A worldview is a fundamental set of assumptions that help us understand the highest and best way an organization could be organized, led, designed, and nurtured into being. Lately, I’ve been thinking about what a regenerative worldview looks like in an organization.
But first, let’s discuss a more common worldview within our organizations.
The danger of extraction over interdependence
Within many organizations today, I notice an “extraction-and-exploitation” energy. Workers are often viewed primarily as costs, and workforce reductions are made based on that assumption. We frame success through competition, without recognizing that we are all part of a much broader system. We organize that success at the cost of something else. Often, we don’t name that cost directly, but it shows up over time in ways we can no longer ignore. That “cost” might be employees, but it can also be something else within the system, our communities, or a cost to the planet itself.
In a regenerative system, relationships need to be based on trust and authenticity. That’s because the system is living and everything is connected. But many organizations are filled with relationships in which some people matter far more than others. We see this, for example, when a business lays off thousands of workers while increasing the CEO’s pay. When this happens, interdependence is no longer in balance.
When we reinforce extraction over regeneration, we cause damage that resonates far into the future. Sometimes that damage is visible quickly, and sometimes it accumulates quietly beneath the surface of the system. Eventually, the organization will pay the cost of failing to tend its relationships as part of an integrated whole.
From competition to interdependence
My definition of a regenerative worldview is deeply informed by my observations and understanding of Nature’s design. It makes sense—Nature is our longest-running regenerative system and our best teacher. First, we have to remember that ecosystems are built on relationships. The quality of those relationships, their abundance, and their diversity shape how the ecosystem functions.
In Nature, competition exists, but it does not exist in isolation. It is held within a larger web of interdependence, where cooperation, adaptation, and mutual support are equally essential. No organism thrives on its own.
When we view our organizations as systems built on relationships rather than things, each relationship takes on new meaning. This includes the relationships between:
- Employees and leaders
- The organization and its communities
- The business and the people it serves
- The resources that support it
…and a host of others. Many of these relationships operate in the background of our awareness, but they are no less essential to the health of the system. We need to approach them all in a way that lets us benefit from our interconnectedness. This worldview helps us harvest our resources in a regenerative way.
The regenerative worldview
A regenerative worldview asks us to consider a different orientation. It invites us to look at the organization as an interconnected whole and to ask how the quality of relationships within that whole is shaping what is possible. It encourages us to pay attention not only to what is visible and measurable, but also to the underlying patterns of interaction that sustain—or destabilize—the system. These patterns are often subtle, but they shape the trajectory of the organization in powerful ways.
As we begin to see organizations in this way, relationships move from the background to the foreground. They become something we can no longer afford to overlook because those connections are intimately tied to the system’s long-term capacity to thrive. As a result, we begin to expand our lexicon to include concepts that perhaps we haven’t associated with organizational development before.
Next week, in Part 2, we’ll discuss the role of sacredness and caring in building relationships that are the true infrastructure of regenerative systems.
