Natural Business – True Sustainability
Our understanding of nature has evolved over the past few decades, from viewing Nature as little more than a struggle for survival through dog-eat-dog competition to one of networking, feedback loops, behavioural qualities and interdependencies within and throughout ecosystems. Nature adapts within limits and creates conditions conducive to life. Likewise, in human systems, the old logic of Social Darwinism underpinning hyper-competitive business practices and management approaches is giving way to a deeper understanding of what drives the individual, organisation and ecosystem in its ability to sense, respond, adapt and evolve. Yesterday’s logic is of top-down, hierarchic, command-and-control, risk-adverse, competition-oriented, control-based thinking. It is a mechanistic worldview based on reductionist logic that fragments reality into abstract definitions, silo’s and objects to be quantified, measured, controlled and then maximised, while largely over-looking the interrelated, fluid, connective, collaborative, participatory nature of Nature.
In drawing inspiration from Nature, we may step beyond our narrowed-down view of life and re-cognise the intrinsic patterns and reciprocal relations in our midst. These patterns can often seem confusing or complex for our reductionist mind, yet for our intuitive logic they are quite natural to cohere with – we are, after all, expressions of Nature. Such patterns and flows are, by their nature, regenerative and sustainable. In applying this inherent logic of life, we no longer need to superficially bolt-on sustainability initiatives to unsustainable modus operandi. In going with the flow of Nature, we re-design for resilience, ensuing sustainability – in all sense of the word – is ingrained in how we operate and innovate.
Natural business creates the conditions conducive to collaboration, adaptability, creativity, local attunement, multi-functionality and responsiveness; hence, enhancing the evolution of organisations from rigid, tightly managed hierarchies to dynamic living organisations that thrive and flourish within ever-changing business, socio-economic and environmental conditions.
While, on the surface, diverse, interconnected, open, emergent organisations may appear more chaotic and difficult to manage, they are vibrant places for people to become self-empowered and to inspire others – self-managing through mutual understanding of correct behaviours rooted in core values and clarity of purpose. It is this shared value set of core ethics – an ethos – that ensures self-empowered diversity naturally emerges towards delivering the value creation goals of the organisation, while maintaining flexibility, adaptability and sense of purpose.
Increasingly, as the organisation is required to become more emergent, so leadership is more about empowering, empathising and encouraging interconnections, innovation and an active network of feedback. As organisations and business ecosystems become more self-organising and self-empowering, the working environment and culture becomes more emotionally and mentally healthy, where business goals are met without sacrificing personal values and integrity. Quite the contrary, in fact: work acts to reinforce personal integrity in providing a rich emergent experience for individual and collective learning and ethical growth.
The role of leadership is to actively participate in enabling and facilitating local change, by encouraging effective communications through clarity of understanding of how to behave, act and interact. Each of us plays our part in leadership-of-the-future by helping others to co-create towards positive outcomes. Here, future outcomes are beyond pre-definition: it is the co-learning journey rather than the pre-defined destination that brings transformative value to the organisation and wider ecosystem of partners involved; real benefits beyond ‘doing less bad’. This approach to business walks-its-own-talk by embracing a living, regenerative, empowering, co-creative, ecological way of being and doing which is aligned with our authentic human nature and deeper Nature.
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Successful businesses of the future will be those that work in harmony with Nature. Here is a guest blog by Leadership Coach Liz Rivers covering a particular aspect of Nature’s rhythm’s – that of the moon.
A huge untapped resource of nature-based energy which is consistently overlooked is the power of working in alignment with the phases of the moon.
Proponents of biodynamic agriculture know that if they sow and reap in tune with the waxing or waning of the moon they will get better results than agriculturalists who simply ignore this rhythm. I love the biodynamic eggs I buy at the local farmers market – I have no doubt they are vastly superior to anything I can buy at the supermarket.
We know that the moon has all sorts of influences on earth, both on nature, such as the tides, and on human behaviour (there is more crime around time of full moon). Yet this influence goes largely unremarked and is particularly invisible in the business world. Unless I make an effort to pay attention I have no idea what the phase of the moon is – especially living in a large city.
Our calendar honours solar cycles through the length of the day and the year, but when it comes to the phases of the moon we are fundamentally out of rhythm because we have a 12 month calendar yet there are 13 cycles of the moon in a solar year.
As any musician will tell you, rhythm is the bedrock of good music. It is impossible for musicians to collaborate and produce great music together if the rhythm is off, you can have the best melodies in the world but the music will sound horrible unless you are all playing in rhythm.
The 12 month calendar was invented by Julius Ceasar at the time when the Roman republic was becoming a colonial empire, as a way of coordinating the subjugation of its conquered people – it represents a tool of domination rather than democracy. The number 13 has been demonised ever since.
Women have a physical reminder of the lunar cycle through their own fertility cycle.
Much has been said recently about the importance of women’s leadership at this time and that the leaders of the future (whether male or female) will embody what we think of as “feminine” qualities. In my view, a powerful fast track to embodying feminine leadership is working consciously with the rhythms of the moon.
What if we applied this to how we organise our individual work lives and to fostering collaboration in our teams and organisations? We’ve had biodynamic agriculture for about 100 years – is it now time for the biodynamic organisation?
So how does this work in practice?
There are three distinct phases to the lunar cycle:
New moon
Waxing moon (up to full moon)
Waning moon (down to new moon)
New moon: This is a time for reviewing the past month and setting goals for the coming month. (day 1)
Waxing moon: from the day after new moon in till full moon (2-14 days) – put ideas out, initiate new projects, make connections with people, promote activities and products you want to generate support for.
Waning moon: Day after full moon to day before new moon (15-28)
reap the harvest of what you have sown, tie up loose ends, finish things off and clear the decks.
Repeat the cycle again.
Simple yet powerful .
How to apply this?
Individual level:
Try it out yourself and see what you notice
Women who are pre-menopause can also apply this model to their fertility cycles, which is our embodied reminder of the cycles of the moon. Rather than seeing it as an inconvenience you can transform it into a source of power and creativity.
Teams:
Use it to establish a rhythm for team planning, activity and review
Ask individual team members to experiment with the model and track their results
Notice what effect it has on team cohesion and performance
If you would like a more detailed worksheet of how to work with this cycle please get in touch and I will send it to you. let’s start a movement!
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Liz Rivers is a leadership coach who works with women and men who wish to embrace the feminine in their leadership styles and who are committed to challenging the status quo of business as usual, creating businesses that serve the wider Earth Community. She does this through sharing powerful ideas and creating communities of purpose, both online and offline.
‘Business as usual’ is no longer an option for those wishing to thrive in the volatile times ahead. 
As individuals and organisations we can either a) retrench (clinging fearfully to outdated mind-sets) or b) transform (embracing new ways of operating). It reminds me of the ancient Chinese Proverb:
In times of great winds, some build bunkers others build windmills.
The good news is that the answers to our pressing challenges are all around us in Nature. Over the last 3.8 billion years, Nature continues to flourish through volatility by networking and collaborating. 
Diversity, flexibility and inter-relations, we find, are core to the interwoven evolutionary journey of life – the driving forces that provide resilience and regeneration. The Nature of Business covers off how we can transform from the old logic, what I refer to as ‘the firm of the past’ to the new logic of a ‘firm of the future’ – one inspired by and in harmony with nature. It is worth noting that there is much to learn and carry forward from the past. For instance, the characteristics of a firm of the past – stable, predictable, atomised, easy-to-control, risk-adverse and so forth are useful in business and yet, on their own, wholly inadequate for dealing with the volatile seas ahead.
Resilience is fast becoming the Holy Grail — in understanding how our organisations can thrive in uncertain times through becoming more decentralised, distributed, diverse and locally attuned – much like Nature is. Applying nature’s life principles from the Biomimicry Institute, business principles for the firm of the future have been developed as follows: -Building in resilience; local attunement; adaptiveness; ecosystem thinking; navigation by values; and a life-supporting sense of purpose. There is much to learn from Nature, and we also need to look inwards deep into our own human nature, after all we are expressions of Nature. The Nature of Business explores human-nature characteristics and the important role of leadership in the firm of the future – characteristics being: empowerment, inter-relations, encouraging local attunement, improvisation and co-creativity — this is a far cry from much of the top-down command and control, quantity-obsessed management thinking still pervading so many firms of the past. Here I share two business examples to bring this to life: The CEO of Coca-Cola was charged with transforming the hierarchic and silo’ed global organisation into something nimble, agile, creative, responsive and dynamic that could learn and adapt while exploring new markets…the transformation was most successful when bottom-up empowerment and emergence allowed high-performing, locally-focused diverse teams to flourish in a self-organising way. Another quite different example is Semco, the multi-billon dollar Brazilian manufacturer where there are no job titles, no written policies, no HR department and the CEO duties pass around from person to person every six months, all employees are associates and free to attend board meetings and they share in the profits while given classes on how to read the company’s financial statements, and vote for their managers with all meetings being voluntary. The status quo in Semco is challenged at every step and so ensuring diversity and innovation are embedded into the organisation enabling them to out-perform the market in difficult conditions. In these challenging (yet pivotal) times for business and humanity, we must realise that to become truly sustainable, human organisations have to become scientifically inspired, emotionally connected and soulfully entwined with Nature.
Natural Business does not seek to reduce organisational behaviour to biology, rather it suggests qualities that echo the deep wisdom of life itself. Natural Business is innovative, inclusive, liberating, improvisational and fun – setting free our creative potential in these challenging yet exciting times. It is time for us to open ourselves to the living knowledge that the answers to our many pressing challenges are all around and within us. To explore ‘the new paradigm’ further, join the Face Book community here View a short video clip on business inspired by nature here
Creating Constructive Futures In Business And Beyond
Business strategist, Peter Senge, notes that our world today is shaped not by individuals alone but by networks of businesses and institutions, and that these organisations are currently grounded in an old logic which needs to radically shift for the times we now live in.
New horizons are created through new ways of thinking, perceiving and attending to ourselves, each other and wider life – it is up to the individuals within these organisations to co-create a new logic. This shift in logic is what Senge calls The Necessary Revolution which is the biggest challenge facing organisational management and leadership today. Without this radical shift in thinking, Senge says, we will be unable to transform successfully towards a sustainable future; in other words, we will utterly fail in our evolution.
The logic of yesterday is of top-down, hierarchic, command-and-control, risk-adverse, competition-oriented, short-termed maximisation, control-based thinking best suited to the Industrial Age. It is a mechanistic worldview based on reductionist logic that fragments reality into abstract definitions, silo’s and objects to be quantified, measured, controlled and then maximised, while largely over-looking the interrelated, fluid, connective, collaborative, participatory nature of Nature.
In drawing inspiration from Nature, we may step beyond our narrowed-down view of life and re-cognise the intrinsic patterns and reciprocal relations in our midst. These patterns can often seem confusing or complex for our reductionist mind, yet for our intuitive logic they are quite natural to cohere with – we are, after all, part of Nature. Such patterns and flows are, by their nature, regenerative and sustainable. In applying this inherent logic of life, we no longer need to superficially bolt-on sustainability initiatives to unsustainable modus operandi. In going with the flow of Nature, we re-design for resilience, ensuing sustainability – in all sense of the word – is ingrained in how we operate and innovate.
For Senge, creative orientation is what facilitates our shift beyond yesterday’s flawed logic. Creative orientation helps us address our many practical problems as opportunities for transformation, rather than risks to be mitigated or problems to be worked-around. Real life challenges are what afford us the opportunities to transform to more resilient ways of operating. Through humility, openness and playfulness, creative orientation brings a radically different mind-set beyond the hyper-competitive, quantised linearity of old. It is a ‘learning-through-doing’ approach to prototyping by collaborating amongst diverse stakeholders. Here, future outcomes are beyond pre-definition: it is the co-learning journey rather than the pre-defined destination that brings transformative value to the organisation and wider ecosystem of partners involved; real benefits beyond ‘doing less bad’. This approach to business walks-its-own-talk by embracing a living, regenerative, empowering, co-creative, ecological way of being and doing which is aligned with our authentic human nature and deeper Nature.
This fresh (yet ancient) logic enables us to see the richness and value of interrelated business ecosystems, of intra-organisational learning, of diverse stakeholder empowerment, of emergent leadership, of open co-innovation. Linear approaches to supplier and customer management are liberated by vibrant values-led ecosystems which nourish, and are nourished by, their own co-creativity. Company ‘IP’ transforms into ‘ecosystem intelligence’ beyond the old methods of privatised control. This may be mind-boggling for today’s minds’ still rooted in yesterday’s logic and it is a radical shift in management and leadership for all aspects of the business whether it be sales and marketing, human resources or supplier and customer management. All change please. And Senge is quick to point out that many organisations are already engaging in ways of behaviour in what he calls ‘life beyond the Bubble’ – life beyond the confining control-based bureaucracies of yesterday.
Intrapreneurs, internal network leaders and community builders across the business of all backgrounds (whether engineering, sales, logistics, etc.) will serve as the catalysts in empowering locally attuned teams of diverse stakeholders to make regenerative business a reality. Hence, the search for such catalysts within the organisation as well as across the partner ecosystem, through new hires and external consultants is an important one. Often external consultants and specialist partners can help shine a light on areas of opportunity that people steeped in the cultural mind-set may need help in seeing. Business schools, activists, social innovators, think-tanks, consultants, change-makers can all help spawn such transformative creative orientations. Such networks will benefit from social media and collaboration technologies in helping co-innovate a bright future for business – the way Nature intended.
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The future of bio-inspired business
Recently, I have frequently been asked similar questions about the application of biomimicry for sustainable business transformation and where its future lies. Hence, I thought it useful to share insights on three key questions with input from the biomimicry specialist Denise Deluca, co-founder of BCI: Biomimicry for Creative Innovation.
1) Why is biomimicry a smart thing for sustainable business?
We in business find ourselves operating in increasingly volatile and transformational times. Businesses that wish to not just survive but also thrive in the years ahead are those that are agile, responsive and adaptable. Such firms of the future are able to continually redesign themselves for resilience. These are characteristics we find with great abundance in Nature. The more we tune-in to the natural world around us, the more we open up to the answers all around us in Nature. After all, Nature has been dealing with transform and volatility for over 3.8bn years. Biomimicry offers a framework and toolset for understanding how to best explore and apply Nature’s strategies for sustainable business and beyond. In the words of Albert Einstein:
‘Look deep into Nature and you will find the answers.’
2) How does biomimicry spur creative innovation?
There are many levels at which Nature’s inspiration can spur our innate creative potential. At one level, the biomimicry methodology requires us to reframe our design challenge and ask entirely different questions. Biomimicry asks us to explore how Nature solves our design challenges, or more specifically, the strategies Nature uses to perform the functions our design needs to perform. This reframing, pausing, reflecting, exploring and attuning with Nature’s wisdom generates a burst of creativity for all stakeholders involved in the process, which itself then leads to further exponential co-creativity within performing teams.
What can often be over-looked or under-valued in our rationalistic paradigm, is the sensuous and soulful, as well as the scientific, aspects of Nature’s inspiration. In attuning ourselves with Nature, we allow an opportunity for our analysing left-brain and contextualising right brain hemispheres to align and also for our head, heart and hands to cohere. This can bring profound shifts for individual and collective logic, leading to further bursts of creativity where the innovation is truly transformative in challenging business-as-usual methods and mind-sets.
3) What new direction will biomimicry take in the coming years?
As explored in the book ‘The Nature of Business’, think of applied biomimicry – or rather ‘Nature’s inspiration’ – as layers within a pyramid: ‘places’ at the base of the pyramid, then ‘products’, then ‘processes’, then ‘people’ and finally ‘purpose’ at the top of the pyramid.
There is a plethora of ‘Nature inspired’ applications at the ‘places’ level (architecture and infrastructure) and also at the ‘product’ level (biomimetic design). One only has to Google-search ‘biomimicry’ to come across a great variety of ways that we are copying Nature’s forms for the emulation of our human designs (e.g. the Bullet train and the kingfisher’s beak, for instance). There is plenty of work to do for biomimetic designers and architects in the years ahead and much to be done to align our ways of designing to that of Nature’s.
At the ‘process’ level, there has been applied inspiration from Nature in the areas of energy and resource flows for many years, for instance industrial ecology, where the ‘waste’ output of one process becomes the ‘food’ input of another. Cradle-to-cradle and ‘circular economy’ processes apply ecological-thinking for inter-organizational manufacturing processes. What is interesting, and still embryonically emerging, is the embodiment of Nature’s inspiration at the informational process flow level. This can explore technological processes (for instance, the internet forms a similar pattern to mycelium webs found in soil beneath our feet) and also the rich domain of human interactions, team dynamics, leadership approaches and stakeholder relations. This brings us into the next level up the pyramid where the emergent future of Nature’s inspiration ventures into: ‘people’.
There are obvious Nature-inspired ways of translating behaviors and patterns of communication from the natural world for human relations; for instance, the different leadership approaches we find in flocks and herds, as well as the behaviors we find in swarms and super-organisms such as ant colonies and bee-hives. Yet, what is sometimes over-looked is that we too are very much expressions of Nature. Leadership-of-the-future is asking us to attune with our own authentic human nature – a shift from egotistic, heroic, command-and-control leadership to heartfelt, emergent, ecologically-attuned leadership approaches. For instance, the rich seam of ecological psychology explores the human psyche and its attunement with the natural world. In gaining a deeper resonance with our true self (beyond the illusory confines of our ego-self) we open up to our deeper sense of purpose, whereupon the purpose of our organizations and wider stakeholder community may align. This brings us to the pinnacle of the pyramid: ‘purpose’.
Ultimately, real sustainability is being in harmony with Nature by learning to participate as co-creators in the immense beauty of life, anything less is unsustainable. The more we open ourselves up to our inner nature, our local neighborhood and the wider world around us the more we attune with the wisdom in our midst. The diversity of our individuality is what makes for the richness and resilience of our collectivity: the co-creativity of life spawns from diversity within unity. This wisdom is as relevant for politics (true democratic representation) as it is for sustainable business, as it is for community regeneration.
In short, Nature’s inspiration can help us re-align minds, hearts and souls with Nature. It helps us remember that we are Nature. The bright future of biomimicry lies in its scientific, sensuous and soulful understanding of Nature’s wisdom beyond the confines of yesterday’s divisive logic of dog-eat-dog competition and isolating separateness.
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View a short video clip on business inspired by nature here
A New Logic Beyond The Illusion of Separation
As Paul Polman, CEO of Unilever has said, ‘Too many people think in terms of trade-offs that if you do something which is good for you, then it must be bad for someone else. That’s not right and it comes from old thinking about the way the world works…We have to snap out of that old thinking and move to a new model.’ Likewise Peter Drucker once famously said, ‘In times of turmoil, the danger lies not in the turmoil, but in facing it with yesterday’s logic’. Yesterday’s logic is one that sets humans apart from each other and from the rest of Nature; it views life through the narrow-minded lens of dog-eat-dog competition.
The scientific convenience of isolating complexities into neatly packaged definitions for us to get our heads around has led to a flawed logic which we then project on to our societies and economies. It is this flawed logic that is at the heart of all our crises – world poverty, climate change, biodiversity loss, social inequality, etc. And yet many of today’s solutions apply this logic without stepping back to question it. If we have any hope of rectifying the error of our ways, this logic needs to be put right at its root otherwise all we can hope for is merely delaying the inevitable end-game through efficiency tweaks to an inherently carcinogenic modus operandi.
What is now called for is a new logic, a fresh way of attending to inner self, each other and neighborhood. This new logic is actually ancient: it is the logic of Nature.
As Confucius spoke of five centuries before Christ,
‘He who is harmony with Nature hits the mark without effort and apprehends the truth without thinking.’
To hit the mark without effort and thought is, at best, confusing for the rationalizing, confining, abstracting mind of yesterday’s logic; yet for a mind attuned with the wisdom of life itself, it is the path becoming conscious of itself, the wave realizing it’s part of the ocean, the knower and the known embracing their reciprocity, and the unity within diversity becoming self-evident.
The answers to our pressing challenges are all around and within us – simple; yet simple is not necessarily easy, especially for the grasping, culturally-conditioned mind of yesterday’s logic which so haunts us with its struggle to see beyond the confines of its own illusion. Small steps with great love, moments of aliveness, imaginative immersions, soulful openings, new beginnings, authentic relations, mindful listening. Beyond narrow-minded control-based thinking we swim the seas of synchronicity – at one with Nature. Here, ‘doing less bad’ is only ever a springboard to becoming who we truly are: ones in service to life’s rich tapestry.
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The Future of Business – In Harmony with Nature
Can business be a force for good, restoring society and the environment, providing solutions that genuinely help rather than hurt? Ought business to be striving for more than just limiting its harm? I think we intuitively know it can, yet it requires courage to break rank from the mainstream approach to business.
The prevailing business paradigm of maximization, monoculture, self-interest and short-termism is weakening its own resilience, in turn sowing the seeds of its own demise. Our prevalent business concepts, values, perceptions and practices are being disrupted and systemically challenged. This ‘perfect storm’ of crises provides the perfect situation for individuals and organisations to retrench (clinging fearfully to outdated mindsets) or transform (embracing new ways of operating). For those able to adapt in these volatile times, they face nothing less than a shift to a new business paradigm; a way forward that seeks to enhance life on Earth rather than destroy it. Like the ancient Chinese Proverb:
In times of great winds, some build bunkers others build windmills.
Our prevailing reductionist approach to science, technology and business has encouraged us to see ourselves as separate from nature, and to view the world around us as something to be analysed and over-exploited for our own wants and needs, with scant regard for the consequences. Here lies insight into the root cause of our problems facing us today in business and beyond. The sobering fact of the matter is that our current business approach (and its immense power to fuel problems as well as implement solutions) is neither balanced nor life-encompassing; it is reductionist and anthropocentric in its belief and behaviour. This separated thinking and reductionist view of the world has encouraged an alienation from nature over recent years, leaving us unbalanced in our understanding of the real world – the world not just of stock market trends and commodity prices, but also of soil and sea, of cycles and seasons, and of ecosystems and environments. As Ray Anderson, former Chairman and CEO of Interface, observed:
We have been, and still are, in the grips of a flawed view of reality – a flawed paradigm, a flawed world view – and it pervades our culture putting us on biological collision course with collapse. It is the paradigm that is reflected in our culture’s infatuation with stuff and our willful ignorance of nature.
Our prevailing view of nature as a battleground of competing species, each fighting to survive, is a narrow view of a more complex picture. When Charles Darwin published his Origin of Species, the phrase ‘survival of the fittest’ was quickly co-opted and distorted by powerful elites to promote the idea that only the biggest, strongest, and most powerful can survive. In reality, what Darwin found and described in his findings was that those organisms with the greatest ability to adapt to their local environment – the ‘fittest’ in the sense of the best fit – would survive when and where others would fail. He found that sensing, responding, adapting, and aligning with and within the local ecosystem were key to survival. Recent scientific discoveries, coupled with advances in systems thinking and quantum theory, continue to build on these findings, and uncover a more complex and complete view of nature, the workings of the universe, and the evolution of life.
Over the last 3.8 billion years, nature has survived and flourished through times of radical change by dynamically networking and collaborating among species and throughout ecosystems. Diversity, flexibility and collaboration, we find, is core to the interwoven evolutionary journey of life – the driving forces that provide resilience and regeneration within species and ecosystems.
In the words of the business pioneers Michael Braungart and William McDonough:
Popular wisdom holds that the fittest survive, the strongest, leanest, largest, perhaps meanest – whatever beats the competition. But in healthy, thriving natural systems it is actually the ‘fitting-est’ who thrive. Fitting-est implies an energetic and material engagement with place, and an interdependent relationship to it.
So how does business go about shifting from a prevalent mind-set of reductionism and short term profit maximisation that views the world as a collection of things to be consumed (nature’s capital) to a world-view that has an energetic and material engagement with place and an interdependent relationship with life which is symbiotic not carcinogenic? In short, how does the prevalent approach of business (and for that matter human society) break its devastating illusion of being a part from nature to realising in reality that we are a part of nature, even with our specialties? This is the sixty-billion dollar question (not whether the USA defaults on its ever-spiraling debt mountain, which is just one of many symptoms we now experience as a result of failing to address the root cause of our social, economic and environmental crises: our carcinogenic relationship with life on Earth).
This question of the moment can be answered through 3 R’s – Re-design, Re-connect, Re-kindle:
1) Re-designing – new ways of operating and innovating beyond ‘less bad’ into ‘doing good’ (shifting from the take/make/waste economic paradigm to a regenerative approach that heals society and the web of life rather that destroying life in the name of short-term gain). An example here is the Kingfisher Group aiming to be a ‘net positive’ force for good in the world.
2) Re-connecting – reconciling our human relationship with life/nature and our own authentic human nature (re-establishing our vital bond with ourselves, our neighbours and the web of life within which we are a part of through education, authentic leadership and eco-psychology). An example here is the co-founder of Natura, Pedro Passo, who instills a business culture that understands our interrelatedness with nature and community.
3) Re-kindling wisdom – working with the grain of nature and operating within the rules of life on Earth (enabling businesses and societies not merely to ‘sustain’ but to thrive in the years ahead by practicing wise approaches to life that draw on, for instance: symbiosis, ecological thinking, permaculture, systems-thinking and systems-being, business inspired by nature, presencing & indigenous wisdom). An example here would be Weleda with its bio-dynamic philosophy and its holistic approach to all aspects of its business.
In these challenging (yet pivotal) times for business and humanity, we must realise that to become truly sustainable, human and business life has to become scientifically inspired, emotionally connected and spiritually entwined with nature and Gaia. Nature and business (as with nature and humanity) must be symbiotic and operate in mutualism for there to be anything resembling a successful outcome. The sooner business realises the opportunities that come with being connected to and inspired by nature, the better for humanity and the interconnected fabric of life.
To explore ‘the new paradigm’ further, join the Face Book community here
View a short video clip on business inspired by nature here
View a presentation on ‘A Radical Review of Reality’ here
Radical sustainability beyond the illusion….
Radical means getting to the root of it. Illusions are shattered when we get to the heart of the matter….and so by being radical in our approach to life we find that we can uncover artificiality which may cloak our ways of attending to our selves, each other and our wider neighbourhood.
‘The way you see people is the way you treat them, and the way you treat them is what they become.’ – Goethe.
Learning to love our selves and each other is perhaps the most important task that lies before us. Put another way, the beginning of any new paradigm ought to be grounded in love if it is to be authentic and seek to replace old ways with truly fresh, new ways beyond current illusions.
Here are five tips or pointers that may help remind us to remain flowing within the tides of love:
– Empathy: the ability to put our selves in the other’s shoes by feeling the context of the other and understanding their perspective. This allows for a reaching out and meeting of the ‘other’ which is the essence of love. It requires us to imagine the other’s situation and so asks us to shift from knowledge to wisdom – our wisdom grows through empathy.
– Forgiveness: the ability to no longer hold-on to negative judgement of the ‘other’ and harbour resentment. This does not mean to say that what the ‘other’ has done is ‘right’ or ‘good’ in some way, but rather, we can acknowledge the problem and forgive the person for their actions, accepting them as they are, freed from pre-conditioned perspectives. Empathy and acceptance greatly help with forgiveness; all of which are crucial for wise living.
– Presence: to be fully present in the here and now of the moment is to open up to the ground of love in our midst. To truly listen, for instance, when we are conversing; to give the ‘other’ our full, undivided attention is to open up to love which then allows an authentic relation of reciprocity and trust to emerge – the beginnings of any new paradigm happen right here, right now with the birthing of each interrelating moment.
– Generosity: to recognise that giving to others is actually a gift to our selves and all of life is to recognise that we are all connected and all our actions have reactions. And so we can either consciously provide gifts to others (which also makes us feel good, not in a smug way that gives only to be perceived as ‘good’ by others, but in an authentic way of contributing meaningfully and from the heart, which may initially ‘put us out’ or ‘cost us’ yet with hindsight provides for richness beyond measure) or we can try and keep things for our selves in-so-doing create an environment that mirrors that scarcity and sense of separation. Charles Eisenstein is a good example of a modern-day story-teller who explores the profound power of giving.
– Small steps: it is the little things, the small acts of kindness that allow us to transcend the illusory barriers to love. In the profound words of Mother Teresa ‘You can not do great things, you can only do small things with great love.’ Small things with great love sow the seeds of the new paradigm. By way of example, I recall, when I was younger, jogging past a worm pulsating rhythmically and beautifully as it made its way across the road in front of me one early morning, and I thought, ‘I wonder if I should help the worm cross the road as she may get trampled underfoot or under wheel?’ I left him/her unaided as I continued my jog by, busy in my own world of thoughts to do with ‘matters of consequence’. Soon after, a car zoomed passed me and something inside me made me jog back to where the worm was just to check and see if she was OK…alas the rhythmic pulsating was now a frantic, bloody, seething, wiggling mess, and I felt compelled to put the worm out of misery.…from then on when I pass a snail, or slug, or worm crawling along the road I gently (and with love) bring them over to the other side of the man-made hazard… Does it matter? How does that small act have any meaningful impact or consequence on the plethora of challenges humanity now faces? It matters to that worm, and the one before….just as the small acts of kindness in the local store, down the street, on the underground, or in the office provide a moment from love to flow into life beyond the illusion of separation. This is the beginning – small steps with love.
I do not delude myself that acting with and through love is not a constant challenge for me, yet it is a challenge that turns me on rather than switching me off. It provokes the opportunity for me to catch myself and wake-up to the present moment. I often ‘miss the boat’ but the boat is still worth trying to catch….otherwise, quite frankly, what on Earth are we doing here….getting in the way or going with the flow?
If we are really honest with ourselves, we may begin to see that the barriers to love are self-imposed preconditions and prejudices, albeit often culturally induced, yet ultimately held-on to by our self. And so, radical sustainability begins with the self. Waging a war on: terror, carbon, poverty, cancer, bullying, consumerism, etc. deals with downstream ramifications and often approaches the problems with the same things that created them (the clue is in the ‘waging a war’ attitude which is hardly an attitude rooted in love).
Life’s destiny = learning to love…..learning to love our selves (our conscious and unconscious depths of mind, heart, body, soul), to love each other (relating authentically through our quality of attention in opening up to the reciprocity of life), and to love Nature (the matrix of life itself, the cosmic womb of our being and becoming, the all-pervasive presence flowing through and beyond us)…this is the magic of radical sustainability and it needs no money, no manipulation, no hurry, no worry, no stress, no fear….and yet magically provides for our serenity, courage and wisdom.
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‘All poetry is a matter of giving sensory form to ideas and finding the images that take us unhindered into the heart of things.’ Roger Scruton
‘Art takes Nature as its model.’ Aristotle
‘The greatest art in theoretical and practical life consists in changing the problem to a postulate; that way one succeeds.’ Goethe
To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour. – William Blake
(Oil painting on canvas by Alan Rayner, 2005). Light as a dynamic inclusion of darkness continually brings an endless diversity to Life.
Super Tramp, Logical Song (extract):
When I was young, it seemed that life was so wonderful, a miracle, it was beautiful, magical
And all the birds in the trees, well they’d be singing so happily, joyfully, playfully, watching me
But then they send me away to teach me how to be sensible, logical, responsible, practical
And they showed me a world where I could be so dependable, clinical, intellectual, cynical
There are times when all the world’s asleep
The questions run too deep for such a simple man
Won’t you please, please tell me what we’ve learned
I know it sounds absurd but please tell me who I amI said now, watch what you say, now we’re calling you a radical, a liberal, fanatical, criminal
Won’t you sign up your name, we’d like to feel you’re acceptable, respectable, presentable, a vegetable…
Joni Mitchell Big Yellow Taxi (extract):
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
With a pink hotel , a boutique
And a swinging hot spotThey took all the trees
Put ’em in a tree museum
And they charged the people
A dollar and a half just to see ’em
Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got
Till it’s gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot…
‘Strange times are these in which we live when old and young are taught falsehoods in school. And the person that dares to tell the truth is called at once a lunatic and fool.’ Plato
The quietness between soundings; the preparation for what is to come from what has already been; the stillness between incoming and outgoing; the dance of life’s movement within and around the receptive space of life’s ever-present love, forever becoming refreshed in each other’s presence.
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Leading Across The Threshold of a New Paradigm
It is now clear that sustainable business requires a new mind-set which transcends yesterday’s logic. Paul Polman, CEO of Unilever, is one of many business leaders now pointing to the need for a new way of thinking. The logic we now need for the plethora of challenges facing us is found nowhere else than within our own hearts. It is in leading from the heart that we pave the way for a truly sustainable future in business and beyond.
The root word of ‘leadership’ is ‘leith’ which means to cross the threshold, to let go of the old in order to embrace the new – so fundamental for any transformation. The art of courageous leadership rooted in the heart has been applied to organisational transformation and business leadership through the great work of Peter Senge, Otto Scharmer, Parker J Palmer, Tim Macartney and many others. It is less about the theory of an idealised leadership model and more about the practical ability to navigate a journey of inspiration and authenticity; energising and equipping oneself and others to make the right choices for the situation at hand. As leaders we serve as midwives to a birth of a new way of attending – a new consciousness; the fresh yet ancient and ever-present logic of the heart. Our collective and individual shift in consciousness requires space, time and courage, through our trust in others to find their authentic voice in allowing their own logic of the heart to sing. In this way, leading can be seen not as orchestrating or conducting but rather as facilitating the ability of others to attune themselves. The result is more effective teams who are able to face increasing uncertainty with renewed inspiration, sharing, creativity, and above all, love.
Sadly, love is not a word we hear much of in business circles these days. It has become a much misunderstood and misappropriated word in our commoditising consumerist culture. Love is what enables us to give to ourselves and others. To fully open up, tune-in and listen to each other is to allow the currents of love to flow within us. It is what nourishes our ways of attending to ourselves and each other, breeding positive virtuous cycles in all we do – this is the wisdom of leading from the heart. As Tim ‘Mac’ Macartney, Founder of Embercombe notes: ‘Love inspires leadership…It is the finding of love that will bring forth the leaders we need. It is with each one of us and we only need to let go of our fear and she will be known to us.’ Embercombe’s Heart of Leadership programme pioneers this leading with love in order to make it a reality in our organisation, in-so-doing unleashing immense benefits for one and all. It includes the ancient indigenous wisdom of the way of Council which creates sacred co-creative space for groups of people to open up to the wisdom of the heart within a communal atmosphere of empathic sharing, non-judgement and acceptance. In Council, people sit in a circle and commit to being fully present by really listening to each other from the heart, free from distractions, judgements, opinion forming or preparation of a response. Pippa Bond, a well-respected Council facilitator, notes that, ‘Council invites empathy, stillness and honesty’ vital ingredients for a successful culture of transformation. This powerful practice is applicable to all human interrelations whether it is a board meeting, a team discussion or diverse stakeholder dialogue. Applying the practice of Council in our work as leaders crossing the threshold encourages authentic environments of listening and speaking from the heart to occur.
The more we create such environments the more people embrace the way of the heart in their relations whether engaging with difficult clients or tackling the strategic challenges of shifting to a business model that goes one step beyond doing ‘less bad’. It is from within that we find the power to transform. As the playwright, prisoner and former president of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Havel noted, ‘the salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart.’
Just as it seems inconceivable for the leaf-chomping caterpillar to contemplate dancing with the wind while cross-pollinating sun-drenched flowers, so it seems inconceivable in today’s short-termist, quantity-obsessed, fear-driven organisations to lead from the heart. The metamorphosis to a new paradigm first-and-foremost asks us to let go of our pre-conceived notions, our cultural conditions, our rigid mental maps and tidy definitions in order to cross the threshold, to see reality as it truly is from within our hearts. This can be immensely uncomfortable as it requests we breakdown our current ways of attending in order to breakthrough into new ways beyond our self-defending egos. Nothing less is called for in these epochal months ahead. In our hour of reckoning, are you up for courageously leading from the heart?
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The Nature of Business 