IDEAS FOR GOODFrom March 18 to 21, Ecological Memes held a global online forum, “Ecological Memes Global Forum 2021”. The session featured a variety of guests who pioneered the front line, from business and art to ecology, under the theme of “Emergence from AWAI: Regenerating human-nonhuman relations.”
This time, we interviewed a keynote speaker and business adviser Giles Hutchins, co-author of Regenerative Leadership, which highlights the importance of learning from the wisdom of nature in bringing about regenerative systemic transformation. During the forum, the keynote address was followed by a panel session, “Regenerative Leadership: Systemic Transformation, and Dancing with the Rhythm of Nature,” along with Hiroshi Yamada, Founder of Morie, and Yasuhiro Kobayashi, Founder of Ecological Memes.
What is required for leadership and business working toward a regenerative future in which people co-thrive with other lives and the Earth? We looked at the essence of regenerative leadership that restores the connection with nature and facilitates a symbiotic system transformation for the evolution of all life.
Leadership rooted in the wisdom of nature
Hutchins has been active in organizational development for the past 25 years, including being KPMG’s International Management Consultant and Head of Practice for Business Transformation/CRM, and Global Sustainability Director for a multinational technology company, Atos, which has more than 100,000 employees worldwide.
Hutchins stated that the theme of this session, “The Regenerative Leader,” is the one who integrates the divided world and guides society based on the interconnection of all life.
Hutchins: An entrance to a “regenerative leader” is to look at and acknowledge how life works and how things relate with each other and interconnect. If you look at these connections at various levels, including the invisible intangible inner-realm informing the outer-system, you will find that our lives are rooted in myriad levels of systems within systems, just like our organizations and business ecosystems are as well.
Hutchins co-authored a book called “Regenerative Leadership” with Laura Storm, which applies the wisdom of life into the context of organizational leadership. Specifically, there are three levels of learning from living-systems applied to organizational development, 1. Living System Design, 2. Living System Culture, 3. Living System Being, which are explored in detail in the book.
First of all, “Living System Design” which includes “biophilic design (designing as nature intended, to aid people feeling connected to their inner nature and the outer natural world)” and “biomimicry (to apply insights from nature to product design and service development).” In other words, from the perspective of design, it means thinking about how to take inspiration from nature and apply nature’s principles to our product manufacturing processes, our business processes (like circular economics and cradle-to-cradle design) and our built environment.
Then there is a second level of applying living-systems-thinking to our organizations, “Living System Culture.” This is about how we cultivate life-affirming cultures in our organizations. By starting to see and sense the organization as a “Living System” rather than as a “Machine,” we can start to unlock the innate flows of life within our human communities and team dynamics.
Underpinning both Living Systems Design and Living Systems Culture is “Living Systems Being,” which is a quality of consciousness, a way of being, that is attuned with the way life works. By learning to center and ground ourselves, develop coherence with our inner and outer nature, we start to flow as nature flows. For example, when we enter nature through a forest bath, we may feel the flow of time and the space of silence. By facing oneself deeply in such an environment, the form of one’s own leadership becomes clear.
Two dynamics focused on life and leadership
There are two dynamics that connect the three elements of Design-Culture-Being that make up regenerative leadership. These two dynamics are “Life Dynamics” and “Leadership Dynamics.”
In “Life Dynamics,” there are two waves, “Divergence” and “Convergence,” through the interweaving of which life emerges. Hutchins and his colleagues apply these dynamics to organizational development to enable today’s organizations to become more emergent, agile and future-fit.
There is also the “Leadership Dynamics” of self-awareness combining with systemic awareness to create regenerative leadership consciousness.
Self-awareness is the quality of leadership consciousness we bring to the present moment. This has two dimensions – the horizontal dimension and the vertical dimension. The horizontal dimension is the quality of presence we bring to this moment, which relates to our ability to be aware of our own triggers, judgments, emotions and projections. The second dimension, the vertical dimension, is the perceptual horizon or worldview we are open to. How much of the world are we actually seeing, and how open are our filters to reality, in its fullness of interrelationals. This relates to adult developmental psychology.
Then there is “systemic awareness,” which is about being aware of invisible ordering forces and hidden connections within yourself and within your organization.
Hutchins applies these two leadership dynamics of self and systemic awareness into his leadership development coaching and business advisory work.
Awareness of self and system
Hutchins: How do you see an organization as a living system rather than a mechanical one? Western management theory was limited to a mechanical perspective, but now there is a movement to see an organization as layers of complex, adaptive, diverse and relational components. Shifting how we see and sense the organization shifts how we embrace change and transformation in the system.
What Hutchins emphasizes in “Regenerative Leadership” is revitalizing the super-sensory aspects of our natural human capacity. At the same time, those supernatural parts are equipped with natural wisdom, and various things such as intuitive knowing and synchronistic insights that help us in these volatile, fast-paced business climes. Hutchins said that the idea that our bodies themselves have intelligence is gradually being accepted along with the importance of intuitive and emotional intelligence, all acting together to activate our super-nature.
Hutchins: In “Regenerative Leadership,” we integrate four different ways of knowing – the rational, intuitive, emotional and somatic. This integrated intelligence opens us up to sensing the living-system dynamics of the organization, which are subtle and beyond what the rational mind alone can measure and monitor.
An integrated perspective
In regenerative leadership, “sustainability” is not divided into culture, strategy, leadership development, etc., but integrated.
“Divergence” and “Convergence” of “Life Dynamics” are important in practicing such work. “Divergence” means that ways of working are open, diverse and creative, and “convergence” means that we balance the diversity and creativity with some ground rules, agile structures and sense of purpose and alignment. Also, “convergence” does not impose from above, instead is emanating from each person, and within the network of teams and their ways of relating. People take responsibility for learning, and by balancing divergence and convergence, the resilience, suppleness and agility of the organization unfolds.
Hutchins: As we embrace the logic of life and promote collective leadership for a prosperous future, we feel that shifting consciousness is an inherent ability of human beings. By integrating Eastern and Western wisdom and focusing on “life,” we can develop our natural abilities. A futurist said that the future of the 21st century would be created not by technology but by an expanding concept of what it means to be human. Rethinking ourselves as human beings able to tune in to nature’s wisdom is regenerative leadership, and I think it is the key to living in harmony with all life as human beings.
Rich dialogues that emerge from nature
Next, a discussion was held with Yamada, the founder of Mori Co., Ltd., and Mr. Kobayashi, the co-representative and founder of Ecological Memes.
Yamada: I also host a “Forest Retreat” that takes leaders of organizations into the forest. I felt that there was a lot of overlap with what I had been wondering about for a long time.
Kobayashi: The key to reimagining – the concept that humanity starts from ourselves. “Reconnecting to Life,” I suppose. Would you tell us more about what actually happens when you take business leaders into nature and spend some time together, Giles?
Hutchins: I think the core of today’s business problems is the disconnection from ourselves, from each other and from nature. Over the last two decades, I’ve been involved in business transformation and have seen how best to connect nature’s inspiration to business. Specifically, we hold workshops to bring leaders and coaches into nature. In such a workshop, I think it is important to immerse yourself in nature, and have an embodied sense of connection with nature.
This workshop is a very simple method, but it has a great effect. When you are in nature, you can notice a lot of simplicity. When you sit in nature and feel something, your feet will touch and connect with the Earth and open yourself to the energy of the universe. That helps you develop a capacity to accept the complexity of the world as it is, and you can make quick decisions without being confused by complexity even in the world of business. That insight goes inside your life and helps leaders.
Hutchins shared that this is a feeling of opening the mind and heart, while grounding into the Earth. With that feeling, interacting with others and listening to them in a deeply connected compassionate way. Through such practices, he says, we will explore the magnificence of existence and allow ourselves and others to dance with nature’s rhythms.
Hutchins: Business discussions then flow from this quality of consciousness, it is the “quality” of being that brings them up that is important. I also use my head, but I use the awareness of my entire body, and the wider field or “Logic of Life” we are immersed in. We are trying to affirm life by connecting with it through nature. By doing so, it will lead to a business that empowers life.
Yamada: I have also taken managers into the forest. When we talk in front of the bonfire about where we are, what we are having trouble with, what we are feeling, and where we want to go, only the really important things come out. Not only about the business, but fundamental questions about the person him or herself. Then, a regained sense of connection to themselves and to one another naturally leads to a larger systemic shift that opens up in front of us.
Hutchins: Leaders maintain the flow of energy within the organization and spread the energy that enters the organization. In addition, they sense into the soil of the corporate culture and consider whether they trust each other. Cultivating a culture of trust is a key defining factor for successful 21st-century future-fit businesses.
Why we need to look at AWAI as a path to life-affirmation
Even if organizations have the potential for the interconnected flow of energy emerging within them, most of them are not spotlighted in many organizations. That’s why Kobayashi thinks of the necessity of a physiological safe space where people affirm what they feel and cherish.
Kobayashi: In order to foster that kind of awareness within organizations, I feel that it is important to foster a safe space of “AWAI.” AWAI is an ancient Japanese concept of the plural, ambiguous, and non-dualistic space between selves, and I believe we need to restore that kind of space embracing complex wholeness and ambiguity that is not explained in reductive and analytic rationality
I would like to ask Giles about the importance of such “space.”
Hutchins: Creating a safe place is to create a space that allows creativity and insights from nature to flow through yourself, and where people feel psychologically safe enough to be in that flow, undefended, open, vulnerable and compassionate. The challenge is how to bring out not only the “light” part but also the “shadow” parts of the system – the challenging tensions, difficult conversations, negative gossip, etc. It is a process of integration that happens through safe spaces where people can share what is coming up for them in their relations and their teams, the good and the not-so-good. This is the essence of” regenerative” to work through tensions and reveal learning and evolution. From the mud comes the lotus flower, as the Buddha knew many centuries ago.
Kobayashi: The dynamic process is very important, isn’t it? I feel that the intellect that sees such a dynamic world as a dynamic flow has been nurtured in Eastern philosophy and ancient wisdom. Hutchins’ co-authored book, “Regenerative Leadership,” mentioned indigenous wisdom and “Yin and Yang.” Any points to share about the inspiration you got from them?
Hutchins: Certainly, the underlying idea may be Eastern thought. There are dual-tensions in the world, such as yin and yang, and how they interrelate and create the third, through alchemy, is how life evolves. This is a view of the world in the wisdom of the Orient, and may have influenced Egypt, Shinto, and even Buddhism. Since these are derived from the way of life, it can be said that they are inspired by “nature.”
I think it is necessary to become aware of the existence of life in the process of our growth, notice that we are in “AWAI” composed of undetectable things, and reaffirm our existence in living organizations and relationships.
Letting go and dancing with life
Finally, it was time to share what each speaker felt through this session. In addition, we asked Hutchins for his thoughts on the expression “Dancing with nature system” in his co-authored book, and the keys to continuing a deep “awareness” in daily life.
Yamada: One of the things that is said in the book is an active hope for what will come out in the future. While there is currently a system that does cause suffering and conflict, there are also “fields” and “universes” that envelop all of it. When we feel a connection with such things, hope appears, and the power to create a new mechanism springs up. This is hard to understand with the head, but I think it is a feeling that resides in many people.
Hutchins: First of all, I think it is important to trust life. Perhaps you may be confused in the process. However, if you concentrate on this moment and trust yourself, and open into the tensions of life, this engages in active hope.
Also, enhancing “awareness” of life in our daily lives is an act of love. It may seem irrational, but it is deepening our love of life, which is what we now need in today’s challenging times. See the sunrise and sunset and immerse yourself in those times and spaces. It’s easy to say, but hard to do in practice. It is the “ego” that gets in the way. We build our own “prison” with ego, but the system doesn’t need it. I think we need to feel and acknowledge our freedom, self-agency and collective-responsibility to get out of prison, to learn to become truly human in this more-than-human world. This is an act of love and of active hope – opening up more consciously into every day as a learning journey.
Kobayashi: We live in the era of the great turning where human civilization has come to a standstill, and we need to re-encounter the concept of what it means to be human on this planet. I believe the important key will be fostering the attitude and mindset to dance with the world of life, including the rhythm of ourselves, others, organizations and myriad levels of living systems. Thank you, Giles and Hiroshi, for a great session.
Editor’s Note
“Regenerative” is a word that has been attracting attention in recent years. I felt that the power of “regenerative leadership” is to open up organizations and people and regenerate them into a truly creative space. I think “regenerative leaders” are those who attune themselves to the dynamics flowing throughout the organization and steer the entire ship based on this attunement, rather than try to control the people in the organization.
Recently, as efforts for a better society such as sustainability and “ethical life” are being made, I feel that there is a tendency to overemphasize efficiency. The speed of such actions is important, but to capture the essence of “what is good for society,” it is necessary to pay attention to the inner sustainability of each person who takes action. Regenerative leadership that promotes the flowering of one’s sensibility and nurtures the soil of the entire organization will become more and more important in the future.
Regenerative leadership is a grand theme, and you may find that it has a long way to go. The first step in this long path might be to tune in more closely to our body, heart, and mind, so that we can restore a deep connection to our inner worlds.
You can purchase the archive videos of all sessions on Ecological Memes online store here: Regenerative Leadership: Systemic Transformation, and Dancing with the Rhythm of Nature (with Giles Hutchins).
This article is translated and originally published on IDEAS FOR GOOD.
