 It's not about us asserting ourselves, it's not about us fixing the world, it's about us, as you said earlier, learning to get back in tune so that we can feel the heartbeat of the universe. Giles Hutchins is my guest on this episode of Inside Ideas brought to you by 1.5 Media, Innovators Magazine and sponsored by the Aloha's Regenerative Foundation. Giles Hutchins is an executive coach and senior advisor at the forefront of the revolution 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 in 2012, The Illusion of Separation 2014, Future Fit, which I happen to have right here in front of me, Future Fits right there, Leading by Nature, which I have right here as well, 2022 just came out hot off the presses and also this wonderful book, Regenerative Leadership. He is the chair of the Future Fit Leadership Academy and founder of Leadership Immersion, co-founder of BioMimicry for Creative Innovation and Regenerators. He runs an international leadership center at Springwood Farm, an area of the outstanding nature beauty near London, UK. A nice spot, I've seen some videos of it, I haven't been there personally, but I hope to convince him to get an invite very soon. Previously held corporate roles, head of transformation practice for KPMG, global director and head of sustainability for ATOS, which has about 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, regenerative leadership and guest lectures at international business schools. His latest podcast series can be found in the link of this podcast and it is at thenatureofbusiness.org where he also writes a blog and gives us plenty of wonderful information. Giles, welcome to the podcast. Real pleasure to be here with you today, Mark. It's an honor. Thank you. You're most welcome. Thank you so much. I really am glad that you found the time. I know you do a lot of different things and are all over. If I understand correctly, I want to start out slow and get a little bit more history on how you started out on this journey and you've been doing this for over 10 years now, so a decade, maybe exactly if you could tell us exactly how long and has there been an evolution in yourself that you've seen where you started out maybe 10, 12, 15 years ago? How that has evolved and changed and shifted over time or has after your studies and after you completed everything, was it always the way we're seeing it now in your books? Yeah, the journey started quite early on for me. I had a sort of quite a profound out-of-body experience when I was quite young which stayed with me for many years and then when I was a teenager, actually around the age of 15, a maths teacher actually showed us as a class films of animals being tested on, alive, in laboratories and animals being skinned alive and abattoirs and so forth and that sent me down a rabbit hole and so that led me to all sorts of explorations which then by the age of 17 or 18, having flirted with activism and so forth, I made a promise to myself and that promise to myself, that commitment was to go into business, to use the mind that I had been gifted with to understand why and how business was seem to be clashing with life on earth. I then went on a bit of a journey and that took me through finance, law, real estate and then into management consultancy and helping all sorts of businesses around the world through various transformations and in that, if you like, that sense of a bit like a journey of separation because I actually went into the belly of the beast and in the process started to lose my sense of deep connection with nature, actually, global travel, suits, business meetings, back to backs, 400 emails a day, you name it. In that process, I just kept the thread going and then made good of my promise. So when I made good of my promise was actually around 2005, 2006 with the David Attenborough program, who's he spoke directly to me when he said the time is now, if we don't do something we are, he'll apparently damaging the fabric of life on earth and that was my calling that got me to stand up straight and make good on my promise. Otherwise, I was convincing myself to stay in business, to become a CEO and then from that place in business, I would then be a force for good for that. Instead, I then pressed the eject button and first started in sustainable business. So I became global head of sustainability for a large multinational and learned to hell of a lot about sustainability and the ins and outs of it and making the business case for sustainability. But then I went further and this process was happening inside me as a metamorphic process when I look back on it at the time, you can always make sense of it. But the very clear message I was getting was this was about a sense of disconnection from nature. We had become disconnected from life itself and we can explore later what we really mean by nature, it's not just trees and bushes and so forth. That deep sense of disconnection was creating the problems and that we could go about sustainable business for instance, but if we went about sustainable business without that sense of connectedness, then we were potentially creating further problems. And so I went deeper and left corporate life completely and that was about 10 years ago when my first book, The Nature of Business came out. And yes, over that time, over the last 10 to 15 years, I've been really actively engaging in this space around learning from living systems. How do we reconnect business and nature? My thinking and my way of communicating has, I would like to think, evolved and certainly in that journey I've learned a hell of a lot. But the deep underlying felt sense is the same as when I was seven years old. I thank you so much for that because it's something that can be tickled out a little bit from your books, but it's so vital and it's going to set up nicely what we're going to talk about on how your experiences and the dealings with the businesses and the people you coach and individuals, how there are similar transformations that occur when you try to apply regenerative models or regenerative practices into business as usual or normal corporations and how there is an evolution or transformation, a shift that needs to occur one way or the other in those individuals as well. I have to confess, since I've read Jeremy Lent's book, The Web of Meaning, I've been going around basically telling everybody it's the best book I've ever read. When I read, and this is by happenstance, so I want to give a little bit of the backstory as well, I first read Regenerative Leadership because of Laura Storm and what I heard and saw from her and other groups from John Elkington to Daniel Christian Wall where I read this book and then I became so intrigued about your contributions and who you were that I immediately went out and got Future Fit and then I read that and then I was already like, oh, I like this guy, this is singing my song, this is the information that I love and then I reached out to you and I asked you if you would do a podcast and in that you suggested I read your latest book, Leading by Nature and also some of your other books and I ended up reading them all. I actually went back and read this twice and I absolutely love it, it is fabulous and I believe, I have to say it's the key I've been looking for, not only in my own work but in a tool that a lot of businesses, organizations and individuals need to even fathom or make an understanding of where the future of their organization will need to go to keep up with our exponentially growing world with the way that the world works at all instead of this continual battle of capitalism or a really extractive type of economies or models out there that have a limit to growth, have a burnout rate, have an end to the future of work so to say and the question that I really not only make that statement that is such a fabulous book but in your past dealings with all the organizations you've taught, all the individuals, when you're talking to them or trying to convince them that there's another model that works similar to the way nature and life works inherently, is that for most of these organizations an esoteric thing, is this kind of like a weird, like you're talking about consciousness, you're talking about regeneration, are you some kind of a hippie tree hugger, what does that have to do with business? I want to hear about some of those struggles or some of those stories from you on what that feels like and if those are things that you run into they're saying we're concerned about the bottom line, why are you telling me I need to take a step back and realize how the world works, I'd love to hear some of those stories. Yes and this is really the real challenge is helping to provide a bridge from one world to another and back to that, watching that film or that video when I was 15 years old, what was interesting, two very interesting things came out of that experience for me, one was it led me down a rabbit hole of understanding what civilization was really about but the other was that everyone was in that classroom, was shocked, was hurt, you could see it in their eyes, it was something deeply wrong, by two lessons after, so two and a half hours after, most people had moved on even though it was obviously deeply shocking and worrying, most people had moved on, by the weekend me and two other people were still on it, everybody else had moved on, by the following Monday it was me, now that isn't to say that in any way I had something that the others didn't, it was more to recognize how easy it is for us to get caught up in a way of engaging with life, we are malleable, we are plastic, we are open, we are conscious, emotional cognitive spiritual beings and much of the time we are woefully unaware of our potency and impact and our ability to be programmed, so that was a really interesting insight for me very early on because I could see whoa, hang on, we're up against things here, this isn't a case of just producing some videos, this isn't a case of communicating a message, this is a case of trying to unlearn mass programming and then try and relearn something, on that journey what I found is two very powerful things that we have on our site, Mark, one is that we are all, and I noticed this in business in some of the darkest corners I've been in, that we are actually, we wish to be loved and to love each of us, no matter how psychopathic we've developed ourselves and often the psychopathic tendencies I've met in narcissistic leaders, as a result of them earlier on in their life being very sensitive and having to close to out because of a lack of love in some way, so that's important to recognize that there is this capacity, there is this open door in all of us and the second is that actually this unlearning and relearning is in itself a bit of an illusion because it's always here, always has been and always will be, so we're not actually inviting in a whole host of new things for us to equip ourselves with, we're just opening our eyes to what we already said and I just wanted to say that because there is some good here, a lot of good, that said the reality of building a bridge from our current mindset into something that is more along the lines of what we're exploring here, your dead right is fraught with, this is hippie, this is nothing to do with business, we haven't got time for this or there's always some challenge, either we're growing and we're doing well so we haven't got time or we're declining so we have to cut costs so we haven't got time, so one has to go right in, right in through the cracks into and this is why I coach leaders one to one actually a lot, even though there's a lot of good in the peer group learning and journeys that people engage with, to really engage with the key leaders in an organization and to allow them to go through their own threshold crossings, their own shifts in meaning making, so they feel it, they sense it, they know it, that you're activating, you're reactivating and remembering in them, now whether that be going back to their childhood or whether it be ancestral connections or whether it be something that they know and there's something to them that is emerging in them anyway, so a lot of these leaders are going from midlife crises in some way or shifts in meaning making and another bit of good news is that the current situation with the levels of stress and challenge and mental health and breakdown is actually helping stimulate that shift, that threshold crossing, but yes the short answer is yeah, day to day challenges of having to engage with why is this, why am I needing to do this and so one has to be a little bit street wise just like I was with developing the business case for sustainability back in corporate days is you have to play the game a bit, you have to meet people where they're at and go actually hang on a minute, this is about future fitness, this is about helping your culture become more agile and this is about unlocking the potential of your people, so your high performing talent wants to stay here, this is about enhancing your brand, this is about ensuring your value propositions actually are engaging people rather than just transactional, all of which the business mind starts to get and the likes of McKinsey and some of the big strategy players are singing that tune and so there is a message out there which is actually hang on a minute we need to do business differently so one has to ensure that message fits with that, the challenge comes if the message just stays at that level then you're meeting people where they're at and adding a bit on you're not actually taking them on a journey of a threshold crossing which is what is essential. That's amazing so you unlocked a few things one you said it's pretty much the way it's always been there I believe was the terminology you used and I want to unpack that a little bit more and go deeper so it's always been there for me says it's the way the world has always worked and so if we align with that model the way the world's always worked and that nature and then our business is not only going to be future fit but it's going to be an alignment with the way the world works already and we're not going to have these siloed or mechanistic type of approaches lean scrum agile black belt jiu jitsu whatever they want to call it is is a form of a fight a battle or a way to mechanize nature in the natural world we're living beings whether we're an organization or an employee within that natural world that is trying to and I hate to say in many respects just capitalize to to survive for the future but I believe there's a core model that you've talked about in all your books especially this last book that it's not only always been here but it's a model that is symbiotic it's always been the way the world has worked you also tickle in a couple of your books you tickle in this neoliberalism neo-darwinism natural selection survival of the fittest that's somehow we thought was the way that the world worked to competing and natural selection and survival of the fittest that that's the way the world worked but that's not how the world has ever worked it's in symbiosis cooperation collaboration not only biomimicry which you also touch upon but on adopting and being part of the natural world or part of this world that is the way the world's always worked and it works much better when you do that model am I correct in kind of what I'm saying understanding in that as well yeah I mean we can dive into detail here because the good news is or the interesting thing is is what I talk about in leading by nature is this shift from achiever mindset into regenerative now it's easy for our minds to be binary this is the challenge especially we like to think okay we're shifting from one into another in reality we're shifting from achiever into achiever and regenerative yeah we don't lose the achiever we need the achiever but the achiever becomes a tool that serves the deeper purpose yeah so we have these tensions inside in in life so life is full of tensions it rises as far as we can understand out of this field of stillness and then goes into movement and as it goes into movement the yin yang symbol represents it very powerfully we quite quickly go into tensions of energy which could be seen as polarities but they're actually continua yeah part of the same thing they're just stretches like strings if you like to masculine feminine and so forth light and dark and passive and active and that's how life works I talk about divergence and convergence and it's that tension of both of those that creates emergence the way in which nature flows and the same happens inside ourselves it happens in our living organizations and we need it for our teams for the organization to adapt and evolve but the same is going on in us so we have just inside the brain a number of little healthy tensions going on we have the dorsal and the ventral ways of attending this is the dorsal is much more kind of focused and goal orientated which is quite exciting and we have an objective and we get going and that gives us a heightened sense of getting things done but when it's constantly on all the time it becomes grasping it becomes our guide and we get that feeling of insecurity I'm not doing enough and oh and that leads to burnout or actually a less good quality delivery of purpose and so we need the ventral which is more expansive more awakening more deeper sense of purpose we also have the left and right brain hemispheres quite big regions of the brain which again have these quite different healthy tensions of perceiving life left brain hemispheres like mechanistic drilling down into the parts abstracting things out of their living context yeah and we need to do that as human beings we need to be able to deal with this relational world of us but when we get too caught up in that again it comes with a heightened sense of oh yeah we know about something and we can make it clear and everything becomes a project management gantt chart or we run our businesses through an excel spreadsheet or profit and loss account and whoa and that's where the business case for sustainability or valuing whales for instance or dolphins because of their carbon capture and storage capacity but things like that get too caught up they come from a good place perhaps but it gets too mechanistic needs to be balanced with the right brain hemispheres sees more of the interconnections and then we also have just in the head again you have the top forehead insular region which again is this sort of sense of driving forward and then the back of the head the what they call the parental region which is much more open to the awakened mind to intuition so just going on here there are these healthy tensions that you can imagine let alone when we go into the body with the sympathetic power sympathetic cortisol and adrenaline versus oxytocin so it's all of these so you get these healthy and so we are part of this divergence convergence little creative dance that is sitting within the lovely creative alchemic dance of life this choreography of dance so we're immersed within it it's going on within our own cells it's going on with our genes it's going on with us and so understanding that helps us recognize when we get too caught up or out of kilter too caught and snared on one way of being now what the yin yang symbol does very powerfully for us and this is where ancient wisdom traditions are great and they all align quite frankly even where they come from the east or the west or when you look deep into them they all align around this fact which is that when we deeply connect into source then it's the yin that is the basis and that yang rises out of it yeah so it's what laosu means in his early work know them the masculine yet keep in the feminine yeah so it's one needs to be applying that dorsal that left brain hemisphere that mechanistic that nowing down but always then remaining in connected to the field to life and what we're doing and what we have done is get caught up in a journey of separation where we've got out of kilter and we've got more caught up in the left brain hemisphere in the head in the outer yang doing in that dorsal activity which is getting as more and more intense for people walking around on their emails zoom calls not really looking where they are on the street mental health going out window depression people struggling rampant debt and inequality all of this is actually coming from this out of kilter way of attending to reality and unless we can rebalance that attentiveness then our ability to become a regenerative culture or to become a more sustainable organizational society is warped at best i absolutely love that and thank you for summarizing it and describing it so visually how we work we tend to see this quite a bit and the apps of a business not only being mechanistic and having that separation that we separate ourselves from the way the world works but in your books what i also really love is you this isn't hocus pocus magic this isn't esoteric in that respect you talk about dr fritzhoff capra you talk about system science chaos theory you talk about the yin and the yang so Taoism and some other forms of thought you talk about hard science that is proven this is a model of the way the world works and so it's not some kind of a chant or mantra or religious almost in that respect of what you're saying there's a lot of science and data which a lot of organizations want they're always saying give me my return on investment why is it and better to be regenerative or to be more sustainable what what is it going to cost more is it going to what's the benefit and there's always that in the beginning but it's proving especially during this pandemic time and this hard time that a lot of these leaders that you're mentioning are realizing that the models or the structure of their organization is just not working anymore it's not future fit like your book talks about it's not prepared for the future and it's almost that unbalance with the way that the world's working and so the organization doesn't keep up to speed with the future that we're moving towards love that that where you interject that and where the sources come from where that science comes from and those ancient or wisdom or old philosophies or thought processes and science comes from you talk about Lynn Margolis and the symbiosis and many other things and I as well for almost 28 years now I've been talking about some of those same things and for many of those years it was really interesting because people they looked at me like I was esoteric a hippie a tree hugger that I was saying mark what does a symbiotic earth or getting to the symbiosis mean or what's a regenerative business model or what's systems science or systems thinking that I thought I was speaking another language how does that affect the bottom line how do I do that how do I please my board on that and now during this craziness where I'm seeing and I hope hopefully you are as well seeing more people saying talking I was at Davos in May of this year they're talking about regeneration they're talking about regenerative business models and I'm not sure they know what that means it's a buzzword or trendy right now but I'm like wow that's unbelievable and so now the tools are in your book leading by nature and all your other books as well on where to look how to make that organization and it's almost and I know this isn't the right terminology so that's why I want to say it so that maybe you could phrase it in the right way it's a way to calculate that return on investment by aligning yourself and your organization with regenerative models with regenerative thinking with a symbiosis in the way the world works some of these shifts and consciousness in this transition before you even start to say not only in aligning myself and I'm going to have tons of benefits as an individual or leader in this organization but my entire organization is going to be future fit and the benefits are really going to be there we've seen that in those organizations that have made that shift are you seeing that as well how is I don't imagine you're not selling what you teach or what you coach to anyone I'm sure people are hitting a point where they're ready they're realizing that some of these models and systems don't work and then they're coming to you how do you take them on that last journey that last little transition to understanding yeah it's that's why I sometimes the one-to-one work is important because when people when a any person a human really starts to get it and that takes some time because you're inviting someone someone needs to be ready to your point of I'm not selling myself people come things I assume that when someone contacts me that it's because something's going on and when we usually then start working together if it feels right if the connection's right then quite quickly one recognizes oh okay I get now why they're here and what's going on because I've had people come here sometimes and say or if it's online saying I need help with organization going more efficient effectiveness or future fit and I'm like that's not what I do but and then when you get past that initial bit you go okay some of that is a defense mechanism a person knows that they're after something else but they don't know how to verbalize that they don't and they and because I've come from is I have not only trained in leadership development with my own diplomas and masters and so forth but I've actually been a leader in corporate in the cutting-edge bit of high stress corporate life and ran many large p&l's and so forth and programs have changed I can empathize with where the person is coming from and therefore I feel they are able to trust me to a certain extent that I'm not a seen as something someone who doesn't know what they're talking about so to start off within those early dance moves if you like what it is about what is this how how's this going to help me with my e-commerce platform how's this going to and you need to be able to talk about that if you can't and you're just on an island right out there in the deep woods then it's difficult for people to reach and connect but quite quickly and I had a so as an example I had a CEO from a Dutch organization here just two days ago and we had three hours together and at the end of it I said wow do you feel this was his first session I said how do you feel and he said I didn't realize we were going to move so quickly and you've got to move quite quickly in those early stages one to see whether that person's ready for this and two so they get so they go okay this isn't just coaching this isn't then saying some stuff and me asking some questions to invite in a deeper exploration that's obviously important but it's more it's okay let's really explore where is your business where is your organization where are you at and you're like and you have to do quite a lot in those first couple of sessions for them to go great okay gosh whoa and then you can work and then that work is actually holding space for that person that psyche to open for them to feel safe enough to open to actually dare to explore some of this stuff which to them could feel a bit like well what is that and how does it relate to the business so you're just giving them you're holding a space for them to go it's okay to explore that it is good for your business it is going to help your business this it is going to help you you may be unpicking the very things that you feel have enabled you to be successful to get to this step in your life but don't worry that's okay so that's quite important for them to get to a stage of trusting not just me but trusting this process of opening to life and then it's not going to end up becoming a mess with them just being on the floor and not able to hold down a job that actually it's going to make them a better leader it's going to help their organization become rich i love that and what i realized is so i i said at the beginning of our podcast this is sponsored by the alohas regenerative foundation and when i finished this the first time i immediately said i want everybody core founding member of the foundation to go through this book to read it or to actually get some kind of a training support from you i've spoken about it in in similar ways but different times and different sorts of presentations a lot of the same things that you've discussed in your book or that you hone in on in the book and what i've heard over the years is a lot of people are so stuck in the in the rut of business as usual where and how their mechanistic jobs work or their mechanistic views of organizations tell me what to do this is my job description and not being part of an organization or not being part of this change to be future fit and that it's like frederick lalu's book reinventing organizations and teal organizations and just talking about this is your family you spend the majority of your time with these people why not enjoy it and be the best you can and also not just get monetary benefit out of it but get a whole plethora of other benefits out of changing the way you look and i see that a lot of people even at the un at the world economic form level in my own foundation tend to be numb or desensitized in some respects about some of these new concepts that it's not about change or agile or kpis you also discuss that type of talking which are really all past performance indicators and have very little to do with the future or even reaching the future and it's basically repeating old models and old mistakes so to say that they don't get up because they're just numb or desensitized but because of the pandemic because of the war in your Ukraine because of the new president in brazil because of brexit or whatever crisis that's going on in the world they're starting to say boy these systems are not no longer these business models are no longer working for me what's a new model what could be better and looking and so i the question is i know you have your farm and this acreage where you bring people and i don't know if that's how this last leader from Denmark went through the session with you but it is also a big part of the environment that you're reconnecting him to nature by doing some of this work outside or is that not always necessary in this journey and is it part of setting up that other environment that when i say zombie or numb or desensitize people that they've separated the natural world and so they're in a sterile business environment they're surrounded by computers and phones and technology is there as part of the process as well that you let's go on a walk let's go out in the trees is and what part of that function also do you use and hopefully you understand what i'm trying to ask and say to you there yeah there's there's a lot there in family market teasing out some really good stuff here i think there's something just to start with there's something around the inner and the outer here that feels important to share so our inner psyche our deeper nature with all the shadow projections and stuff that we've stuffed in about what people think of us and so forth and our own dharma our own true essence and then the outer nature of us how are we showing and again that's affected by our inner nature but also conditioned programings and so forth and and our own energy levels and so on then there's the inner nature of the organization the way in which people are showing up every day if you just said why not make it and make it a place where people really unlock their brilliance surely that that makes good sense and then the outer nature of the organization which is these value propositions stakeholder relationships how are we actually engaging with everyone are we looking are we treating someone over there just managing the margin whereas over here giving some money to a charity because it's good for the brand what's the integrity of how we're showing up as well and that that journey is important for both the organization as a living system and for the individual leaders and everyone in the organization by the way is a form of of need in some way so when I engage with someone to your question there what how key here is allowing that shift and there are shifts in meaning making that we have in our lives and quite profound ones some studies say it's every seven or eleven years around that sort of rhythm but certainly there are some quite meaningful threshold crossings around late adolescence into early adulthood and around what has been called a midlife crisis which can be from any age by the way I've coached people through that at the age of in their sixties or in their late thirties not about age it's more about how are you engaging with that and how are you processing that but those moments are where the inner and the outer are starting to try and engage and they're quite important very important because there are opportunities to allow something deeper to come through and the same for the organization actually the organization as a living system has these patterns that we can superimpose on to human life if we wish in terms of age which is sometimes helpful but it definitely they go through these upstretch moments like a startup does well and becomes a b-corp becomes purposeful but then gets to around 150 or so people and some of the more corporate people come in and they want to find revenue they want to take it to 500 mil and quite frankly why not because it increases its impact and so forth but in the process it changes and then it hopefully gets to a point where it starts to go okay that maybe too much of that how do I re-engage so for the leader this inner outer relationship this threshold crossing this metamorphic unfolding yes nature is a powerful medium for that there's no doubt about it because of course that's helping us with the inner outer however a lot of the people I coach online and thanks to covid actually before covid I wasn't that keen on that and therefore I was probably limiting my reach but actually people reached out during covid and I have proven time and again that one can take leaders through powerful journeys completely online now I give people homework in between those sessions so actually the online sessions are just their check-in processes themselves but actually the work happens between the sessions and yes I usually give homework to people where they find spots in nature where they can start connecting and doing this with someone the other day just from an organization in France and we were working with how they can actually do a practice that they developed in nature more often because that's helping them connect in an energetic way with a sense of place with a sense of other with a sense of and how shall I put this that we're not experiencing reality reality is experiencing itself through us and that's quite a significant shift from I'm this sort of separate being in the world with my little piece to offer into actually I'm a self that is participating co-creating co-evolving within the world symbiosis is part of that that is a shift now it's all well and good having words around that actually you need to have an embodied experience of that so allowing the leader to have many peak experiences or shifting that actually these peak experiences don't have to happen when I'm on holiday halfway up a mountain they can happen in the day in fact we can open ourselves to more of that more information more wisdom comes in it helps us with that shift and so that's important so yes nature is a powerful tool for that but it doesn't have to be going deep inside our own sense of self through meditation for instance in a basement in a factory can also allow a deep sense of connection to inner nature yeah recently saw you on I don't know if it was the volans book club or on volans a little kind of video interview podcast about the book volans is fabulous because of green swans john elkington the triple bottom line I don't know if I'm sure you do that john elkington 2018 recalled the triple bottom line people plan and profit mainly because of his work with the world business council for sustainable development he was seeing people using that as a accounting principle mainly focusing in on the profits and forgetting about people on planet and so he recalled it but then what a lot of people didn't realize as the recall came back out with with responsibility resilience and regeneration in his book green swans he says on the subtitle of green swans it's regenerative capitalism and so my question is I love john I love lou lou keller up she's wonderful but is that even possible regenerative capitalism question that I'd like to get your take on is regenerative capitalism something possible or is that an oxymoron we're back to our bridges again well if I cut straight to the chase the one scares off the horses yeah either evolving capitalism is healthy no doubt about it and so regenerative capitalism is an evolution of capitalism which is healthy because some capitalism if we go on a deep dive and which I've done in the illusion of separation which was hugely useful for me and my own understanding of things does find its roots in mechanistic materialism now what does that mean that actually it's overly focused on that left brained hemisphere approach compartmentalizing things into capitals that can be measured and can be controlled and owned and revenue streams generating from them now back to our point that we said earlier on we're shifting from achiever to regenerative in reality we're actually shifting from achiever to regenerative and achiever yeah i achieve is a kind of tool that helps serve the underlying regenerative capacity i.e we're not getting rid of the dorsal we're not getting rid of the left brain hemisphere and so forth no we need them they're part of what makes us human they're special the ego isn't something to be dissolved it's a useful tool that serves our capacity to deal in this relational world and let's pause it for a moment mark because otherwise we could get ourselves into a much deeper philosophical conversation but let's pause it for a moment but actually capitalism is a useful tool that serves it has been useful it has delivered in many ways on many of its kpi's even if those kpi's are too mechanistic that the wider picture has crumbled as a result of those delivery and so therefore that tool just like we talked about the achiever mindset can sit within something deeper and there's no reason why that tool that socio-economic narrow view on things that breaks things down into parts and that manage manages and measures and so forth could not also be a useful part of our future so i'm not here to throw mud at capitalism i feel we've gone on a journey for many reasons and that journey has been immensely useful for our civilization and our civilization is getting to a point now of quite a potential upstretch a momentous moment for our human way of being in the world and so let's build on what we've learned from the past and that's not about capitalism versus communism or individualism versus collectivism quite frankly or even left versus right in politics that's old news we need to transcend that and work with the aspects and start to set it within the way in which life on earth works that's not new cultures have been doing that for millennia the vast portion of our human history we have that in our muscle memory and yet we need to build a bridge so that we don't see it as something too big we see it as something that we can play stepping stones on and if regenerative capitalism is one of those stepping stones then i am supportive of it and you touched upon this just now the way the world works do you believe there's a set model is it a regenerative model the way the world works and can you be so bold to define that very specifically for us let's take the concept of reality so rather than us thinking we are perceiving reality and therefore on our process of evolution we're seeing more and more of how the world works and we're just getting deeper and closer to the truth it's one way of seeing it another way is recognizing that actually reality is perceiving itself through us that we are in a dance that we are in this universe or multiverse song that is informed by something beyond which our minds can comprehend that our minds or our brains at least of the brain the heart the gut three powerful neurological centers are tuning in to something that they're not actually producing they are of course co-creating and have self-agency but they're actually more like antennas or transducers than they are the and so that that shifts things and so we often think about how the world works and our minds naturally go to outer to fixing to let's get some principles about how to design products and services and so forth and we need that we need that so that gives us some stepping stones again that gives us some solidity in the ocean however if we get too caught on the solidity and forget the immensity of the ocean then we're just creating another little little illusion for ourselves and so how does the world work good news is that's beyond our capacity what we can do is tune in and learn to cultivate the capacity that we have as homo sapiens living up to our names wise beings and to actually start to activate natural capacities that we've always had the indigenous there was this film called Luna which looks at the Kogi in the Sierra Nevada and so this culture has really tried to keep on to its old indigenous roots throughout horrid attack from the mechanistic mind over the years and they are saying now is the time for us to share more of this wisdom and a BBC reporter went over there and produced a film some years ago and then did an upgrade of it to a Luna more recently and in the documentary there was a moment where it was so revealing where they brought the Kogi came over here chewing their tobacco and their robes and everything to some scientific labs in Cambridge to talk about astrophysics and you could see these top notch scientists some of the best brains in that mechanistic materialistic worldview explaining very proudly what we have found through these multi-billion bites and space stations that we've put up there on the edges of the universe we were discovering these things or out in our solar system and galaxy these nebulae and we had been showing this picture and one of the guys chewing this sort of tobacco and there with his long hair and so forth said something and that had translated it which is oh this pointing at something on the map going oh we call it such and so and you could see the scientist's mind his blood just drained from his face and you could see something had happened he had listened to this and the so the BBC reporter or the who used to be BBC reporter said but what was what what's happened what why what why did what he just say create a response and the scientist said it's unbelievable because he's talking about a star that we've only just discovered how would he know about it we've just discovered it and that shows a worldview collided yeah so you've got a very important mechanistic materialistic perspective which is brought huge strides in medicine transportation digitization you and i are enjoying now nothing wrong with it and that is showing us these nebulae and how red dwarfs work and all of these sorts of things and how it's discovered this new constellation and how important that is unable to understand that some people deeply connected to use the expression into the way the world works or deeply immersed into something beyond the rational mind is already able to have seen that and understand that and feel that is a chasm in our way of knowing and so the journey that we're taking is a powerful one because we're actually allowing ourselves to still hold on to the ability to develop space stations and 5g and agile teams and all of that good stuff that we need for today's world whilst opening up to this world that is beyond how we think it works but we are able to sense into it we are able to open into how life really is and just to say that it's not about us asserting ourselves it's not about us fixing the world it's about us as you said earlier learning to get back in tune so that we can feel the heartbeat of the universe again does that become difficult when you're speaking with these very data driven show me the numbers type of business people that say okay i need to see the results of that even though everything you talk about in your book is science-based it's very solid that is how our world is working and that's the direction for a better model when they're when they're saying oh being more sustainable or being more regenerative or adding that on my organization is that where's the data showing me that's a better model what what do i have you dealt with that have you run into that at all and what do you usually tell them and is that somebody who's not ready yet to be picked up and you say okay how do you deal with that yeah i've run into it all the time and i've learned to enjoy it rather than get triggered by it because it's okay it's back to this meeting people where they're at use spiral dynamics or some of the models that i've pulled together in in leading by nature you have this sort of orange green teal shift from mechanistic into regenerative we achieve into regenerative and the orange and the green levels that we have predominantly in organizations today so the orange being the sort of organization's machine and measuring monitoring controlling reducing having a handle our cost levers we need that it helps the business survive in the challenging time so it's not getting rid of that it's that's a basis but it's not just getting limited by that and then you've got that green which is more about sustainable business understanding stakeholder value well-being in the workplace diversity and inclusion all of that good stuff which is really starting to become stronger in the world at the moment but then teal living systems is a quite a significant shift on from both and so you're picking up in that language you were just sharing that you're picking up a leader talking about some stuff from orange some maybe stuff from green and so you've got to meet people where they're at there are tools out there that report people's awareness or happiness in the workplace or well-being or innovation that can be helpful however what's really important here is again to have some key leaders in the organization to get it and frederick the loo talks about this if you he's very specific he says if you don't have the ceo on board forget it now i would say that you could you can work in some big organizations that i'm working with where as long as you have some key people in there you can still do some really good stuff but if those key people don't get it then you are going to get caught up in when especially in times of challenge now when naturally the cost leave has come in so i'll give you a prime example and this is why we need to engage both the felt sense or the emotional or even though i say it's a spiritual aspect of the human being as well as the mechanistic we need to appeal to both otherwise we're going to get too caught up on the business model and not get both so an example is a client consumer goods company needing to ramp down costs going into the recession very obvious the c doing some filming here in the woods with some of the individuals from the company and it was actually some of the let's say less senior people in the organization sitting around the fire with the camera on them sharing whilst the ceo was chatting to me he started just listening because you could see the hairs on the back of the neck of the ceo when he was listening to a couple of the people sharing around the fire what this journey of becoming more regenerative had truly meant to them when one guy from relatively juniors to say early on in his career was saying to camera early on when we were starting to deal with this regenerative stuff i thought it was a load of bollocks i used to roll my eyes and think what is this is just going to be another fad that we're going to go through and it's taken me a while it's i've been now here at the organization for 12 months and honestly i have felt in my not just in my working life how it's enabled me to take more responsibility and accountability and work in a more effective way but in my personal life i've gone through a change and my family my friends have all noticed this and shared that back to me and i i know that it's because of this regenerative journey and you could see when the ceo heard that the hairs on the back of his neck changed and then another person straight after again quite a different person from an ethnic background very challenged up with again saying a very similar story but in a different way which was just struggled with a lot of this stuff but then after a while it really started getting into me and i was talking about quite a profound experience he had in his personal life and if it hadn't have been for this the tools that we'd been exploring he would have gone back under again in his social life and how as a result of this it's given him the resilience to carry through now moments like that which were i have to say unplanned it just happened and so it could have not happened and me we could have been just talking about the business case without those factors but when those factors come in it's clear for the leader to see okay this isn't just about enhancing the brand this isn't just about improving more efficiency and effectiveness in the business this isn't just about helping people work more effectively yes it needs to be about those things and you can make a good coherent case around them but it's also this is simply the right thing to do why am i not doing it and you need a leader and that's why one takes them on a journey that is open to that if they're too caught up in the old system they're not going to allow themselves to even see that and then the business and civilization isn't going to move on so you need to give people the space for them to be able to go hang on why am i not doing this i often ask a lot of my guests and people i speak with what are all the models that they're living in a typical daily life say a monday which would be typically a working day i'd say what are all the models that you're living what different type of economic models are you living what kind of organizational models are you living as an extractive a hedonistic what we find out is there's usually at least three different models in individuals living in one typical day one's a model that they live at work and another one's a model they live at home and then there's a separate model of what they would like to do or what their hobbies or passions are they usually comes in there as well and first of all it's a hard it's a hard type of exercise to do with most people because you just see smoke coming out of the airs are like what in the heck and even if you just ask them the simple question what economic model are you living they're like most people don't have a clue but when you get down to the nitty gritty of it it's a lot of those models that many of us are living in our daily lives are pulling in separate directions and which is creating an extreme amount of havoc on on our health our mental health of physical health because we're it's almost like living two lives you're preparing to go to work to live this other model and then when you come home you're you've got to shut that off somehow to live a different thing and they're going in separate directions but one's helping to provide for the other and it's this craziness and so I totally you know that when you spoke earlier and what you were saying is it comes out that when those two align like reinventing organizations and this work life balance we hear about that quite a bit or this yin and the yang and the story that you just told what a world of difference that makes not only in your enjoyment and the colleagues you work with in your work life but in your family life your personal life your how much less you prepare to go to work how much less stress you have to be there but it's like a family it's a whole different ball set a mindset and way of being and that brings me back to something that you said much earlier in our conversation you says we need to kind of be aware of the masculine but hold in the feminine I think I'm trying to repeat what you said and the reason I bring that up is throughout all our civilization frameworks we've ever had in our world so far well over 21 different civilization frameworks early antiquity mesopotamia Incas Aztecs Mayans Greeks Romans on and on all of those civilizations big knowledgeable innovative infrastructure civilization frameworks all collapsed and all but three collapse because of environmental or ecological collapse which is basically basic needs food agriculture water infrastructure basic needs and those three that collapse because not because of ecological environmental collapse because of disease displacement or just some form of disruption but all of the civilization frameworks that don't exist anymore that that are all ruins that we take selfies on vacation on all collapse because they were running the same model and that model was a very hierarchy model with a man a leader president emperor priest on the top and on the bottom were slaves peasants farmers laborers on the bottom holding that model up and that model is absolutely not regenerative and it's one that we see continually being repeated today and most of our organizations have that hierarchy model most of them don't have a lot of feminine leadership of that feminine in the big picture I wanted to see what your thoughts or takes on that are and if that's something that we don't see in regenerative models we don't see that in the way the world really works this hierarchy structure and how do you maybe have some tips or wisdom how do we break free from that instead of the repeating that binds problem theory the definition of insanity keep creating new systems with the same thinking that we created the ones that aren't working with let's start with Einstein there's a lot there like yeah I could go in many directions with them so thank you mark and that's fine lovely canter through the civilizations there and interestingly how the quality of soil has always declined as well and this relationship began with inner and outer the soil within us the psyche soil and also the soil outside us we can touch on in a moment but just to start with Einstein just to get us going the intuitive mind is a sacred gift the rational mind it's faithful servant we have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift so this is the problem so the intuitive mind let's be honest has been in our lives through the education that we've experienced which I suspect is reasonably privileged compared to a lot of other human beings on the planet the intuitive mind has been kind of way and so everything else is taken over and and back to our imbalance again so we prioritized that we've done what these other civilized high civilizations have done and that has created imbalance and so it's really a case of integration your previous comment about people integrating their lives I'd like to get beyond work-life balance and actually a sort of integration process where we know how to find that balance and flow even during the working day outside work and I feel that is something that we each need to learn how do we work with balance how do we integrate as one of the values I talk about the regenerative leadership virtues balance and courage and patience and purposefulness that kind of work together so working with that that yin yang all the time keeping ourselves grounded when we go into the family what we find is that stillness is that place beyond all of the dorsal left brain hemisphere top front will lobe and all that we drop into something deeper we are nourished reality coming through us experiencing itself rather than us experiencing reality that inner and outer shifts and these shamanic communities indigenous communities of which there are only fragments left unfortunately but have held on to a way of living regardless of many of them all the way around the world having very similar principles that have held on through all of those civilizations coming and going many of them have said I met an elder a while ago at a bioneers conference I think it was probably 15 years ago I was talking to him in indigenous area and he said what we do is we sing and dance around the fire every day with our barefoot on the earth beating and drumming singing and dancing every evening if we don't we know that we get ill we get sick sick unfortunately we've allowed ourselves to get diseased to get out of balance and that's creating all of these problems as you say in civilization so back to this reconnecting the simplicity of this is that it's here dancing and singing loosening ourselves up allowing ourselves to integrate now on a deeper flow going through a threshold going through a midlife crisis actually one also experiences perhaps sometimes depression or questioning or dissonance so we need to go through that space and that's where someone like a coach can help as a light in that to guide through that process but let's also keep that freeing let's allow the dancing and the singing and the bare feet on the earth ensure that we don't get too serious with this process of integration and healing because fundamentally this is about love this is about realizing that life Gaia is a living sentient being that we are part of and so it's about reconnecting back into that love and so we need to keep ourselves open and perfect permeating with that richness of life so it's I'd like to just bring in that concept of dancing and singing and that when we don't do that we get to treat ourselves too seriously whether it be getting ourselves caught up in the climate emergency or important factors we actually take ourselves out of the very feeling of this aliveness of this love of life I'm a student of ecological economics Herman Daley passed away sadly October 28th just not too long ago and I really have seen so many ecological economic models emerge in the last 10 to 20 years some of them you and I know very well but a lot of people haven't never heard of obviously there's donut economics circular economy planetary boundaries platform economics shared mission economics on and on there is a former regenerative economics as well and the reason I bring this up I just spent two and a half weeks at the climate conference of the cop conference of the parties cop 27 shulman shake Egypt it's hard to have an optimistic perspective I wish that every leader there every delegate every negotiator had gone through one of your courses or coaching sessions have read your book because our world would be a much different place there is a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel because the club of Rome just shortly before the cop came out with a new book and I don't know if you've read it it's called earth for all it's a club of Rome report that's a survival guide for humanity but it talks about a new ecological economic model and there's a lot about regenerative economies in there that that thinking and it's a really good it's a really good book but I wanted the last kind of big question about your book and about what you do I would like to get your take on not only is there another model for business and for life that mimics our natural world it's always been there but there are some better bigger models out there for ecological economics it's interesting to know that there's a way to integrate regeneration into that really ingrained form of ecological economics that can take us to a whole different world what's your thoughts or views on that and do you touch on that a little bit more your thoughts for future my next book will be on that so I've also written some books my next book will be more of a phd thesis on a different form of ecological economics but I'd like your thoughts and feelings on how you're we're seeing this emerging more and more because our capitalism models and our extracted models aren't working for us anymore where do you think we're going to end up at where do you think things are going to fall and lie we're all going to be circular economy donor economics or what are your thoughts and feelings I think there's a lot here there's a lot around regenerative agriculture regenerative medicine regenerative economics regenerative design regenerative business all of these things are starting to come out into the zeitgeist and are amalgamating each of us in this space bring our own unique tunes and that's great there's a diversity within that unity the one thing I would add to this is I remember your language there around sort of ecological economics it reminds me of when psychology started really getting involved in this reconnection back into nature and it had environmental psychology and ecological psychology which is sometimes called eco psychology for short and I think the difference between those two environmental psychology was about recognizing that being in nature made us better made us more creative more compassionate more alive and therefore we should be doing that because it's a good thing for us as humans yeah nothing wrong with that it's important but could be achiever and could be mechanistic because it's an enhancement again but there's nothing wrong with that we need that ecological economic psychology or eco psychology is about actually recognizing that we are fundamentally part of nature that we are an aspect within it that we are immersed in it that our minds are not becoming as an epiphenomenal of the brain structure that we are actually tuning into something and that's why I talk about nature's wisdom bits I also talk about logic of life principles throughout my books you will see applying business principles using biomimicry and regenerative thinking and so forth and applying it to business we need that but underpinning that is a substrata which is how life beyond the principles and practices but beyond the economic structures there is an underlying capacity to tune in and if we miss that then we're going to come up with more new stuff new definitions as you've just repeated there's five or six of them that's good because it's diversity and there's a unity underneath them and I suppose what I'm pointing to here just to ensure that it's there is that there is that deep sense of connection so when I talk about nature's wisdom yes we have about change and so forth but actually change is about going into the stillness within the movement yes we have tensions and dealing with those tensions and relationality but yet let's actually go into how through dialogue we can work through those tensions as crucibles for learning for evolution and then when I talk about interconnectedness and relationality yes of course everything's related and we need right relation but actually how do we sense that interconnectedness and how does that shift how we perceive and how we engage as a living organization in an interconnected system so I would invite in that step again that ensuring that underneath that is a thread through ecological economics there is a thread that encourages a mindset shift which is an integration at a psychological level otherwise it's very easy to do what we know is a great tendency of ours to get caught up in the models again and the fix it approach and then we'll fill ourselves with more books more reports more colour point charts and so forth which are definitely an improvement on what went before so that's good I think it's very helpful but unless we weave in that reconnection back into the sacredness of life of them we are still lost absolutely and there's one thing that you I need to tickle out that you just mentioned in your book you also talk about the quantum as well and I think that there is by adopting these models or by using them or being more connected to nature of these models that have always been there and we just bridge that gap in realization that actually there's a form of the exponential function or the speed of success because life just flows better it works better we're not fighting things we're not reaching that limit to growth we're not it's not GDP extraction on a finite planet it's more in harmony it's more that ying and the yang and that that quantum aspect of quantum leaps or mechanics of however you do it I just automatically have seen it in my own businesses in life and what I've done that that it's just a better model that works more efficiently in our worlds I don't know if you hear this as much as I do but everybody's on their tongue the last 15 years exponential this exponential organizations exponential everything and they don't even understand the compound effect or the exponential function but yet they use it in their thing and then you look at their models and how they talked about KPIs and all these things you're saying that has nothing to do with that and I just see that in a much different way and regenerative organizations I have three last questions for you and this next one's probably the hardest one I'll ask you it's really based upon I'm a big fan of buck minister fuller bucky and and his kind of why his mission that he released at the world fair and at the peace game that world peace game that he did and it was basically the question to you is what does a world that works for everyone look like for you not for others but what does a world that works for everyone look like to you interesting question there mark you've slipped in at the end so yes I think that rhymes nicely with what we were talking about earlier that it's very easy for the mind to go to fixing to go to the outer what does a world work and so yes I think there is a lot that that we could do to fix and sort the outer out but in the spirit of this conversation I will weave in the inner what's coming to mind is actually the amenity of the sea and where am I getting that phrase from is a lovely French writer called Antoine Saint Dixbury who wrote The Little Prince and other books and he says if you want to build a ship don't assign people tasks or break them out into teams or get them to chop wood instead teach them to long for the immensity of the sea and I feel yes of course now back to our achiever and also achieve and regenerative of course we need to break people down into tasks and but getting to chop wood we need to build a ship so we're not saying we don't need these models and we don't need these solutions and we don't need to move towards regenerative of course we do yet how much are we teaching people to long for the immensity of the sea let's open that door and I feel that the party is just getting started and the big guests are arriving now on the scene which is how life really works and we are opening our minds to that so a world that works for everyone is a recognition that the individual mind is a special contributing song line within a deeper song of songs that we are immense powerful unique diverse aspects within the unity of life that there is diversity within unity and that we aren't actually these creators of consciousness we are allowing life to come through us and that death is just another threshold in the process of life and so rather than getting scared of death and being fearful of survival we can open that door out of the fear and start to reconnect back into the rapture of reality so a world that works for everyone is one where we begin to dance again barefooted and sing and feel that life again inside our souls that is one of the best answers I've had to that question ever I've asked everyone who's come on the podcast that same question and I have to tell you almost everybody's answer has been different very few have been similar and I also have to align myself with you that I long for the immensity of regenerative desirable futures and it's almost just like the question that I asked you comes from but minister fuller but it's his why his purpose for existing his long envision it's not the how chopping the wood or building the bulk to to see the immensity of the seas it's the wire vision to make it desirable why I'm a sustainable developmental advocate I'm do a lot with resilience and but why do people want to be sustainable why do they be is it going to be boring is it a better future what's that future look like and so by setting that why and that longing for that immensity of the sea and longing for a regenerative desirable futures that works for everyone boy that right there we'll figure out the how we can do it but that that why is so beautiful and you put it so eloquently the last two questions I have for you is if there was one message that you could depart to our listeners as a sustainable takeaway that had the power to change their life even if it's two messages what would it be your message I'm not sure it's any easier than the last question there synchronicity I'll go for that there is more and more evidence back to our earlier point about science there's more and more evidence coming out now that as we notice synchronicities as we notice the non-locality of reality and we bring that into our experience of life that we not only notice them more but that it awakens different aspects of our mind and therefore helps us upgrade and so I feel bringing in synchronicities being open to them noticing them allowing them to show us pathways of insight is vital in these times what have you experienced or learned in this long journey that you would have loved to know from a start gosh I life is the learning journey so it's very easy to think of how one might speed up the journey and therefore try and fix the journey but I get the question what would I when I explored the illusion of separation I was just about to do a phd at the time at a leading business school they kindly invited me they knew I was leaving corporate life and they finally invited me to do a phd on business inspired by nature and in the process of it I decided no it was the wrong thing for me to do because I could see how it was getting quite mechanistic so I decided instead to write this book the illusion of separation just go on my own exploration as to this sense of interconnectedness of consciousness that I have what is it and in that process I stumbled across the fact there were a whole shed load of brilliant minds throughout history that have been exploring this and I came across people that are still alive today like Irvin Laszlo and got invited to speak at their specialist it was a really interesting journey for me and I suppose it would have been nice if some of those ancient wisdom traditions hermeticism alchemy Taoism shintoism shamanism all of these ways of thinking which are deep and rich and really all have the same underlying message all have the same aspect to them that maybe they had made themselves known to me a bit earlier in life but I say that with apprehension because I have a feeling that everything of my everything is with hindsight happens at the right time in the way it's meant to be yes I think that would be my response maybe understanding and having space for some of these deeper learnings earlier on would have been helpful yeah thank you so much for letting us all inside of your ideas highly recommend leading by nature to anyone I have no more questions for you unless you have anything you'd like to say or ask me I'm done and I really appreciate all your valuable time there's been some nuggets of wisdom and some really beautiful things that have come out in this conversation that are of value and I know it's going to be a great podcast people will love it thank you so much thank you Mark for your experience and your insight as well thank you