When is the right time to start a business’ regenerative journey?
Why working in terms of spirals better activates regenerative potential.
By Carolina Fdz-Jansink and Bowie Kung
We often hear different reasons why now is not the right time—for the business or the business leader—to start the regenerative journey. Is it after a new Chief Sustainability Officer has been onboarded? When the strategy has been better defined? When there is more clarity? Or when a personal crisis passes?
In our conversations, we often hear leaders express a fear to start and jump in. There’s the fear that change might cost the company; that the executive team has other priorities and no time; that the people aren’t ready or prepared. We understand this fear, a fear that causes inertia and inaction, stagnation and resistance to change. This fear comes when we think in linear terms, when we think that A needs to be completed before B should be started or that development can only happen one stage after the other.
There is an elegant way around it, a way that respects the flow and structure of businesses that feels more natural and doesn’t demand the stress, pressure, and confinement of a linear process—and that is working in spirals.
Lineal processes are deterministic while spirals allow for emergence.
As in nature, spirals spread the stress across all the surfaces; they strengthen and bend rather than break under pressure.
When we work and think in terms of spirals, we allow ourselves to start anywhere. Anywhere that has an opening. In life, spiral shapes usually start when Life is more present, either where two tree trunks meet, where there is an impulse, where there are prey—where there is a spark.
When we work in terms of spirals, we welcome life to start through the path of least resistance, and then permeate naturally to the areas with the most potential. Working this way allows the path of the spiral to rebuild where potential lies for the next level of enhancement.
The “right time” is a spark of curiosity, a stubborn hunch, a sudden motivation, a will to act. The “right time” is something you noticed that others didn’t, something that inspires you, something that caught your senses. That’s where the Life is. There’s no fear that it’s not the “right time” because anywhere you jump in is the beginning. All you need to do is start and commit to the present cycle.
What spirals mean to us for transforming businesses is that business leaders first go over all the business areas. The first spiral is all about aligning the different business areas, identifying strengths and weaknesses, and seeing the whole. At the end of the first cycle, things will naturally emerge to be addressed in the second cycle. And so the upcycling happens on its own, with a life of its own.
The right time to activate your business’ regenerative potential is when you sense that trigger and hear that call. As long as you are going about it in a spiral approach, you can have the confidence that you are doing it in a regenerative way.