while sweating assets for short-term returns. No matter how sustainable or values-led, this is a bi-product of mechanistic-materialistic logic, and simply not regenerative, regardless of how much it gives back to community or ecology.
As our lenses widen, we gain a deeper understanding of viability, resilience, profitability and systemic value creation amid volatility through a deeper understanding of nature, human nature, the organization-as-living-system, and its capacity to work with and serve life. Life is regenerative. Reconnect with the rapture of reality and regenerative leadership conscious flows through us. This is the beautiful simplicity the other side of all this complexity. Soul-wisdom beyond ego-cleverness.
‘Those who flow as life flows know they need no other force.’ Lao Tzu
It is a virtuous endeavour – as fresh as it is ancient – to seek inspiration from nature amid metamorphic times. Yet all-too-easy is the application of a mechanistic-materialistic lens to our acquisition of findings ‘from’ nature that ignore deeper nature’s energetic interconnectedness; thus, applying the very same level of consciousness to our well-intended solutions that created the problems in the first place.
‘Learn how to see. Realize everything connects with everything else.’ Leonardo Da Vinci
Essentially, we are nature, we are ever-immersed in nature, never separate from it/Her. Nature is a participatory affair steeped in consciousness. Sentient, energetic, informational, rhythmic; held within a depth of dimension one might call ‘metaphysical’, ‘inner’, ‘implicate’ or ‘quantum’. From the quark string humming away, the water tumbling down stream, the sapling and Mother tree, the bee and hive, to the leader and organization, there’s not just ‘systems nested within systems’ but ‘fields immersed within fields’, interpenetrated with intentionality. We participate in this, whether we’re conscious of it or not. Becoming regenerative is an act of waking-up to Nature’s Wisdom.
Think – Indra’s Net: living-systems participating within living-systems which participate within wider living-systems, reciprocating across both tangible-physical and intangible-metaphysical dimensions. Each unique individual essence finds its tune within the team-essence, within the wider organizational-essence which finds its tune within wider systemic interplays (business ecosystem, society, Earth/Gaia, cosmos).
Feel – The Dance of Life: tunes playing within tunes playing within tunes that inform diverse dancing moves while finding right-relation amid a unity-of-multiplicity, improvised-yet-choreographed unique-yet-unified, emergent-yet-evolutionary. And underpinning all this movement is a pervading stillness. The way into the dance is through nothingness. How magical!
‘Understanding the illusion only comes after the understanding of reality, not before. Until we have the experience of reality, in all its stillness, we are still lost.’ Peter Kingsley
(Artist – Jodie Harburt)
Today, our mainstream leadership mindset is inured in a heightened ego-consciousness which prioritizes left-hemisphere over right, masculine over feminine, outer over inner, humanity over nature. It’s this fragmented imbalanced ego-consciousness that creates an illusion of separation that infects our daily consciousness – enter energy sapping stress, inauthenticity, dis-ease, control, fear, bureaucracy, inefficiency.
From the moment we wake up, its all-too-easy to slip into Mechanistic Materialism regardless of whether we might wish to be regenerative or not. Before we know it, the organization-is-a-machine to be managed by the P&L FOR the P&L. Rather than the P&L serving as a useful tool to help the vitality and purposefulness of the living-organization, it becomes the master, enslaving the life-force of the organization.
Enter the matrix. The wasteland of the wounded Fisher King becomes reality. First – we need to catch the slip into the machine-matrix, in order to notice the entrapment. Then we can begin to find our way out.
Through death-rebirth metamorphoses we learn to let-go of old ways and start to see with new eyes. In-so-doing, cultivating mastery of ego-consciousness in order to open our hearts and minds to learning from AND attuning with living-systems.
During many years of coaching regenerative leaders and practitioners through death-rebirth metamorphoses, I have found the framing of a three-level learning from living-systems useful:
1. ‘open mind’ – learning from nature – educating ourselves about nature’s design principles, biomimicry, circular economics, regenerative design, biophilic design, systems thinking, nature connection, etc.
2. ‘open heart’ – participating within nature – cultivating self-and-systemic awareness, sensing the organization-as-living-system, learning to work with L&OD living-system dynamics
3. ‘open will’ – attuning to nature – opening into deeper nature, finding accord with the rhythms and wisdom of life, alchemizing inner-outer nature in service of life
These three levels of learning from-and-within living-systems enable a shift in how we perceive reality – a ‘seeing with new eyes’, which is both ontological (a shift in our being) and epistemological (a shift in our knowing); both scientific (a shift from mechanistic-materialistic science to quantum-complexity science) and spiritual (a shift in how we experience the ‘inner’ metaphysical dimension of nature amid our day-to-day).
‘The true ground-of-all-being is the infinite, intangible, spirit that infuses all living beings.’ David Bohm
Essential to enabling regenerative leadership consciousness, these three levels are not a nice-to-have luxury to contemplate only when on silent retreat or round the camp-fire. They are the prerequisite for dealing with the root of today’s breakdown of civilisation, and for enabling future-fit business. Not climate change, not the money system, nor capitalism, corporatism or consumerism – these are downstream effects of an ungrounded perception of life. Dealing with these crises with the very level of consciousness that created them is unwise.
All three levels of living-systems learning, when embodied, allow us to work with the flows, rhythms and wisdom nature affords us. This is what lies before us, as a humanity. Nothing more, nothing less: A full-bodied immersive experience into what it means to be human in this more-than-human world.
‘The greatest breakthroughs of the 21st century won’t occur because of technology; they will occur because of an expanding concept of what it means to be human.’ John Naisbett
The adult developmental psychologist Clare Graves, through his painstaking research, saw this latent regenerative potential in human consciousness being born on our watch, and his prescient work is coming true through the exponential take-up of regenerative business, leadership, economics, farming, medicine and more.
Welcome to the wisdom that’s fresh yet ancient, momentous yet timeless, full of dynamism yet born of stillness. Welcome to the Wisdom of Regeneration!
Then he clasped his hands together, smiled, and said “This could be a good time! There is a river flowing now very fast. It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid. They will try to hold on to the shore. They will feel they are being torn apart and will suffer greatly. Know the river has its destination. The elders say we must let go of the shore, push off into the middle of the river, keep our eyes open, and our heads above the water…All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.’ Hopi Elders’ Prophecy
Giles Hutchins is a pioneering practitioner, regenerative leadership coach and senior adviser at the fore-front of the [r]evolution in organizational and leadership consciousness and developmental approaches that enhance personal, organizational and systemic agility and vitality. He is author and co-author of several leadership and organizational development papers, and the books The Nature of Business (2012), The Illusion of Separation (2014), Future Fit (2016), Regenerative Leadership (2019) and Leading by Nature (2022). Chair of The Future Fit Leadership Academy and Founder of Leadership Immersions, co-founder of Biomimicry for Creative Innovation and Regenerators, he runs a 60 acre leadership centre at Springwood Farm, an area of outstanding natural beauty near London, UK. Previously held corporate roles – Head of Transformation Practice for KPMG, Global Director and Head of Sustainability for Atos (150,000 employees, over 40 countries). He provides coaching at individual and organizational levels for those seeking to transform their personal and/or work lives. Giles is a keynote speaker on the future of business and regenerative leadership. He is also a Reiki Master, a certified advanced coach, holds a Diploma in Senior Leadership Development, a Masters of Science in Business Systems, is trained in advanced Integral Solonics leadership development, Spiral Dynamics, a range of consciousness-raising modalities and is a certified Harthill Leadership Development Practitioner.
“Giles Hutchins has for over a decade led the way with his championship of learning through nature. His new book Leading by Nature is a really important evolution of these ideas emerging into a philosophy of systems thinking/being – it’s bang on the money, a really important book” – Sir Tim Smit, KBE, Founder of The Eden Project
Please feel free to join the LinkedIn Leadership Immersions Group here
For the latest episodes of the Leading by Nature podcast see here
Leading by Nature – The Necessary Shift in Leadership & Organizational Development Now Required for Future-Fitness
We are living through a once-in-a-civilization moment marked by great upheaval, where the breakdown of global systems has become impossible to ignore and signs of breakthrough are starting to emerge. This metamorphic breakdown-breakthrough moment is characterized by the need to evolve our enterprises from polluting extractors into life-affirming contributors. Our collective future requires that we learn to flourish within planetary boundaries while respecting all life on Earth. This is what the term regenerative means, to adapt and evolve towards life-affirming futures.
There is a rising zeitgeist around regenerative. Yet what regenerative truly points to is a timeless journey of becoming more in harmony with life, more attuned to nature’s ways. For an organization to be on this regenerative journey, it must work toward enriching all stakeholders, including employees, customers, suppliers, investors, the wider society, and the environment. Key to this is leadership, and in particular Leading by Nature, which establishes a regenerative leadership consciousness that is more in harmony with life.
Leading by Nature is a fundamental departure from the traditional mechanistic management theory that much of today’s mainstream leadership and organizational development (L&OD) is rooted in. This regenerative approach works with a living-systems worldview by unlocking self-and-system consciousness within us so that we can better sense and respond to dynamics at play across the organization-as-living-system, enabling future-fitness amid these volatile and metamorphic times.
Alas, we can’t just activate a new quality of leadership consciousness with the flick of a switch. Instead, we must endure a journey of transformation that involves a deep psychological renewal—a process of dying and being reborn, a threshold-crossing from one state of being to the next by letting go of the old while bringing in the new. This threshold-crossing morphs how we relate to our inner selves and our outer world. The ancient Greeks used the term “metanoia” to describe such a shift. “Meta,” like in metamorphosis, is to “shape-shift” or “move beyond” and “noia” relates to “true understanding,” to transform the understanding of our sense of self and how we relate with the world. It’s a profound undertaking that affects us in deep and partly unconscious ways. It’s not something to be taken lightly, and without this personal shift in consciousness the looming crises our organizations and societies now face will be unavoidable.
Over many years of coaching leaders from all walks of life, experience has shown me that for a leader—or any adult for that matter—to undergo such a psychological metamorphosis, one needs to hold space for both inner and outer shifts. Outer is the way we relate with others and attend to the world around us, and inner is the way we attend to our inner psyche and its deeper nature.
The way in which we respond to the world shapes our own world, in turn shaping us. As Ghandi insightfully said, “As one changes their own nature, so does the attitude of the world change toward them.” Our leadership consciousness influences our teams and the wider organization, just as the organizational culture influences us. Likewise, the organization’s inner culture, its values and behaviors, has an influence on the organization’s outer brand, its value propositions and stakeholder relationships. Vice versa, the changing nature of the organization’s outer market and stakeholder ecosystem has an influence on the organization’s inner culture. Both the inner and the outer aspects of the leader and of the organization are ripe for transformation in these metamorphic times.
As our leadership consciousness shifts, we become more aware of the reciprocal and participatory nature of relationships within and beyond the organization-as-living-system.
The Necessary Evolution from Machine to Living-systems L&OD
When, as leaders, we are able to let go of the outdated mechanistic tendencies and expand our restricted view of the organization, we open ourselves and our teams up to how life inherently operates—in harmony. We learn how to work with natural rhythms and methods that encourage the vitality and adaptability of the organization. We learn to lead by nature.
Table: Worldview Shift
Machine Worldview Living-Systems Worldview
Dominator culture Partnership culture
Parent-child Adult-adult
Control-manage Sense-respond
Disempowering Empowering
Unnatural Natural
Life-denying Life-affirming
This evolutionary shift in L&OD is a learning-in-action process. First and foremost, it’s an internal shift, an embodied process—rather than a linear tick-box exercise—where one must become self-aware of old habits while patiently practicing new ones. Secondly, it requires enriching the cultural soil of the organization so that each person can draw nourishment from everyday interactions as they learn and adapt.
The good news is that we need look no further than within and all around us to find inspiration for this L&OD shift from a machine into a living-systems worldview.
When we observe a forest or woodland, reductive machine logic sees trees struggling against each other in a competitive battle for survival of the fittest. However, when we sharpen our lens of perception—using a living-systems lens—we start to see the immense, inter-relational venture at play. Different species of trees share nutrients with each other through the soil, and tree roots form intimate relationships with mycelia, bacteria, and microbes. The forest floor is teaming with networks that benefit the vibrancy, resilience, and evolutionary dynamics of the whole ecosystem. In only a handful of healthy soil there’s more living beings working together than there are human beings on the entire planet.
What Charles Darwin originally meant by the phrase “survival of the fittest” was not “dominate or become dominated,” but rather each species adapts to an ever-changing context by “fitting-in” to its niche. It’s not the strongest species that survive nor the most intelligent but the ones most able to adapt to change. This adaptive edge is what our organizations need to foster by welcoming in the living-systems worldview into our L&OD.
The ability for our sophisticated, digitized, yet stressed-out organizations to attune with Nature’s Wisdom is the next frontier. It means aligning with life itself, nothing more nothing less. All of life—including human society, the organization, and the leader—is immersed in an ever-changing rhythmic and relational dance. When off kilter with the rhythms of this dance, chaos and fragility ensue; when in-tune, all parts find flow and the capacity to flourish. It’s the same for life within the organization as it is for life beyond the organization. Those organizations and leaders who learn to attune with the rhythms and ways of nature are the ones most able to adapt to change.
Leading by Nature
I call my regenerative, nature-inspired approach to L&OD Leading by Nature. It is simultaneously completely natural and radically different from today’s dominant leadership narrative. Above all, Leading by Nature is a journey not a destination, a journey that includes both inner and outer dimensions for the leader and the organization to embark upon.
For the leader: The inner dimension is the capacity to connect to our true nature within; tapping into our essence so we can lead with authenticity, coherence, and purposefulness. The outer dimension is about attuning with life around us; being open and receptive to the ever-changing nature of life and creating generative spaces where trust, responsiveness, and developmental learning thrive. This inner-outer leadership coherence allows us to create regenerative potential in ourselves and through our relationships with others.
For the organization: The inner dimension is the mission, culture, values, meeting conventions, and decision-making protocols that support the organization’s way of being. Creating a more purposeful, adult-adult, entrepreneurial, self-managing, diverse, and inclusive way of working unlocks the organization’s regenerative potential. The outer dimension is the customer value propositions, supply-chain, and wider stakeholder relationships that drive how the organization shows up in the world. This inner-outer organizational coherence allows diverse stakeholder relations to flourish through the products, services, experiences, and communities the organization facilitates.
The upshot of regenerative L&OD is a working environment where people feel welcome to bring their whole selves to work. An adult-adult culture of agility and empowered entrepreneurialism allows failures to be continuously transformed into learnings, which ultimately reduces the burden of bureaucracy. This humanness invites innovation, collaboration, and purposefulness into the heart of everyday meetings and decision-making where individuals are able to discover more of their natural, creative spark.
Giles Hutchins is a pioneering practitioner and senior adviser at the fore-front of the [r]evolution in organizational and leadership consciousness and developmental approaches that enhance personal, organizational and systemic agility and vitality. He is author and co-author of several leadership and organizational development papers, and the books The Nature of Business (2012), The Illusion of Separation (2014), Future Fit (2016), Regenerative Leadership (2019) and Leading by Nature (2022). Chair of The Future Fit Leadership Academy and Founder of Leadership Immersions, co-founder of Biomimicry for Creative Innovation and Regenerators, he runs a 60 acre leadership centre at Springwood Farm, an area of outstanding natural beauty near London, UK. Previously held corporate roles – Head of Transformation Practice for KPMG, Global Director and Head of Sustainability for Atos (150,000 employees, over 40 countries). He provides coaching at individual and organizational levels for those seeking to transform their personal and/or work lives. Giles is a keynote speaker on the future of business and regenerative leadership. He is also a Reiki Master, a certified advanced coach, holds a Diploma in Senior Leadership Development, a Masters of Science in Business Systems, is trained in advanced Integral Solonics leadership development, Spiral Dynamics, a range of consciousness-raising modalities and is a certified Harthill Leadership Development Practitioner.
“Leading by Nature is THE handbook for regenerative leadership. A must-read for every business leader who genuinely cares about the future of humanity.’ Jayn Sterland, CEO of Weleda UK
Please feel free to join the LinkedIn Leadership Immersions Group here
For the latest episodes on the Leading by Nature podcast see here
Activating Regenerative Potential with the 5 E’s: Essence, Energy, Emergence, Evolutionary, Enthusiasm
The root cause of our social and ecological crises today is an impoverished and imbalanced way of attending to life. Put simply, our prevalent experience of life is corrupt. Rather than a natural flowing-with experience, we are often distracted, anxious, fearful, judgemental and war-torn.
At present, there is a near total disequilibrium between what modern humanity aspires to and how nature works. This disequilibrium is due to a disharmony – a debasement, fragmentation and consumerisation – of our embodied experience of life. This spawns an underlying corruption deep inside the individual and collective psyche, creating anxiety, fear and insecurity. This fear drives a desire to grasp, to fix, assert, control, achieve. We then go about achieving and fixing things from this imbalanced disharmonious way – exacerbating the very problems we seek to solve.
Without attending to this imbalance within side our own selves, and in our systems, we miss-the-point of life, become purposeless, out-of-synch with our true nature, cut adrift and rudderless, tossed this-way-and-that by ego-fickle desires, wants and mores, ‘fixing’ and ‘fighting’ at the surface-level, avoiding the deeper challenge this trilemma of social, environmental and economic crises reveals = what it truly means to be human in this more-than-human world of ours.
To limit our future-vision of humanity to managing carbon and transitioning to a ‘green economy’ in order to keep our imbalanced consumerisation of life rolling hedonically onward, would be a grave error leading to further downfall for humanity and the wider fabric of life on Earth. Don’t get me wrong, climate change is clearly very important but a symptom of a deeper malaise. Try and patch up the symptom through a narrowed-focus on carbon while leaving the underlying corruption intact is not a way for the wise.
What is well within our capacity in this epochal hour is a real transformation toward future-fit life-affirming futures. But, what do terms like ‘future-fit’ and ‘regenerative business’ actually mean?
You will find definitions here on The Future-Fit Leadership Academy website written over 8 years ago by myself and future-fit business specialist Geoff Kendall. These definitions are as relevant today as back then, though now seem more mainstream, popular, perhaps even trendy. Back then (only 8 years ago – not a long time in humanity’s history) they were viewed as pretty edgy.
For the benefit of this article – see a summary of definitions here:
What do we mean by the term ‘Future Fit’?
The scientific definition of a future-fit organization is one that in no way undermines – and ideally increases – the possibility that humans and other life will flourish on Earth forever.
The question I ask you to reflect on, right now, is: ‘Why would we wish for anything less?’ Surely humanity can contribute to life? Ofcourse we can, and in-so-doing we activate our purposefulness.
In practice this means:
- The organization is actively working towards reaching a threshold of performance across a range of social and environmental issues. This can be quantifiable through holistic benchmarking, such as the Future Fit business benchmarking goals.
- The organization’s sense of purpose, culture and leadership is aimed at becoming a regenerative business. This life-affirming strategic intent drives behaviour throughout the inner-nature (culture) and outer-nature (value propositions and stakeholder relations including interrelation with society and nature).
What do we mean by ‘regenerative business’?
Regenerative business seeks to be life-affirming by aiming beyond the preservation and restoration of our human communities and natural ecosystems – i.e. it is not simply ‘net positive’. It is about operating in ways that contribute, replenish and evolve within the evolution of life: business that is not just copying living systems logic but seeking to embody this logic, by seeking harmony within the rhythms, flows and evolutionary currents of life. Regenerative business seeks to serve life while tending toward harmony with life. This necessarily involves a shift in consciousness; and directly attends to the root problem, the corruption in our way of attending to reality.
What do we mean by the term ‘life-affirming’?
Life-affirming is a quality: an intent, attitude and mind-set.
This mind-set can be characterized as a shift from an overly mechanistic and materialistic perspective rooted in separation/fear, toward recognition of the inter-connectedness of life. It is an awakened and embodied recognition/remembering that our selves and our organizations are living systems immersed within the living systems of society which are immersed within the living systems of our more-than-human world. Everything inter-relates with everything else, and in sensing life beyond separateness our fearful self-as-separate-and-in-competition with life eases, and a deeper self-as-participating-within life emerges.
This mind-set shift affects how we lead, manage and organize in business and beyond. And a future fit regenerative leader is anyone who is actively pursuing the development of a future-fit regenerative organization.
Sounds great in theory – but how are organizations and leaders actually embodying this in practice? Its this that I unpack in detail with frames, tools and examples in my latest book Leading by Nature.
Practical business examples are exponentially growing in number by the day. I have the real pleasure and honour to be directly assisting a wide range of different organizations across the globe on the regenerative journey – by example:
The B Corp consultancy Greenheart – who explain ‘Sustainability is no longer enough. For a meaningful transition to a future-fit economy we need more.’ With their expertise in B Corp, impact management & planetary health they help clients build businesses that are regenerative by nature. You can check out their work here.
The award-winning minimalist footwear and wellbeing brand Vivobarefoot – who say ‘Why is Vivobarefoot becoming a regenerative business? Because the status quo needs shaking up with actions that urgently revise ingrained, habitual approaches to commerce.’ You can check out their work here.
The insurance and professional service provider AXA Climate – who affirm ‘Reducing our negative impact on the planet is not enough. Our collective challenge is to switch from extractive companies to regenerative companies. To that end, we are transforming our business models, our organizations and our collective missions. And this transformation movement drives us.’ You can check out their work here.
The consultancy, footwear producer and insurance company (along with the investment bank, food retailer, design agency, fashion brand, manufacturer, creative agency, wellbeing provider, food charity, global corporation, local housing association, and many other diverse organizations I directly engage with on the regenerative journey) all share in common an authentic deeply-felt sense of the challenges and opportunities in unfolding toward becoming regenerative – to work the way nature works – not just in some theoretical way, but through practical methods enabling future-fitness, agility, entrepreneurialism and synergistic value throughout the business ecosystem, society and ecology.
Over more than a decade of coaching leaders through their process of becoming regenerative, I’ve found that vital to the rebalancing/reconnecting into living system logic is an embodied shift. This embodied felt-sense deepens our coherence and awareness of how life works. A letting-go of the ‘achiever mindset’ and a welcoming-in of the ‘regenerative-mindset’ involves a comprehension of, but also an embodied tuning-in to, living-systems.
A simple frame I offer coaching clients is the Three Levels of Learning from Living Systems
Three Levels of Learning from Living Systems
These three levels of learning from living-systems go hand-in-hand with a shift in how we perceive reality – a ‘seeing with new eyes’, which is both ontological (a shift in our being) and epistemological (a shift in our knowing). Another simple frame I use when coaching is the Three Lens which I explain in detail in my latest book Leading by Nature.
In this article I offer another simple, yet important, framing – the 5 E’s – as a way into embodying a regenerative mindset. The 5 E’s are: Essence, Energy, Emergence, Evolutionary, Enthusiasm. Each of these words have a dynamism to them, and partake in a ‘process of becoming’, a revealing, unfolding, regenerating potential essential for the leader and the organization. Let’s explore each of them through the dimensions of self (leader) and system (organization):
Essence
Self – What is our individual essential nature? Underneath all the habits, acculturations, norms, family conditioning, and personality traits, what is unique to us? It’s a powerful inquiry to ask oneself ‘Who am I, really?’ What is my reason-for-being? What are my deepest and most profound gifts and loves? Such an inward inquiry might be misconstrued as a selfish endeavour, and yet it’s through this self-inquiry that we can learn how to truly serve others in regenerative ways that nourish ourselves and others reciprocally.
‘The one who looks outside dreams, the one who looks inside awakens.’ – Carl Jung
The times we are in demand leaders who are awakening to their true nature, and unlocking their essence. The capacity to sense-in to one’s essence comes through inner attentiveness, stillness, and an embodied knowing. There are various practices I explore in Leading by Nature that help us sense-in and reveal essence. Then we can start to work with the grain of our own nature, rather than struggling against it. This is a vital step from ‘Achiever’ toward ‘Regenerative’.
System – The tap-root that deeply nourishes the regenerative business draws upon knowing the essence of the living-organization. This involves learning to cultivate the systemic-sense of when activities, projects and missions are working with (rather than against) the essential life-force of the living-organization. This, in-and-of-itself, demands a fundamental shift in being-and-knowing. It invites us to sense-in to the living-system dynamics of the living-organization. It’s not just a simple case of using nature metaphors or imagining the organization as a certain creature or aspect of nature, it’s a deeper sensing-in to how the living-organization behaves, its shadow aspects as well as its more overt behaviours, the historic journey including pivotal shifts, trauma and unconscious bias that cause habits and patterns that warp the way the living-system adapts to change.
The organizational essence is deeper than a purpose statement or mission. What’s the organization’s unique gift/service to the world in terms of how it can help manifest life-affirming futures? Why is this living-organization needed now in the world? What makes it unique from other similar product or service providers? Who are the conduits/guardians/stewards of this unique potential? How might they describe its essence, and how might they regularly come together to sense-in to the living-system? The analogy here might be one of a parent truly listening to the child, looking deep in the eyes, connecting at a soul level, rather than interacting at the everyday reactive, largely unconscious level while engaging in daily errands, getting ready for school, tidying the room, etc. All-too-often we are superficially engaging in errands and to-dos while busying ourselves in the living-organization, getting-the-job-done, but rarely consciously and authentically connecting with the organization as a living-system with its own unique potential. Otherwise we run the risk of conditioning the organization into the very mechanistic mindset we are then wanting to transform it from with our regenerative business initiatives. One of the tools I share in detail in Leading by Nature is the role ‘systemic enablers’ can play in revealing and working with the essence of the living-organization.
Energy
Self – Life is full of stillness and movement, essence and energy. Energy flows from essence in a ‘process of becoming’ through ‘emergence’ (which we explore next). This energy is the very life-force of nature. It impels the essence of each living-system to unfold.
We can learn to work with this life-force. Rather than achieving, controlling, opposing, we find coherence and connection, letting-go of what’s not serving our potential and welcoming-in authenticity to flow more fully. This is an act of surrendering which involves courage and trust in life.
The more we practice this surrendering/opening-up process, the more we become sensitized to the life-force and learn to discern when we are out-of-kilter and off-balance. Interestingly, we may find dissonance or tension arising as we shift from ‘achiever’ to ‘regenerative’ when old habits are challenged and released. Some teachings purport that dissonance or tension is a sign that something is wrong, so we ought avoid situations or experiences that trigger us or create discomfort. I have found through my leadership development work that this is far too simplistic. In fact, dissonance and tension can become the very crucibles that catalyze our deeper development, as uncomfortable as it may feel to the ego. And so developing a level of discernment is crucial in order to sense the difference between negative energy that ought be handled with due-care, and dissonance that upsets us and yet is inviting a learning-challenge for us to work-through and evolve. Cultivating the capacity to work through tensions, and become more comfortable with the uncomfortableness these tensions create is a vital part of the process of becoming a regenerative leader.
Also, energy flows between our inner and outer worlds. Outer experiences affect us inwardly, and our inner-being informs the way we perceive and experience the outer world.
‘As one changes one’s own nature, so does the attitude of the world change toward oneself.’ Ghandhi
Cultivating what I call ‘bodymind coherence’ is a vital aspect of learning to work with energy in becoming regenerative. Bodymind coherence is not only about cultivating our inner being, its also about our inner-outer alignment, by sensing when our experiences and ‘ways of doing’ resonate with our sensations and ‘ways of being’. This inner-outer alignment enables energy to flow more readily, and we find accord with the life-force. Our essence can unfold more readily, and we can learn to work with the essential nature of the living-organization.
This energy provides an aliveness, an active-yet-relaxed presence and purposefulness. We are more available to our own selves (our authenticity, truth and intuition) to others (listening attentively, holding-space, and sensing-responding) and to the living-organization (deep listening, systemic-awareness, systemic enablers).
As leaders, we’ve become well-heeled in the control-manage dynamic. We can unlearn this dynamic through a developmental journey of learning-in-practice. As we unlearn, we create space for a deeper knowing inside ourselves to be heard. We start to trust our natural, inner capacities (non-rational intuitions, hunches, gut-feelings, heart perturbations) as well as our rational reasoning. It’s these natural capacities which help us sense how dynamics play out across the living-organization. This calls upon a combination of self-awareness and systemic-awareness.
In Otto Scharmer’s Theory U, he refers to the Voice of Judgement, the Voice of Cynicism, and the Voice of Fear. These three voices speak to us all the time, keeping us safe from potential danger, yet in the process they are also keeping us small and reducing our capacity to adapt and evolve. As we become more intimate with our own inner ways, we learn how to acknowledge these inner voices and the habitual patterns of reactivity they create, so they do not hijack us as much. That way, we keep ourselves receptive and sensitive to the present moment, along with challenges and tensions. We improve our ability to sense-respond rather than control-manage.
Instead of the usual judgement, cynicism and fear closing us down and keeping us safe (yet stuck) we open with vulnerability, surrendering to what presents itself to us, conscious of our inner emotions and somatic sensations. This allows for a deeper flow of energy to unfold in us that helps reveal our true nature, our essence, from which insight for emergence and deeper connection forms.
‘To run from vulnerability is to run from the essence of our nature.’ David Whyte
To work with the energy of nature is to open oneself into the dance of life, full of stillness and movement. Three tools I provide in Leading by Nature to aid this attunement to the life-force within and all around: Stillness, Surrender, Sensitivity.
This sensitivity and surrendering enhances our systemic-awareness – the capacity to sense the wider relational system we lead and operate within and its hidden ordering forces, patterns of behavior, historic conditioning, habituated responses, and energetic networks of participation, learning, and evolution. As we begin to realize that life itself is developmental (ever-learning) so too our living-organizations.
System – The living-organization thrives on relational energy affected by how people show-up and engage with each other. Complex Adaptive Systems research into the complexity of human organizations shows the importance of allowing processes of human-relating through structure and unstructured engagement: structured – meeting conventions, check-ins, feedback processes, appreciative inquiry frames, developmental coaching conversations, etc.; unstructured – office gossip, water-cooler moments, whatsapp/teams/Slack chats, etc. Systemic leadership coaching can help here. While conventional executive coaching focuses on the leader as an individual actor, systemic coaching seeks an understanding of the ever-changing relational field with its relational tensions and developmental dynamics. A couple of tools I have found particularly useful for helping the sensing-responding relational energy of the living-organization are Organizational Acupuncture and Systemic Enablers, which I explain in detail in Leading by Nature. Upon identifying and acknowledging systemic patterns, Systemic Enablers learn to discern where and in what way to engage in small systemic interventions that send positive ripples across the system—just like acupuncture pinpricks do in aligning us to our inner healing potential. We re-pattern relational stuckness into better flow, richer purposefulness, and increased outer impact. This helps the living-organization tune-in to its essence and flow with the energy of its life-force emergently amid an ever-changing business context.
Emergence
Self – Emergence is the way life unfolds. As the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead said, “It’s nature’s creative advance”. All living-systems express themselves through the self-generating, self-organizing property of emergence. Our selves as leaders and our organizations-as-living-systems are no different in the need to creatively adapt.
Rather than fearing change and struggling to survive in a dog-eat-dog world, we open up to opportunities, recognising that change and tension is what impels development and growth. This invites a deeper attitude toward oneself, others, and the living-organization in working more in harmony with inner-outer nature.
Fundamentally, this opening into the emergence of life is a process of letting-go, of surrendering in order to work with the essence-energy-emergent flow of life. In my coaching sessions I use the three dimensions of letting-go: micro, meso, and macro – which I explore in detail in Leading by Nature.
Micro Level
The micro letting go process is like the frontline of transformation. It’s the daily noticing and surrendering of our own reactivity so that we can deepen into life. It’s the life-learning revealed through everyday challenges. Each tension and trigger, and the resistance it creates within us, becomes the crucible for opening up to more of life, through noticing and relaxing. Each twinge of cynicism or pang of fear or defensive or aggressive reaction is in itself a useful learning for us, an insight from which to gain perspective on what is within us—our habits, wounds and shadows.
Meso Level
The meso level process involves the leader learning to hold space for the transformation of the organization as a living-system by releasing the control-manage tendencies driven by fear and reactivity and beginning to sense-respond more by learning to listen and allow the system to become more developmental and emergent. The leader begins to sense the dynamics of the system and reveal then heal system blockages and blind spots by nurturing regenerative ways of working that help the system become more purposeful, adult-adult, self-managing, diverse, and inclusive. Deep listening, holding space, dialogic circles of sharing, liberating structures, Systemic Enablers, non-violent communication methods, giving and receiving feedback, coaching conversations, and more, are all part of cultivating this meso level letting go process. You can find more about many of these systemic processes on my website.
Macro Level
The macro level process happens not daily or weekly but over many months and years. It involves a death-rebirth, a moving from the Achiever to Regenerative on the spiral of the figure eight panarchy. Adult developmental psychology shows us that as we gain greater self-awareness (facilitated through the micro level) we gain greater systemic-awareness (facilitated through the meso level) and we also gain greater worldview awareness (facilitated by the macro level). Recall Jung’s individuation process of revealing and integrating our deeper nature by coming to terms with our own inner shadows and learning to release them—shining the light of our own conscious awareness on to the darkness within, and so making the darkness light. It’s a lifetimes’ work, and yet there is a figure eight rhythm to this macro process.
Life can be seen as a tapestry of interrelated figure eight cycles continually spiraling back and forth, creating and decaying. The breakdown of one process informs the creation of another. This continual and nested unfolding of creative potential is what the German philosopher, Martin Heidegger, referred to as a “bringing forth” or “poiesis” as the fundamental creative dynamic of life. As we learn to become conscious of these spirals, we engage in a bringing forth process of becoming—an unfolding self-expression of who we truly that deepens the authenticity of our interactions with the world. This tuning-in to both the outer-nature of spiraling life condition changes and the inner-nature of spiraling psychological development allows us to become more integrated, more purposeful, more able to embrace complexity, and therefore more future fit.
We now realize that the journey toward regenerative leadership is actually a letting go into how life really is, beyond the habituated and acculturated patterns, wounds, shadows and projections we all-too-often get caught-up in. This acknowledgement is an important step on the Achiever to Regenerative journey – that we need to work on our own selves in order to more truthfully serve the regenerative futures we know in our hearts are possible.
‘What is within us is within everything. Once we understand this truth, we step outside of the parameters of our individual self and come to realise the power that is within us. This shift in awareness is a very simple step that has profound consequences’ – Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
System – The living-organization is in a state of constant flux, full of complex emergent processes of human relating. It is emergent by nature. These energetic relationships participate and inter-relate across the system. Small interventions in one part of the system can have great influence on other parts of the system, just as releasing stuckness through acupuncture enlivens not just the localized area that was stuck but the flow of energy throughout the whole system.
Upon learning to recognize the organization-as-a-living-system, we cultivate our capacity to navigate the emergent systemic dynamics of the living-organization while transmuting tensions into adaptation, innovation, and growth. Rather than communicating through power-control based bureaucracy we learn to work with the right rhythm of divergence-convergence for emergence. We start where we are at, with each day framed as a learning journey that invokes the growth, adaptation, and evolution in us and the living-organization as we transmute tensions through listening, noticing, reflecting, and sharing.
Emergence is propelled by tensions. Tensions create anxiety in us that stimulates and cajoles us out of the status quo and into emergence. These tensions arise between the space of divergence (diverse perspectives) and convergence (alignment around purpose and values). The sweet spot between divergence and convergence creates emergence—not too much divergence or chaos ensues and not too much convergence or rigidity forms. Living-systems thrive on this edge of chaos and order, and it’s this edge that enables adaptability and vitality across the living-organization.
The life-force of the living-organization is stimulated through the alchemy of divergence and convergence, and it is that combination of divergence and convergence that enable emergence. Because it’s the life-force of the living-organization, emergence is fast becoming the Holy Grail in L&OD.
Evolutionary
Self – Evolution is not a chain-reaction or a blind process of random selection, but a flow-response that sensitively and seamlessly connects all life. Everything is in continuous participation with everything else. Tensions of emergence reciprocate and interpenetrate across networks of relationality, in complex and unpredictable ways and yet there are non-sequential evolutionary dynamics at play that we can learn to work with rather than push against. To truly comprehend the participatory, inner-outer essence-energy-emergent nature of evolution is not just a head-based rational-analytic reductive-scientific activity, it’s an embodied felt-sense, a shift in our being-knowing. It’s a transformation in consciousness no less—a momentous movement of our being in the world—whereupon we let go of the personal will’s ego-orientated, achiever drive and step into the deeper purposefulness within ourselves and also within life itself found through our own inner journey, as I explore in Leading by Nature. Its what Ghandhi gestures toward when saying that as we change our nature, so the attitude of the world changes toward us.
What’s relevant here is that this deeper purposefulness we awaken within provides a less acquisitive and ego-needy “What’s in it for me?” and a more open vulnerability, sensitivity, and availability to work with the deeper purposefulness of the living-organization. Our inner truth or dharma then resonates with the purpose of the living-organization. We begin to ask.
How can I best help the organization become a truer version of itself?
Psychological energy that was consumed by the need to relentlessly achieve in order to better one’s career, status, salary, and personal ambition is now flowing into sensing what genuinely serves the organization and its purpose beyond hitting the numbers.
What is the organization here to do and be?
The more we become attuned with the systemic dynamics within the organization, the more we sense what best serves the evolutionary potential of the organization and the more we acknowledge what is holding it back from serving its purpose. An apt example comes from Buurtzorg with its active commitment to sharing its own hard-won innovations on cultivating an effective self-managing culture with competitors, because it sees the purpose of the organization to improve neighbourhood care, therefore helping competitors improve does not undermine Buurtzorg. Rather, it helps serve its purpose for system-wide impact. It’s this kind of capacity to collaborate across organizational boundaries without the fear of competitiveness and associated need for protectionism that the business world now needs for its future-fit ability to work on inter-woven systemic challenges such as the Climate Emergence, reversing nature loss, and tackling rampant social inequality. We simply can’t deal with these challenges with the same level of consciousness that created them.
System – For the organization, the evolutionary shift in focus is from profits to purpose. For sure, profit is vital for any business, yet healthy profits flow from purpose not the other way around. I like the analogy of breathing. We need to breathe to live and yet breathing is not our reason for living. The organization needs to live by generating healthy profits, yet that’s not its reason for living. As Brian Robertson, founder of the consultancy Holacracy explains, we need to learn to listen and tune into the evolutionary purpose of the organization, “The key is about separating identity and figuring out ‘what is the organization’s calling?’ Not ‘what do we want to use this organization to do, as property?’ but rather ‘what is this living system’s creative potential?’ That’s what we mean by evolutionary purpose: the deepest creative potential to bring something new to life, to contribute something energetically, valuably to the world…It’s that creative impulse or potential that we want to tune into, independent from what we want ourselves.”
Hence sensing into the systemic dynamics of the living-organization becomes a vital capacity. The role of Systemic Enablers (as explored in Leading by Nature) is key here, and everyone in the organization has this latent capacity to sense-in if they so choose to cultivate it. Self-awareness-in-action and systemic-awareness-in-action is not just for leaders or Systemic Enablers, it’s for everyone to embrace in helping the organization become more alive, more adaptive to change, more future-fit.
“We are all natural sensors; we are gifted to notice when something isn’t working as well as it could or when a new opportunity opens up. With self-management, everybody can be a sensor and initiate changes—just as in a living organism every cell senses its environment and can alert the organism to needed change. We cannot stop sensing. Sensing happens everywhere, all the time, but in traditional organizations, the information often gets filtered out…In a self-managing organization, change can come from any person who senses that change is needed. This is how nature has worked for millions of years. Innovation doesn’t happen centrally, according to plan, but at the edges, all the time, when some organism senses a change in the environment and experiments to find an appropriate response.” Frederic Laloux
As well as receptively listening to what wants to emerge while tuning-in to the underlying evolutionary purpose of the living-organization, we can also proactively scan the future horizon. In Leading by Nature, I explore a comprehensive methodology that includes foresight, back-casting, scenario-planning, system mapping, stakeholder interviews, and other tools for Systemic Innovation by identifying emerging trends that resonate with the evolutionary purpose of the organization. This combined capacity of anticipating the future horizon a few years hence while being ever-receptive to the emerging future right before us helps ensure evolutionary fitness—future-fitness
Enthusiasm
This final one of the 5 E’s is quite different from the previous 4 in that it describes the deep inner-outer dynamism flowing through the whole process of becoming a regenerative leader. The other 4 E’s all feed into each other: sensing-in to essence, cultivating coherence and flowing with energy, working with emergence, tuning-in to evolutionary fitness. Flowing through all of this is the soulful energetic attentiveness of enthusiasm. This enthusiasm works with the 4 Regenerative Leadership Virtues of Balance, Patience, Courage & Purposefulness which I explore in detail in Leading by Nature.
To truly understand the inner-outer potency of enthusiasm, I’d like to draw upon the ancient Greek meaning of ‘enthusiasmos’ – a quality of consciousness whereupon we open our awareness to the subtle energies flowing within nature. For this shift in consciousness, the ego-self permeates its boundaries of self-as-separate-from-and-in-competition-with life into self-as-participating-within life.
This activation of our super-nature happens by alchemizing different ways of knowing within ourselves, which allow us to connect more deeply to the Field where Nature’s Wisdom resides. From this integral awareness we sense into essence-energy so as to flow in a more attuned emergent-evolutionary way.
This shift in attentiveness is an enthusiasm for being alive, and requires cultivating a condition of the human soul – the spiritual aspect of the journey of becoming a regenerative leader – whereupon we become receptive to Nature’s Wisdom – a transpersonal experience. For animist cultures from which we all originate, and too for today’s shamanic cultures, this is to live more deeply at the archetypal level, open to transpersonal spirit energies that infuse nature. This transpersonal openness helps permeate ego-boundaries so the illusion of separateness that haunts modern humanity’s malaise is healed through a deep knowing of human-nature-spirit – an embodied experience within the psyche and soul.
Enthusiasm is a discipline; an embodied undertaking to be activated each and every day. It draws upon a deep trust in life as a quintessential learning experience that can be co-created with our intentional attentiveness. This embodied way of attending to life informs our coherence, mindset, actions and moral rectitude, in seeking to flow the way life flows.
‘Those who flow as life flows know they need no other force.’ Lao Tzu
Enthusiasm is not a ‘new age’ positive psychology technique, nor is it a creed or moral code, but a way of becoming that embraces each day as a learning journey, each day as a portal into deepening our flow with life. Through this intentional attentiveness we create a sacred space-time – a temenos, a deep sense of place and purpose – through which regenerative potential of essence-energy-emergence-evolutionary dynamics unfold harmonizing metaphysical forces emanating from the spirit-realm of nature with the world of form; uniting one’s own nature with the field of nature – this harmonizing effect lies at the heart of regeneration. The ancient Egyptians – for whom regeneration was a key principle – knew how vitally important this inner-outer harmonizing effect is to the regenerative life.
Cultivating this depth of enthusiasm across the living-organization’s culture is no mean feat, yet it allows for a future-fitness fostering developmental, learning, growth-mindsets for high-performing purposeful teams with a depth of connection into what really matters – authenticity and wholeness. This is what Teal/Evolutionary cultures seek to nurture as an important aspect of the journey toward regenerative business where both the inner-nature (culture) and outer-nature (value propositions) seek life-affirming futures.
Giles Hutchins is a pioneering practitioner and senior adviser at the fore-front of the [r]evolution in organizational and leadership consciousness and developmental approaches that enhance personal, organizational and systemic agility and vitality. He is author and co-author of several leadership and organizational development papers, and the books The Nature of Business (2012), The Illusion of Separation (2014), Future Fit (2016), Regenerative Leadership (2019) and Leading by Nature (2022). Chair of The Future Fit Leadership Academy and Founder of Leadership Immersions, co-founder of Biomimicry for Creative Innovation and Regenerators, he runs a 60 acre leadership centre at Springwood Farm, an area of outstanding natural beauty near London, UK. Previously held corporate roles – Head of Transformation Practice for KPMG, Global Director and Head of Sustainability for Atos (150,000 employees, over 40 countries). He provides coaching at individual and organizational levels for those seeking to transform their personal and/or work lives. Giles is a keynote speaker on the future of business and regenerative leadership. He is also a Reiki Master, a certified advanced coach, holds a Diploma in Senior Leadership Development, a Masters of Science in Business Systems, is trained in advanced Integral Solonics leadership development, Spiral Dynamics, a range of consciousness-raising modalities and is a certified Harthill Leadership Development Practitioner.
“Giles Hutchins has for over a decade led the way with his championship of learning through nature. His new book Leading by Nature is a really important evolution of these ideas emerging into a philosophy of systems thinking/being – it’s bang on the money, a really important book” – Sir Tim Smit, KBE, Founder of The Eden Project
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Weaving ancient Nature Wisdom with the Science of the New Time
This is a guest blog by Claudia van’t Hullenaar
Change is in the air
We are living in a time of transformation. There are forces at play in the world that are harmful and polarizing in addition to massive global challenges, sustainability crises, injustice, habitat loss and degradation, greed, me-ism, uncertainty and disruption, mental distress and unhappiness on individual levels. Do you feel or sense that things are falling apart or changing in hard ways?
A reversal of the world towards a New Earth
At the same time, an increasing movement to care for our world is arising. We are living in the time that has been foretold by numerous ancient prophecies. This earth upheaval, ancient wisdom traditions, indigenous peoples and tribal shamanic societies long have known as a time of The Great Turning, a quantum leap in collective consciousness. The ancestral Andean Cosmovision speaks of the Pachakuti, a period of change and transformation, when the world is turned upside down which marks the transition to a new time. The ancestral Andean mystical traditions I am referring to, are based on the wisdom of Nature and the Cosmos and at its core it is about Life in sacred reciprocity with All Our Relations and deep love for our Mother Earth, in Quechua Pachamama, and all of her beings.
This process of evolutionary transformation has the potential to move us from our current paradigm of separation into an emerging paradigm of unity and wholeness, into an era of a wisdom society that values the sacredness of Life.
The need of balance and equilibrium for the Sacred Feminine
We are clearly living in a world of imbalances and the natural result is chaos, destruction, and uncertainty. To help shape a possible beautiful and thrivable future, we must create more inner equilibrium that includes bringing into harmony the Sacred Feminine and Sacred Masculine.
The wisdom, presence, intuition, ability to connect with the natural world, and creativity associated with the feminine archetype, is known as the Sacred Feminine and embodies nurturing, loving, compassion, tenderness, care and fearlessness.
The Sacred Feminine complements the Sacred Masculine which represents positive aspects of masculine energy which include strength, integrity, logic, practicality, protection, and the ability to take action. To make it clear, it is not about gender. All of us, women and men have both feminine and male energies, representing aspects of the human psyche.
In the Andean mystical tradition, the physical embodiment of the Sacred Feminine is also referred to as Pachamama or Mother Earth. She is seen as a living being that sustains all Life on earth. We human beings are her children, she protects us, loves us, nourishes us, and allows us to flourish.
However, there has been an excess of masculine energy with the oppression and longtime imbalance in masculine-dominated societies for many centuries, where the shadow sides of the Sacred Masculine of dominance, intimidation, competition, rigidity, suppression of emotions, and disconnection from nature, led to let us believe that power comes from overshadowing others. Many of these perspectives and beliefs have shaped our social, institutional, cultural, and political systems. The aggrandizement of “The more is better”, “getting”, competition, power over, aggression, and individualism can be witnessed everywhere. The devaluation and diminution of traditionally feminine qualities, voices, perspectives, and skills has been prevalent in patriarchal structures and had significant and far-reaching impacts on the Sacred Feminine and women, perpetuating cycles of marginalization, objectification, violence, inequality, and spiritual disconnection. This in turn, had, and has a profound impact and has serious consequences for women, men, girls, boys, individuals, communities, and the planet.
Many of us women are struggling with unique developmental challenges and hidden power blocks which express in a myriad of ways like self-sacrificing, overgiving, shame-based and victim mentality just to mention a few, even if we have lots of outer success.
The return of the wisdom of the Sacred Feminine is essential. One urgent task in these times is the developmental growth and maturation of our adult selves and represents a shift in collective consciousness towards a more balanced, loving way of being and creating harmony and wholeness in the world.
Imagine if these two equally important polarities melted into each other, finding their full expression and supporting each other, as our feminine nurturance, love, and connection to life become fearless and our actions naturally determined, and our masculine clarity, discernment, and actions become tender, compassionate where the feminine is integrated. How would the world look like? How would all of our relationships look like?
Re-membering and embracing the Sacred Feminine and deepening our relationship with Mother Earth
I was long living in imbalance and disconnection with the Self. Too often I was unconsciously doing it the masculine way compromising myself in order to fit in, be seen as woman, leader, family and home manager, to be worthy and loved. It was very painful. On my ongoing own transformation journey, I re-connected, embraced my feminine aspects, worked with the shadows, and life started to open up for me in so many wonderful ways. The greatest gift has been to have been led to and follow the call to the sacred path of the Soul of the ancient healing traditions of the Peruvian Andes and Amazon. This awakening of the Heart journey is life changing. As I continue studying and training the compassionate depths of this medicine, the profound meaning of Ayni, the sacred reciprocity, embracing and honoring the Sacred Feminine, I see that this is a potent medicine in service for an awakening world in this time of transformation.
The Andean mystical tradition is as ancient as profound. It is a deeply earth-honoring and earth-regenerative, soul-awakening and life affirming wisdom tradition, which has a deep reverence for the Sacred Feminine, Pachamama and all of Creation.
Embracing the Sacred Feminine helps us to reconnect with a multidimensional natural world, and reminds us of our deep interdependence with all Life and offers a recalibration of values and worldviews that transforms our relationship with Self and the Universe.
Realizing through visceral embodied experiences that the Mother Earth is our Sacred Mother is an insight of profound significance. It changes everything and cannot be unseen anymore.
After several years of walking the path of the Soul going through breakdowns and breakthroughs, I profoundly see the world from a different perspective: from the wisdom of the heart and our Sacred Nature within. It is an irreversible shift in perception. And the journey continues with ever more amazements, deepening and openings.
I came to deeply believe that the future of our world depends on our reverence and love and care for ourselves, each other and Mother Earth. Once we realize and embody this sacred relationship, that she is a living and conscious being, and the source of our birth, love, and nurture, we will choose differently.
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“We are all indigenous children to Mother Earth.” Chief Phil Lane Jr.
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The importance of expanding one’s beliefs to create new stories
I have come to re-cognize and believe that to become true stewards to our beautiful planet and all of Life:
- we need more loving and make Love our new bottom line
- it takes courage to open and soften our hearts
- healing starts with ourselves first, and that healing, growth, and transformation needs to happen on both a personal and collective level
- we need to embrace, integrate and bring wise and compassionate feminine intelligence into the world
- we need to put love and wellbeing of humanity and Mother Earth at the heart of business and leadership purpose, as well as in education and politics
- a moral foundation and integrity is centered on the wisdom of the Heart
- sustainability and climate change is also an inside job and journey
- we have to become the embodied change we wish to see
- knowledge alone does not bring the shift, it has to be integrated and embodied
- it is an evolutionary journey from the inside out
- this ancient yet new understanding must be shared and will reach those who are ready to receive
Addressing the pressing social, environmental and human concerns confronting humanity today, will require a shift away from individuality, indifference and competition toward cooperation and care. This can only happen if we finally give the inner dimension of our being the importance, space and attention it deserves.
Cutting-edge technologies, elaborated strategies, and business innovation alone will not make it. It begins with each and every one of us, within our own hearts, mind and spirit, within our families and within our communities and workplaces.
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“I think what we need at this crucial time is empathy … We need to think about our world in the sense of taking care of our world. Maybe culturally, historically, they are seen as feminine values.” Chilean Environment Minister Maisa Rojas, a climate scientist and an IPCC author.
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How we can start or continue developing ourselves
There are many ways, approaches and paths, wonderful mentors, guides, and teachers that can help developing a more loving, inclusive, and empowering relationship with ourselves, each other, nature and Mother Earth. Everyone who is ready will find their own way and preferred mentor. Research for a deeper understanding of the true nature of reality, new discoveries in various fields of science are profoundly resonant with what ancient wisdom traditions always have known. So, there are a lot of exciting things unfolding out there.
In view of the limited possibility here, I would like to share some brief ideas that come from my own inner journey, learning and practice supporting my re-membering and opening up to feminine energies:
- Simply “Be” more
- Be open to the possibility that there might be another way for any condition, relationship, event and situation
- Cultivate self-awareness, be conscious, observe and learn, and befriend your inner world and mind
- Death and rebirth cycles are normal and part of life
- Words have power – be conscious with your words
- Caretake yourself, be tender to yourself – it starts with you first – no matter who you are or what position or role you hold
- Be curious, be open to question and inquire, dare to expand your thinking
- Commune with nature: be with Mother Earth, imagine her as a living conscious being, talk to her
- Appreciate ever always
- Use inner technologies like mindfulness practices and or meditation that help awaken one to greater awareness
- Practice, practice, practice – all the greatest mentors do the same
- Trust – there is a Higher Power that is bigger than your mind
It is time to go deep and work deep. It is time to address the longtime imbalances in our societies and it is up to each and everyone to choose to see with new eyes, open up to new perspectives and potentials on how we understand and see the world, the relationship with ourselves, each other and our planet and what impact that has.
What have your own experiences been on your path of growth and discovery on your life’s journey? What does this message open-up for you? What resonates with you?
To go deeper in transformational work in the field of business, I trained Transformational Coaching and Facilitation with the Institute for Women-Centered Coaching, Training and Leadership to weave the novel and the ancient with all my life and professional experiences.
If you are interested to learn more about how I can mentor and accompany you through a transformative approach to authentic and heartfelt empowerment (both for female and male individuals), please contact me directly.
If you are interested in joining an upcoming transformational workshop for women “Embracing the Sacred Feminine Power for a new leadership paradigm”, please send me a message on my website or on LinkedIn.
I am open to synergestic collaboration with like-minded progressive individuals or companies who are curious and want to bring forth new ways of addressing the challenges of our times.
In gratitude and appreciation.
Claudia van’t Hullenaar helps progressive organisations, leaders and women in sustainability to evolve from the inside out, see with new eyes and shape unitive pathways that create impact-focused action. She is an evolutionary leader, transformational coach and facilitator, holistic sustainability advisor, new paradigm storyteller, and a student and practitioner of Peruvian Ancient Nature Wisdom Traditions, Energy Medicine & Shamanic Healing Arts.
Claudia has extensive strategic sustainability and business experience including the industry of global meetings and events, tourism, and destination management. She spent more than 25 years in multi-disciplinary, cross functional, international businesses including an 11-year tenure in the corporate sector at Symantec, as well as in sustainability and consulting environments.
Claudia certified in various conscious and soul-centered leadership, personal development and spiritual transformation programs including a graduation from the Inner MBA, a leadership and business development program that integrates business and spirituality to achieve exceptional and meaningful results, focusing on inner development for conscious leadership, exceptional team building and business as a force for good. Peruvian-Austrian, raised in three different continents, Claudia lives, works and plays in English, Spanish and German. Claudia’s website is www.sustained-impact.com
Claudia on LinkedIn
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For those interested in a special 2-day overnight Regenerative Leadership Immersion with regenerative thought-leader Giles Hutchins at Springwood Farm, near London on 13/14th July – see here, places are limited.
You can join Leadership Immersions Group on LinkedIN here
The Nature of Business 