BY GILES HUTCHINS & LAURA STORM LAURA STORM is the Founder of Regenerators and a global expert on Regenerative Leadership and Business and has led multiple international organizations including Copenhagen Climate Council and Sustainia. Awarded the title "Worldchanger" by Greenbiz, named one of the 30 leading women within sustainability and regeneration by Sustainable Brands, a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader and co-author of the much appraised book Regenerative Leadership. GILES HUTCHINS is a pioneering practitioner, executive coach and senior adviser at the forefront of the [r]evolution in regenerative leadership. Previously held corporate roles - Head of Practice for KPMG, and Global Head of Sustainability for Atos (150,000 employees, over 40 countries). 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) and Regenerative Leadership (2019).
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There is no doubt. We are living in a time marked by great upheaval and change, where the breakdown of global systems has become impossible to ignore. Leaders - both political and business - are being forced to cope with rising challenges: pandemics; resource scarcity; high levels of stress in the work place; unpredictable, frequent and disruptive innovations; rampant social inequality; constant competition for top talent; increasing volatility and changing stakeholder expectations; rapid digitization and globalization; mass migrations and refugee populations; fragile supply chains; mounting social tensions; political extremism… The list goes on but you get the picture. On top of all this, the climate of our planet is changing faster than expected, putting additional critical pressure on all our systems. Our biosphere is collapsing with up to 1000 species going extinct every day. We have created production systems that are based on a linear, take-make-waste approach focused on immediacy and dehumanization. We have created financial systems based on short-term profit maximization that ignore life and debase human integrity. Our organizational systems are dominated by hyper-competition, power-and-control hierarchies, and rising stress. In our current environment, the few benefit at the expense of the many. The old systems and structures of a post-industrial hyper-consumerist culture are slowly breaking down. The old ways cannot go on, and through this breakdown, we are witnessing pioneers all over the world birthing the conditions for a new way. These pioneers believe there is a better way – to live and do business. They are rebuilding systems and structures and instilling new business practices that actually contribute to life on Earth rather than destroying it. For years we have been studying these pioneers, worked with them and witnessed how they impressively through every little action are carving out new ways of
doing business, of leading and of living. A new paradigm, not only for business but for life on Earth, is being born these years. What these pioneers have in common is how they focus on ensuring their organisations have both an ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ regenerative approach. The ‘inner’ being culture - everything from meetings, feedback, conversations, decision-making, self-managing approaches, adult-adult relations, diversity and inclusion and wellbeing. The ‘outer’ being value propositions – everything from products and services to stakeholder-relations, product design, supply chain, etc. For a business to be on the regenerative journey it ought be attending to both the ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ dimensions so that all aspects of its business seek life-affirming futures that enable the employees, the stakeholders and wider society and the environment to thrive. What does regenerative mean? Is it the same as sustainability? We were running Regenerative Leadership retreats and workshops many years ago when seldom folk had even heard of ‘regenerative business’. Now, a few years on, and there is a rising zeitgeist around ‘regenerative’. The term is getting more and more attention and major corporations such as Walmart, Danone, Unilever, General Mills and PepsiCo have started to use the term to communicate aspects of their strategic vision. But what does the term ‘regenerative’ actually mean, and what about ‘regenerative business’ and ‘regenerative leadership’? Regenerative means to renew, replenish, heal, revitalize. Which, in practice, means to understand and work with the living-system dynamics of the organization and its wider ecosystem; to work in ways that allow the business to become life-affirming. Essentially, ‘regenerative’ is to attune with the way nature works. And ‘regenerative business’ enriches all stakeholders including wider society and the environment; a business that is committed to becoming life-affirming in all its facets, both inner-and-outer: culture, operations, strategy and ecosystem. ‘Regenerative leadership’ is a way of leading that cultivates life-affirming conditions. It is a shift in consciousness from a reductive/mechanis-
Foto: Regenerators
A SUSTAI NAB LE TOMORROW
LE AD E RS H I P
WHY REGENERATIVE LEADERSHIP HAS TO BE THE NEW NORM IN BUSINESS
