Nature's Blueprint for Business

00:00:00: Speaker: Transform together – das Podcast-Meetup von und mit Johannes Schartau und Holisticon. Welcome to episode ten of Transform Together, the Holisticon podcast meetup. I'm Johannes Schartau and today I'm talking to Ines Garcia. Ines is many things, among them Agile and climate coach and author of numerous books including "Sustainable Happy, Profit – Becoming More Agile whilst Delivering Salesforce", and her latest one, Nature's Blueprint for Business – Harnessing the Power of Edges". She is also a consultant for Circular Economy, Salesforce, Carbon Accounting, biomimicry and Regenerative Land Design. Ines, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for having me. So I was talking to other people before this episode about how excited I am to talk to you about this, and I was trying to explain what this might be about. And I used the term biomimicry, and I was staring into a lot of confused faces. So I was thinking that maybe at this point you could just explain to us what biomimicry is and how you got interested in that. All right, let's start with biomimicry, which Janine Benyus defined and I think is a really good definition. So I'll stick to that, which is innovation that is inspired by nature. Because, you know, sometimes the the most sort of deep realizations doesn't come from like looking for the answers per se, but just recognizing patterns and patterns that you have been experiencing all along. And for me, if we go through, like the story a little bit back in twenty twenty one, I found myself at this sort of intersection as a circular economy professional, agile and organizational coach. I sort of spent years helping teams and businesses to navigate change, to build resilience, to discover new ways of working. And yet, despite progress, I kept encountering the same challenges or key anti-patterns that teams operating in silos, organizations struggling with collaboration across, and leaders looking for sustainable ways to innovate and also to grow. And I just knew deep inside that the answer is not going to come from the same frameworks and, dare I say, methodologies that we sort of been recycling for decades. We needed just to look somewhere else, somewhere that has solved these things over vast time scales. And we are just so bad at looking beyond a year, eighteen months, four years timescales as a species, I think. So agile sort of took me to lean. Lean, and this idea of reduction of waste to me, to reduction of waste beyond time. And that took me to circular economy. And I went Uh, through an executive program with Cambridge University. And from circular economy. There is one principle that kept me pondering for quite a long time. And that's the third principle, and we don't speak about it enough. So circular economy. Just explain has three principles. One is keeping products and materials in use for as long as possible, two which is reduce waste and pollution. And three this is the one is regenerate natural systems. Aha. That took me to biomimicry. What if we look at natural systems, how they organize themselves? How do ecosystems coordinate complex activities? How do forests maintain resilience through disruption? And what enables coral reefs to support just an incredible biodiversity in a resource limited environment? I think all those questions are very relevant for the work that we do. A bit of a long answer here. Uh, You can keep talking if you want because I think this is fascinating. And also, thank you for just sharing that journey because, um, often people in the field have similar journeys. It's not always the straight path to like this one. Job description. Um, so your new book that has this subtitle, Harnessing the Power of Edges, can you explain to us why edges are so special? Yes. Can I also say something about work being ever evolving? Life is full of flavors. Why work wouldn't be. I mean, I'm pretty privileged. I work for myself and I do a lot of things and I can't help myself. I'm very curious. I think that's where all these things come from, this ever curiosity. It might kill the cat, but can save your organization. Um, so why why edges? Um, so the original book title was edges The Hidden glue of your organization that you didn't need to compromise with your publisher anyway. So to set the scene a bit, um, if we think of boundaries, they create silos and boundaries as a definition. Is the outside limit of an object an area. Surface organizations themselves don't have real boundaries, they just artificial ones. It's a cognitive creation by us humans to help us to make sense of the diverse reality we live in. And one of the repercussions of those defined cognitive invented boundaries, like where the team starts and where it ends, is sort of the intrinsic notion of the separation between the elements and the party. And in our work, we generally focus on the teams or team structure, on the elements, the components that form a whole and imagined order. Right. To help us to coordinate in big numbers. That's all it is. So what if we focus on the edges, the connections, what comprise those spaces? How can those be sustainable? Be resilient. Be regenerative. And you know, the most dynamic, productive, resilient spaces in the natural systems are not found at the centers. They flourish at the edges. The edge effect, like where the forests meet, the meadow where the river encounters land, where different habitats intersect. That's where abundance sort of explodes. The edge effects that support the species that couldn't survive in either pure environments alone, they generate innovations that, you know it couldn't happen otherwise. That's why I just love it. I also when when I got your book and I saw the subtitle, I got so excited because, uh, it's just maybe it's something I haven't really been able to put into words as eloquently, but, um, for example, with, uh, with leaders, I, I think, like modern leadership is often looking at these edges and seeing how, um, what we can do to shape these or make something grow or nourish something, um, or maybe dampen something, um, but I think, like, for example, as an organization leader, a lot of your time should probably be spent on the edges instead of going into the content or for example, micromanaging a team or something like that. Um, and so I, um, when I, when I saw your book, I was just so excited to see that in there. Oh, okay. I'm interested to know the experiments that you may be doing since reading. So I don't think I have experiments that I can relate directly to the book. Um, it was more for me, so I don't how do I say this without sounding full of it? So, um, your book describes something that I feel like I had a different path to, uh. And maybe I've done intuitively. And you gave words to that, right? So you put especially like the pictures in your book and they kind of emphasize the content quite a bit. What I noticed in organizations was that all of the interesting things happen at the edges. Like, how do people communicate? How do you how do we even define what something is? And in relation to something else, is that something that is helpful, or can we find a different way of doing that? Or in programming, for example, we'll be talking maybe about interfaces or something like that, which is not the same concept, but kind of like similar that there is some kind of connection there. So I think that's why I've been doing some of these things. But again, I don't want to sound like I knew all about this, but it's, uh, I feel like I ended up at a similar place by observing, without being aware that all of this was happening in nature. I think, yeah, we are governed by natural laws, regardless if we are aware of it now or we like it or not. Yeah, that's a quote in your book and I would like to read it. You write organizations struggle to operate in the spaces between their constituent elements. If we build awareness of how these dynamics can be regenerative and constructive, the result can be energizing and beneficial intersections that deliver value rather than being a flashpoint for stress. How do these struggles that you write about? How how do these struggles manifest? How can we create awareness of these struggles? The truth is that we have this obsession with order sort of hinting earlier, like tidy, our tidy gardens, my God, these manicured gardens and growing grass. We could feed the world or tidy gardens, tidy organizations, right? How we commonly imagine that order is highly defined artificial roles and structures. And if we look at nature, forest edges are not tidy. They don't have straight lines. Life is beyond straight lines. We know we can make a plan. Life will happen. And when we obsess with that tidiness, with the elements, with the clear cut definitions, what we're doing is sort of pushing progress back. And then nature is right back at work, filling up the disruption we just made in our gardens and in our reorganizations with pioneering plants. So needless to say that when we omit the natural order with our imagined order, it creates detrimental disruption, like those artificial structures that we commonly look basically splitting and competing for resources. And you can see this in organizations gaining terrain, gaining influence, very linear, compartmentalized structures like the square fields we impose in petrochemical agriculture do not encourage much exchange and flow. And I would imagine that something that we do want to encourage in modern organization. For me, it sort of becomes at times like the goose and the Golden egg story. And I tell you something. This invented boundaries. Like the royal hierarchies, the team structure, the organizational charts are sharp, are abrupt, and are outdated. Archaic legacy tools, some of which are from the eighteen hundreds and which we haven't evolved. And especially the bigger the organization, the more mature or immature the organization is. The imagined separation between the different elements is wider. The definition of those models of those roles departments is tighter, and the relief of being truly a separate entity is higher. Right. What does that behavior, what does kind of behavior encourage? Those are straight lines. Boundaries of hierarchies for example, either amplify or suppress information. But it definitely do is filter and silo. What is very interesting is that three point eight billion years of strategy of refinement has a very different take, a take that generates abundance. Yeah. What I'm noticing, for example, I often have clients and they tell me there's a lot of confusion about a certain role. And we would like you to help us to really define that role. And I kind of always laugh and say it's impossible to do. You will never be able to fully define a role. Uh, and I don't think that would be helpful in any way. But there's always this kind of, this idea. If we just make the edge perfectly straight and delineate it, then we'll have clarity and then the problem is going to be solved. But it looks like that is neither possible nor desirable to me. It may not be helpful, just stick to the four corners of the paper. There's another thing. There's so many things I because I read your book and then I just highlighted passages. So I'm just going to go through a couple of quotes that I really like. One concept that I loved was, so I've seen this many times before myself, and I haven't been able to name it, but you gave it such a great name and that is the external God complex. Could you break down for us what that means? So how do you see it? And what is it? Sure. With pleasure. This is, um, is the second book that I talked about. The first when I sort of term this idea was in the sustainable happy profit and an external God complex is different from the standard God complex. That's where someone believes in their own omniscience. Um, the the ones with external god complex believe that the solution to all our problems exists out there. If only we could find it, right? A magical person that will do it. Or a framework technology. But let's think about it. Because our common currencies allow and encourage the pooling and the flourishing from resources, ideas, experiences. So given that the solution that we are looking for work within our own particular context, it sort of makes sense to believe that the answer also lie within the particular context. Like, can you picture a situation like this? Yeah. I mean, uh, basically, um, anything that I do in my work that's often so when I have clients because I'm an external consultant. Uh, one thing is either this gets kind of projected on me. This is like this person has the final solution, and we just buy this knowledge and this person comes in, and then the problem is going to be fixed. Or, um, I think we went through a period of that when, for example, agile scaling approaches were just like we put in, we buy the Spotify model or we buy safe or whatever, like we just implement this, um, and we just copy this from somewhere else and then it's going to work for us instead of doing this difficult work. So, I mean, for me, always one of the questions is what's the problem that you're trying to solve? Or like, what are you noticing? Why is any change even needed? And then, I mean, we have great questions like, have you solved this problem anywhere else in your organization before, because often we're able to find someone already or, um, just, you know, working with the capabilities and the ideas that people within the system have, uh, which are much better tailored to what, first of all, what the actual problem is. So the people are affected by this problem. So I'm thinking they they're more invested in actually solving this. Uh, and then also they know what is what is possible, uh, what is what is effective? Uh, maybe even, you know, what is more fun? That's I mean, that's I would say that's that's most of my work. I do also a lot of group facilitation. Exactly. With the, the aim of let's look at what this is and how we want to solve this, instead of just, um, taking an outside solution and just copy and pasting it. That's it, that's it. Context matter. And I love that you sort of talked about that because and I'll get in trouble for this. But yes, please work frameworks don't have your best interest at heart. They can't. They don't know you. So context is everything. Exactly. I think it's it's all right to look at something as kind of an inspiration or interesting. That's how other people have done it. Maybe I wouldn't have thought of it that way, but like this just I like this is the way Google does it. So we should copy that. It's kind of kind of crazy in my opinion, especially with sort of the boom of technology that we are experiencing at the moment, all flashy new things. Let's get this. Good luck. Yeah. All right. No, but that was something that I really, really loved. The external God complex. Seen it so many times. Uh, I also, when I talk to people, they always feel like it's just us, but, like, it's almost like every every company believes the other company has the solution. And I have worked in the past with a company. And then afterwards, the competitor asked me to work with them, and each one thought the other ones are doing much better and we should copy them. And it was just so fascinating to see that, like they have the solution. We don't. And then you see kind of behind the curtain and it's absolutely not true. The grass is always greener on the other side. Yeah. All right. One more hoarding of resources alone does not generate abundance. We may have accustomed ourselves to see it as normal, but it is not natural. What is natural and productive is ongoing change and exchange. So I don't even have a question about this. I just thought this was beautiful. Can we talk about this a bit? So because you're saying this is I mean, it feels like in in our society we believe this is what an organization is for just to hoard resources, accumulate wealth. And that is the ideal. That is exactly what we want. And you're saying that's not great. Why are you saying that? That's kind of counter counter everything that we stand for here. Well, what we often think that is normal is not natural. It's just common. Like, really think about it. Even Peter Drucker was already talking about organizations as biological networks. Yeah, synapses are the spaces between the neurons. And how important are those? Right. And music is also the silence and the connection between the notes and looking at the garden here. There's just so much going on. So if you can when you get stuck, just look at sight and even better, go outside, look at the edges of a tree. Right. The communication between birds, even amongst different species, you can see opportunistic plants quickly covering the ground. Others at this time of day sort of merging towards the sand in the west. And you can even do an experiment in terms of like why hoarding is not helpful, um, stop mowing a corner of your garden or even stop hoovering a corner in your house. You will see how quickly it's going to be gathering resources and therefore encourage higher exchange and productivity. I mean, nature is just constant exchange, right? So I have a tree outside that I can see, and it has these red berries on it. And the snow has been falling and I can see now it's winter, but all the birds are coming and eating the fruit. Right. And it's just this I mean, the, the tree has, is getting something out of it because the, you know, it's spreading its seeds. But um, also the, the birds survive the winter. Right. So it's just this constant, like, I have this, I give it away like I'm transforming all the nutrients in the soil and the sun and the water. I transform that into this and someone else takes it, and then something else emerges out of that. Um, but the birds gave strapping, which is nitrogen and heat, which at this time of year is very needed, like it's constant. All right. So what's your short answer? How do we get this into economic system? How do we solve this? How do we how do we get out of capitalism? Just, uh, two minute answer, please. And then we need a little bit longer than that, but maybe we can talk about circular economy another day, which is the average exchange rate. Moving from our really linear economy where we take things from us, make stuff from it, and waste it into a way that we keep it in the loop. Think that for our products and services, ninety percent of the materials are wasted? Yeah, ninety percent of the materials are wasted. We got this wrong. We need to be more lean and certainly more agile like. Imagine not putting that in your value stream to start with. Imagine the savings and or the things that you do really have to. Then keeping them within the loop are all right. Place to start. You earned yourself another episode on this podcast. Okay, the last quote. None of these examples is chosen to demonstrate good versus bad. Rather, they are chosen simply to make the point that standardization is ultimately a myth. Wherever there are humans, there is variation. Please explain that to the people listening. Nothing exists in a vacuum. Example A humbug that maybe is worth for some reason several thousand pounds has the same essence, whether it is a sitting in a museum well framed within a museum, or is in the arm of a celebrity in a fancy event, or is left unattended on the bus. The essence doesn't change, but the context sort of renders being something meaningful or historical purpose banal or just tempting. And all these stories to say that your essence may be the same as many other organizations, but the way you leave it, it will be unique, like those competitors you were talking about. And one of the biomimicry life principle is this constant adaptation to changing conditions. And nature does that by incorporating diversity, Maintaining integrity through self-renewal and embodying resilience and specifically resilience through three very specific strategies, which is variation, redundancy, and decentralization. And we tend to think of redundancy as a bad thing. Redundancy have a very specific function for resilience. This is where I get in trouble with a lot of my clients. I mean, I live in I live in Germany, and any anything that is inefficient or smells inefficient or is redundant, it feels like people want to eliminate that as quickly as possible. And I think so, especially when you look at like even in like complexity theory, this this principle of redundancy is so important because it, for example, makes you more flexible, makes you more adaptive. And people have, like you were saying, like this often this these ideas from the eighteen hundreds still, which were probably helpful at some point. But for a lot of people, it's so difficult to wrap their mind around the fact that maybe in some places you want redundancy or you want, you know, you absolutely want to reinvent the wheel. Yes. I mean, how things change from two centuries, three centuries ago. Life has changed incredible amount. Why wouldn't the tools and the things that we use would also evolve with that? Or like, if you want to tap into a proper archive for inspiration. Our body uses that redundancy. We have two limbs and two kidneys. And you know, for a reason. Great. So some people that I talk to often feel like these you're taking inspiration from nature is inspiring, but they don't really know how to apply it or it's not specific enough. What is one small thing that you could recommend where people get started? Or how can how can people put one of these insights into practice to make a bit of a difference in their own environment? It's all about function. We have this tendency of using the common tools instead of thinking of the function you were talking about. What is the aim of this change that you want to happen, right? What are we trying to achieve? Jumping into tools on an auto mode is our default, common, non-natural, like the hierarchies and other tools that we talked about. And hierarchies in nature is a very specific tool for a very specific function. Hierarchies exist to control and to avoid change, and it's much less common in nature that our repeated, reinforced narratives tell us. Or we've been telling ourselves. Hierarchies filter and silo and suppress. And that is not what you are after. If you aim to innovate, right? Look at nature's edges forests, boundaries, riverbanks, estuaries. They are messy. They are irregular. That's where the highest diversity exchange productivity occur. We want to go far. We better go together. So the message with the function here is really to when confronted with a challenge. Quiet down our cleverness and start learning from the proven solutions. R&D fine tune has been evolving for almost four billion years. Open your mind and start asking how does nature solve this? And this is the challenge at hand. Transfer information creates shared knowledge. How does nature organize in big numbers? Flex but don't break on disturbance. Create community. Right. What is the challenge? Which function is at hand? And then ask how does nature solve that? And there is a really good side goal as nature. And they have a repository of things. Because if you don't come from biology background or things like that, you may want some inspiration there. But observation go outside also is really helpful as well. And when you focus on that function, just like a world of possibilities emerge. And in the book, one of the things I was really specific about is infusing it with real life practitioners showcasing examples of people doing things like Esmeralda with her cyclical network of local business, or Michelle reframing conflict as a movement through creative tension or losses, with her work inspired by diversity spots, or Rosanna with her tool for education. You can use things in multiple different spaces. Just quiet your cleverness. Sometimes we think we need to start from a blank canvas and ask, how does nature solve? Lovely. Thank you so much for your time. We're going to link to your work in the description of the episode Nature's Blueprint for business. That's your latest book. Highly recommended. Thank you for appearing on this podcast. At Holisticon, we put into practice what we discussed in Transform Together. We provide companies with holistic support throughout the digital transformation process. From strategy and technology to organisational change. We make our customers more resilient. Establish a future proof Agile culture, create new business models, inspire people better services and products. If you're facing any of these challenges, please feel free to contact us. You can find all the information you need at holisticon.de. Usually at this point, I let people know what the next episode is going to be and I have one plan, but it's in in about four weeks and I want to squeeze someone else in there, but I don't know who it is yet. So if you're listening, just wait for the announcement. I'll make that soon and see you at the next episode.