Synergizing Impact and Investment to Steward Whole System Evolution
Image via Gabriel Fdez. (https://www.flickr.com/photos/gfdezr/)
(This Blog post written for the upcoming Regenerative Business Summit)
When I worked at Fair Trade USA back in 2008-2010 I began to hear the term “impact” a lot. My fellow colleagues and I in the Certification Department were often putting together impact reports for certain Fair Trade products or measuring the impact that different US companies were contributing throughout the world. We also regularly reported our impact to funders. I went on to work at SeeYourImpact and with Catalyst 2030 where I worked on a project called CommonAgenda, both of which roles addressed the nature of collective impact.
However, I had the insight at different times and in different ways that too often we were applauding impact that more often than not was short-sided, narrow and anthropocentric. I had this experience in certifying Fair Trade quinoa while working at Fair Trade USA, which in many ways is making money for Bolivian farmers and bringing a super food to people all over the world. But when you consider the way quinoa is grown as a monocrop and the ripping away of natural vegetation to grow this particular crop, desertification and depletion of the soil happens as a result. Also, native Bolivians over time cannot afford to eat this natural food due to the rising cost and the environmental effects of mass-producing this product. Overall the short-term advantage of how it’s being cultivated and celebrated for its impact does not pay off in the long run and for many stakeholders. Although Fair Trade is carrying out wonderful work in certain ways and is doing what they can to advance their standards, it’s emphasis on individual products and not stewarding the development of an entire company or system generates narrow impact and challenges over time.
What I have learned and embraced through the Change Agent Development School beyond my work experience and which will be explored in greater depth in the upcoming Regenerative Business Summit centers around making significant and lasting impact requires truly investing – going beyond doing “good” in the world – to deeply connecting and caring for a place, people, and systems in order to reveal the true nature and potential.
Origin of the Word Invest
To arrive at this place where impact and investment synergize and with the theme of invest marking the 2017 Regenerative Business Summit, it gives greater context and grounding to learn the origin of the word. Invest comes from the Latin word investire meaning "to clothe in, cover, or surround." The Catholic Church used the word in regards to putting on vestments to designate their role for rituals and signal investing in their faith and themselves. The word transformed in the 1600’s in connection with the East Indies trade when businesses funding ships around the world adopted the term to describe “clothing (with attributes)” financial capital to individuals or groups for their ventures. Nowadays the word is defined according to Cambridge Dictionary as “to put money or effort into something to make a profit or achieve a result.”
The state of the business world today across all industries and in all parts of the world, has a lot to gain with returning to the roots of the word invest in the sense of clothing and honoring our different roles (people, organizations, places, systems) with guiding principles and imbuing greater consciousness into our daily lives. This is where meaningful impact occurs.
Seeking Investment at all Levels
How is it that business gets to this place? There’s a myriad of ways, just as nature demonstrates to us in any kind of eco-system and at multiple levels. One key competency revolves around how businesses work with customers in a way that gets them invested. The essence of clothing and honoring oneself and your customer signifies deeply caring for your customers and yourself so that relationships are formed and there’s no sense of just a business transaction occurring. Apple Computers for years has been selling products that they take great care in making attractive, simple to use and elegant in a way that the customer feels valued and respected.
Apple actually begins with the customers in mind and anticipates and studies their lives and aspirations without looking at their needs and wants. In doing so, Apple avoids engaging with customers from how their business is currently operating and affecting customers, like that of so many other companies, but from a place of potential that is not seeable. Therefore, they dismiss carrying out market research or soliciting feedback. Beginning with deeply caring about their customer base (including seeing the engineers as customers as well), they instill the dynamic of customers serving an important role for what new products will be amazing in the marketplace and how they will be used based on what the company is noticing. The company also invites a commitment from the company to honor all stakeholders as contributing to bring about the vibrancy of the whole in this overarching value-adding system. This is another important point to acknowledge, that all stakeholders are contributing in dynamic and important ways.
In my own work, I put on quarterly seasonal health and wellness events called Full Circle gatherings through my company Naturefy that echo this whole system’s investing habitat. I believe people benefit greatly from a community of others that meet on an on-going basis; not just one off workshops or programs/classes that come and go. The content and design of these gatherings is conceived of each time by considering multiple levels simultaneously – taking into account each person that will be attending, what is happening out in nature at the time of year, what theme seems pertinent with what I’ve been feeling, sensing and hearing from others and noticing at a system level and what will serve the place where the gatherings take place. In addition, I provide a ritualistic environment where people feel honored and respected, and where frameworks are introduced to invite people to grow themselves and connect with others, nature and make more visible the different systems people exist within, which prompts people to go beyond feeling good to access higher levels of consciousness.
Real transcendence happens when people feel invested in themselves, others, communities and systems (within a much larger system). This takes place when everyone and everything is honored and contributing, where latent potential is nourished, where each different stakeholder recognizes and respects their interdependence – with all of these levels being tended to concurrently – allows for impact to naturally happen and for people desiring to invest.
Rising to the Occasion
All in all, many businesses all over the world are carrying out great work – that make people feel good and generates financial wealth. However, we must rise to even greater heights – beyond business doing less bad, patting ourselves on the back for the narrow “good” we may be achieving and adhering to ideals and standards that have been fixed and may not be relevant to what’s at hand. We stand to gain a lot from re-committing to the origin of invest by honoring and holding reverence to people, businesses, and places to do what we all can to foster and steward regeneration in the living dynamic system we call home. This takes honesty and humbleness to applaud what a business has accomplished, what we may have already accomplished together and to extend the boundaries of what impact can happen if the greater whole of the system is illuminated to reveal the blueprint forward for what greater potential can really manifest and what roles we are being called to represent.
This pathway of seeing and working at the system level – stewarding the macro and the micro levels together simultaneously - sets the stage for a business to work with other entities to evolve social and planetary systems that generates the type of impact that is needed on the planet at this time.
To make an investment in yourself, in your business, and the system you work within, the upcoming Regenerative Business Summit at the end of September offers a highly-curated event convening a community of business leaders from several countries working in different industries to create meaningful shifts for whole systems without separating social and planetary gain from financial gain. Participants engage in dialogue processes that are drawn from living systems philosophy, embedded in a regenerative business frame of reference to support you in bringing about impact in numerous ways.
Space is limited and attendance is by invitation only. Please check our website, TheRegenerativeBusinessSummit.com and let us know if you would like an invitation. Also read about our opening night festivities, which will include the awarding of The Regenerative Business Prize. For more information on the living system paradigm, please check out the previous posts in the “What is Regeneration” series.