The forgotten strand…
At the back of the Leeds School Board building, a renowned 1881 edifice in my local city centre, there is a remarkable double-helix staircase which separated girls from boys as they accessed the top floor examination room.
This twin-spiral structure echoes a famous staircase at the Château de Chambord in the Loire Valley, which Leonardo da Vinci reputedly designed to separate those utilisateurs d’escaliers going up from those going down.
The double-helix structure has since become renowned as the structure of DNA, the very building block of life and determinant of future generations.
The other double-helix
A similar twin helix of inner and outer conditions threads itself through the lives of our businesses and institutions and is essential to our evolution from industrial society to ecological civilisation.
Unfortunately, our inner state of being is commonly overlooked when seeking transformation, as we busy ourselves with changing our outer condition, doing things in our business such as reducing emissions or creating circular services. And yet, it is the most definitive.
One of the many profound statements I took from the game-changing Theory U uLab programme is a quote from Bill O’Brien, the former CEO of Hanover Insurance, who sums up his years of organisational change and development thus:
“The success of an intervention depends on the interior condition of the intervener.”
When we try to create change in our organisations without attending to our inner condition, we are only changing one strand of the double-helix.
To be truly effective, we must work on them both, particularly if we are working towards transformation rather than incremental (and insufficient) tweaks to business-as-usual.
Just as DNA defines our genetic characteristics and how these are passed on through the generations, so too the twin helix of inner & outer condition.
If we hope to change what we do, we must change who we are.
Being differently
One surprising way of creating this change can be seen in environmental memes, which are hugely popular on social media for folk who reject the growth-oriented extractive approach of the old-paradigm.
Memes, like genes, encode information to make it transmittable and replicable. Really good memes help us make connections, so we can see, and share, a truth we hadn’t before.
You can see the same in other alternative forms of information propagation, such as folk or Indigenous wisdom, spirituality, religion, and philosophy, along with storytelling, singing, generative listening, appreciative enquiry, journaling, meditation and many more.
These ‘alternative’ ways of being allow access to a different inner condition, one that can reach conclusions at odds with the established norms and tropes of the old paradigm.
This is why these ways of being have been systematically marginalised to the point where they are thought peripheral or ‘alternative’. And why they are currently experiencing a revival as we seek new ways forward.
Nature connectedness
Similarly, cultivating a connection with the natural world is a way of being that is systemically undervalued in the modern world. That’s basically what modern life is about: removing us from those tricksy difficulties of the natural world, like time and distance, weather and mud, bugs and diseases etc.
Yet, countries with a higher level of nature connectedness have a stronger correlation with wellbeing and biodiversity than countries making progress against the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Let me say that again because it is remarkable; being more connected to the natural world supports higher wellbeing and biodiversity than pursuing the UN SDGs.
What on Earth is going on here?! How can that be right?
Well, it’s the same thing happening; the UN SDGs only focus on the outer condition strand of the double-helix, which is one reason why an alternative proposal has emerged for Inner Development Goals.
The Goals do refer to our connectedness, though they underplay its importance to regenerative transformation.
The phrase “You can’t be what you can’t see” is often used to refer to social progress for people from minority groups, but it’s equally applicable to learning from the rest of the natural world.
How can we hope to incorporate the wisdom from the Universe’s longest-running R&D programme – 3.8bn years of evolution – if we never spend any time connecting with nature?
Here, the intent is key; whilst many people engage with the natural world as a playground or backdrop for their leisure – it is only when we tune in to the miracle that is life expressing itself all around us that the wisdom emerges.
Natural philosophers
Through my book subscription business I have been interviewing and selling books from new nature writers for the past eight years.
In that time, I’ve come to realise that people who spend vast amounts of time outdoors become natural philosophers. They understand the way things work and are connected simply by looking to nature.
You might think this goes back to Emmerson, Waldo, and Muir, but these are just the first some of the first Western writers to rediscover a connection and a meaning that has long been clear to those whose culture has always been rooted in the land.
Existing in cultural perpetuity
To continue this theme of indigenous wisdom, and pick up a theme I’ve written about before, the development of our inner condition is not just about self-actualisation, though that may be part. It’s about collaborating with others, including business colleagues, to achieve community-actualisation and enable us to exist in cultural perpetuity.
Being differently is the only way that will enable us to have a just, thriving and flourishing future.
As Daniel Christian Wahl comments (around 34m) this is not about solving a crisis, but finding a survival pattern that helps Homo Sapiens evolve to rediscover our evolutionary niche in the global ecosystem.
And that evolution demands we work on both strands of the twin helix.
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Main image: Photo by Simon Wilkes on Unsplash
