The Responsible Capitalist: The Workbook€¦ · Such wisdom is seldom heard in our loud and often...

© Copyright 2014 Carol Sanford. All rights reserved. May be duplicated only with permission..

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The Responsible Capitalist:The Workbook

Designed to Accompany The Responsible Entrepreneur

Materials prepared and copyrighted by

Carol Sanford, CEO and Founder, The Responsible Entrepreneur Institute



Left Intentionally Blank



I dedicate this book and workbook to:

Nobel Murray, my Grandfather and keeper of our Mohawk Heritage

Lois Murray Faith, my mother who carried forwarded and recorded our Mohawk Ancestor's Stories

Maxwell Nobel Packer, my grandson, storyteller and author even at age 14

Sylvia Packer, my adopted granddaughter, with her own Native American and Maya heritage.

Copyright © 2014 Carol Sanford. All rights reserved. ISBN number: 9781118910757 Published: July 28, 2014 Images owned by Carol Sanford.



Credits:

§ Cover: The Responsible Entrepreneur: Four Game Changing Archetypes for Founders, Leaders and Impact Investors

§ Divider Pages: Shutterstock.com § Images from copyrighted materials in The Responsible Entrepreneur

The Responsible Entrepreneur Workbook Published by Kritis Publishing

An InterOctave, Inc. Imprint 535 Walnut Street, Suite 201

Edmonds, WA 98020



Table of Contents

Foreword by John Fullerton 7

Introduction: One World Is Calling for a New Kind of Entrepreneur 9

Four Domains of Impact 11

Realization Entrepreneur / Industry 14

Pillar One: Perfecting Product Offering 15

Pillar Two: Integrity Beyond Reproach 17

Pillar Three: Principled Precision 19

Pillar Four: Full Dress Inspection 22

Reconnection Entrepreneur / Upending Social Systems 29

Pillar One: Evoking Conscience 31

Pillar Two: Relinquishing Attachments 34

Pillar Three: Evolving Potential 39

Pillar Four: Destabilize Thinking/Invite Reflection 42



Reciprocity Entrepreneur / Cultural Paradigm 46

Four Pillars of Reciprocity Entrepreneur 52

Pillar One: Reciprocity 53

Pillar Two: Significance 57

Pillar Three: Destiny 60

Pillar Four: Camaraderie 62

Regenerative Entrepreneur / Governing Agreements 68

Pillar One: Transformation 71

Pillar Two: Accomplishment 75

Pillar Three: Impossible Dream 77

Pillar Four: Dialogue 79



Foreword from The Responsible Entrepreneur by John Fullerton, founder and president of The Capital Institute The book in your hands is a gift. It is a gift to those who wake up in the morning and want to change the world. It is a gift to entrepreneurs seeking to pursue their highest calling. It is a gift to a new breed of investors, “impact investors,” who are looking to back entrepreneurs with a social and or environmental mission, and to align their capital with their values in the process. Mostly, it is a gift to civilization, for I believe that the innovative and creative potential of entrepreneurialism, empowered by our innate goodness and unique human agency to impact the world, holds the promise of a prosperous future for our grandchildren. It is increasingly clear to most thinking people that the first half of the twenty-first century is and will continue to be a time of great transition. Many interconnected crises—social, cultural, economic, financial, political, and ecological—are all converging at the same time, making this time one of great uncertainty fraught with profound risks. The leading institutions of the world—established in a different time, in a context no longer relevant, and for different challenges—seem hopelessly inadequate to the task at hand. While it has become a cliché among forward-thinking business leaders, it is nevertheless true that “business as usual”— returning to what worked prior to the turn of the century—is not an option. What kind of world will emerge is yet to be determined. Yet many of our leaders from the political sphere as well as the business sphere seem largely stuck debating old twentieth-century narratives. Free markets versus regulation. Capitalism versus socialism. Conservatives versus liberals. In its more extreme form in the United States, the Tea Party versus Occupy Wall Street. If we listen to only the mainstream media and cable channels preoccupied with the fight du jour, which sells ads, we can seem hopelessly stuck. Don’t be fooled. Below the surface, profound change is afoot. Our global economy is proving its dynamism despite the extreme and destabilizing volatility resulting from these interconnected crises. That dynamism, further enabled by accelerating technological change, has bolstered the power of human agency like never before. Our human successes and failings are amplified in the process. Long-established industries, from media and entertainment to energy and manufacturing, and the nature of work itself are undergoing profound transition. So too is geopolitics, driven by the power of individual human agency—and not all of it for the better. Our mainstream “leaders” are left reacting to events they can’t anticipate and don’t control. The human agency explored in this book, manifesting in what we call “entrepreneurship,” is exemplified as much by Mother Teresa as it is by Steve Jobs. Individuals, acting on deeply held beliefs and passion, are boldly imagining and bringing into existence a different world. This book is



about their story and our story. Drawing on archetypes from Carol’s own Native American wisdom traditions, which we can all relate to, it helps us understand how this agency works, across different spheres of society, and at different levels of our economic and social systems. It helps us identify ourselves in this unfolding collective story, empowering our unique genius for greater impact. In the process, we will find greater personal fulfillment, meaning, and joy. Carol’s book is a gift, coming at this critical time, because it embodies much-needed wisdom. I have found Carol’s wisdom profoundly important in my own work and feel privileged to have a direct and ongoing channel into it. Such wisdom is seldom heard in our loud and often shallow public discourse. She has a genius for framing and illuminating accessible wisdom, crystallizing for us some of the most hopeful and empowering transformations happening as a result of human agency. Suddenly, clarity and hope displace confusion and helplessness. Several years ago, a young man named Zilong Wang wandered into my life. He had grown up in Inner Mongolia, found his way to the United States, and graduated from Hampshire College in 2013. His senior thesis was “Entrepreneurship through Time: Genealogy and Dialectics.” In his research, he found that the word “entrepreneur” is derived from the thirteenth century French verb entreprendre, “to undertake,” and is generally associated with the world of business. Zilong also found that at least one line of thinking traces the root of the French entreprendre all the way back to the Sanskrit anthaprema, sounding similar, which translates as “self-motivated.” If the Sanskrit is indeed the original root, it suggests that entrepreneurship is an innate human quality in all of us, applying to all domains of human activity. Thus our modern use of the term “social entrepreneur” carries an unnecessary modifier. The Sanskrit definition is certainly in alignment with Carol’s belief in the human agency in all of us to be self-motivated— to make a contribution to something important, something meaningful. It is my hope and my conviction that, with the help and guidance of Carol’s wisdom, our innate entrepreneurialism and looming events will conspire to foster the transcendence of our seemingly intractable problems. Like the end of apartheid or the demolition of the Berlin Wall—both so hard-fought for so long, yet seeming so precipitous and cathartic when they came about—such emergence has always defined the evolutionary process in nature. Why not human social and economic systems, for are we not part of nature? Whether you’re a business entrepreneur, a social entrepreneur, an investment entrepreneur, or an academic, artistic, or civil servant entrepreneur, devour this important and wise book. Harness the untapped potential of your human agency to tackle the urgent, at times daunting, yet exciting challenges we face. This is our collective twenty-first-century calling, and for me, a source of hope and great inspiration.

Thank you, Carol, for this gift.

—John Fullerton



Introduction : Our World Is Calling for a New Kind of Entrepreneur

“I strongly recommend Carol's book to any (business) leader who wants to learn more about supporting and running a balanced and responsible organization, entrepreneurially. Her overall framework provides a great roadmap. We have made her framework the basis of our overall strategy and way of planning.”

Michiel Bakker, Director, Google, Inc.

"Carol Sanford's book looks deeply at game-changing entrepreneurs and finds a pattern that I think makes sense that holds true to what I am seeing. She provides a systemic approach to intervention based on the concept of regeneration that I am finding useful as I examine the projects, partnerships and investments our businesses make to try to accelerate our ability to adapt to the great shift that is coming. It's a book that's worth spending time with, and reflecting on again and again."

Kevin Jones, Co-Founder of SoCap

Impact Investing: A number of leaders in the impact investor world, including Kevin Jones, John

Fullerton, and Shaun Paul, have found their way toward an idea I called Regeneration well over three

decades ago. I have taught and written about how to develop Regenerative Businesses, Regenerative

Economies, Regenerative Communities and Regenerative Families since 1978. The Responsible

Entrepreneur expands on these ideas, demonstrating how modern archetypes provide a framework

for The Responsible Capitalist to assess the likelihood of social success (as well as financial success)

in their entrepreneurial venture.

Can they really change the world as we invest in them?

Assessment criteria are overdue. The concept of impact investing, responsibility and regeneration

are used far too loosely to provide any real guidance in making investment decisions. This book and



workbook are offered to tighten the meaning of responsibility and regeneration and to fill that void.

When my earlier book, The Responsible Business, was first released, some Google leaders began

reading the book and using it intentionally as a guide to developing strategy and innovation for the

big ideas that Google cares about. They then introduced it to their suppliers around the world, giving

them a copy of the book. To augment reading the book, Google interviewed me on video for their

suppliers. Watch the video here

As the second book is published it is being embraced as well. In fact, one story is about Michiel

Bakker who has been using The Responsible Business since its inception. He is sharing it with

members of the Google Innovation Lab for Food Experience. This group includes suppliers, experts

and leaders in science and education on food, health and ecosystems.

As many more groups took this path, I realized the need for a workbook. The idea arose out of more

and more groups forming investment funds and investment groups. These groups wanted more

guidance on how to discuss and apply ideas in their decision making and engaging with potential

investment. What you hold in your hands is a response to that need.

In this workbook is a design for engaging with founders of a start up and leaders of a second or third

stage growth business you are considering as a potential investment. The worksheets are designed

such that they can be copied and used as you attend competitions or incubator opportunities. There

is also a scoring sheet for your own reference.

Use the guidelines offered here or modify them in any way that serves you.



Four Domains of Impact: The Four Domains for Significant and Lasting Impact - The New Normal All entrepreneurs will make a difference. It may be small. It may even be for selfish reasons. Or it may

be game changing on a scale this is much needed. If you consider it your job, as the impact investor,

to help the entrepreneur see the true potential, consider asking them “what level of change they are

seeking to make.”

Which of the four domains do you see making your investment impact in? These are the four

leverage points that are necessary to achieve real and lasting impact. If an entrepreneur is not

shooting for one of these, you may reconsider the social return... the entrepreneur is red-washing,

telling bleeding heart stories, with social promises, but just like green washing does with

environmental pursuits.



Worksheet 1

Ask: Which of these four domains are you seeking to transform and why?

Domain # 1

Industry. The transformation of the industry you are in, as a whole.

Domain # 2

A social system. You see a system that need to be altered, one that continues to create problems

and side effects (even with good intentions). Instead of working to ameliorate the issues these

systems cause, are you targeting the root cause or primary flaw in the systems design? Do you plan

to work on system redesign?

Domain #3

A cultural paradigm. Where cultural (religious, social or philosophical) beliefs and practices create

opportunity, inclusion, and expression. These often underlie the systems design and so this is an

arena that must be worked simultaneously.

Domain # 4

A governing agreement. We have agreements that we do not live up to or utilize fully and a wise

leader can use these to foster transformation of a system; e.g. democracy as conceived in the

constitution and our capitalistic economic system as codified in regulation. Are these the target of

your business?



Worksheet 2

Industry Domain: If the answer is their industry, then explore in a dialogue.

1. What industry will their customer’s consider them to be in?

2. What is the keystone shift that must be made to better serve the life of consumers

and customers? What will enliven the customer's existence?

3. What is it that this new company can bring to that keystone shift, either immediately

or over time? What might the overtime map look like?

4. What will be the product/service evolution path to get there?

5. What are the benchmarks you might use on that path?



Industry Domain: The Four Pillars of the Realization Entrepreneur

The following framework provides a systemic depiction of the characteristic dimensions of the

Realization Entrepreneur’s thinking and work. I call the four points on this framework pillars because,

taken together, they provide the necessary support for the platform from which higher order work

can be pursued. Each of the pillars is described in detail in what follows.

Integrity

Perfecting

Precision

Full Dress Inspection



Pillar 1: The Goal is Perfecting the Product Offering in your Industry

Preparation for Dialogue: Have the group reread this section on the book.

Review: The first thing that a Realization Entrepreneur transforms is her goals—from products that

can compete in the market for a good return to products that align more perfectly the aspirations of

customers and the success of all industry stakeholders. She works on perfecting the match between

a product or service and its effect. As a goal this is more holistic than simple market position,

because it looks beyond the product’s use to what it makes possible that was not possible before. To

be taken seriously as an industry leader, a Realization Entrepreneur must be recognized for the high

standards she achieves. Apple’s focus on perfecting the effectiveness of its products caused it to be

seen by customers and competitors alike as a leader in its industry.

In this context, realization is a principle-based obligation to pursue what is true, essential, and

therefore better for all who are counting on an entrepreneur’s creative manifestations. The goal of a

Realization Entrepreneur is to achieve ever more perfect renderings of that obligation. For example,

Jeff Bezos of Amazon says that his goal is to get closer and closer to delivering what consumers

think of as the best possible shopping experience.

Perfecting offerings requires that entrepreneurs develop the capacity for envisioning products that

enrich and empower their customers’ lives.



Worksheet 3

Dialogue: The Goal is Perfecting the Product Offering in your Industry

1. Who are your primary customers? Those are the ones who make buying choices repeatedly

and as a result keep you in business? (Have this conversation for each buyer group who fit

this criteria.) It is not demographically defined but defined by how they live and what they

value dearly.

2. What would make their lives work more perfectly? More able to live as they aspire to live?

Live out their values in a more integrated way. This is not found in customer research but

understanding and envisioning their life.

3. What new offerings could fill those voids? How could existing offerings be refined whether

you are the business to make them or not? What would displace your offerings if it were

invented?

For more help on this conversation, see The Responsible Business, which is built on the practice of

enriching customer’s lives as a way to improve products and services. Click here.



Pillar 2: The Ground is Integrity Beyond Reproach


Review: A Realization Entrepreneur must also upgrade the sources from which business actions

originate. Most good entrepreneurs base their actions on a creative concept, something they believe

people will want to buy. But if you want to change an industry, creativity alone won’t be enough. You

also have to base your actions on a commitment to integrity that is beyond reproach.

This is important because people will try to find your clay feet. Although you will make mistakes, the

more transparent you can be and the more willing to grow yourself, the less likely you are to

undermine the trust and respect that is needed to fulfill the role of industry transformer.

Seventh Generation was the first company to publish, with full transparency, their own shortfalls in

promises and commitments. They also always published a plan to change and held themselves

publically accountable for achieving the plan. They also found ways, acknowledged by their Nation of

buyers to be acceptable, to seek to close the gap on any bad effects their short falls had. For

example, often it was a coupon for replacement products. They started with the assumptions that

recompense was needed if there were deleterious effects and without being asked. What is your

response?



Worksheet 4

Dialogue: The Ground is Integrity Beyond Reproach: Integrity Through Transparency and Authenticity

1. Where do we often fall short on, “Doing what we say were are going to do.”

2. Even though we may have good intentions, what things do we hope will not be exposed”

3. What practices or awareness of the effects of practices (past and present) would will have an

effect on our company’s credibility?

4. Where might we rationalize and give excuses we find sufficient to now ignore it?

5. How can we make those transparent now along with a plan to improve?



Pillar 3: Direction Comes from Principled Precision


Review: When I work with business owners who aspire to be Realization Entrepreneurs, I help them

maintain this precision with managing principles. They provide direction and guidance for

maintaining integrity while pursuing perfection. They also provide inspiration and renewed courage,

offering a reminder of why the work is important and what its nature needs to be.

Managing principles invite improvement through time. Principles foster discernment as workers and

citizens become increasingly precise in living them out. They are, after all, lifetime pursuits; one can

get closer and closer to living up to them but one never really arrives.

An example of a principle from Jeffrey Hollender, founder of Seventh Generation: “Do work that is

responsible and emerges from system thinking.” A principle like this provides a stretch, something

that we can get better at living up to.



Worksheet 5

Dialogue: Direction Comes from Principled Precision

Identify arenas where you want to be very principled; particularly arenas where there may be very

different opinions and behaviors. Where do you need to be on the same page about the way to

behave and to engage with others?

1. Identify the restraints to having a common, well-understood and aligned behavior in that

arena. Deep underneath each restraint is a foundation that everyone agrees is the real

restraint to a shared understanding; e.g. how to discipline shortfalls in performance.

2. Now, collectively and on the same side of any difference while you speak (i.e. no debates),

explore what other stakeholders (a big customer, a supplier you respect and serves you well,

your best employees, community leaders who want you to succeed and investors who

believe in you—what would they each say to you about the importance of being aligned.

What would they advice you remember and reconcile yourselves to? E.g. employee says

they want to work for a company that is fair and seeks to help people grow; community

leaders say we have great people in our community who are coming back from economic

difficulties. Suppliers report that they feel they must have someone who speaks for the

organization without constant changes.



Worksheet 5 – cont.

Dialogue: Direction Comes From Principled Precision

3. Write a principle holding the ideas in mind from each part of the discussion that lift everyone

in the room up to a higher perspective and remember what they are serving, beyond

themselves? No platitudes allowed; e. g. discipline is best when self-development is build into

the work. Principle: We design work so that reflection on progress and possible improvement

is part of every person’s and team’s day.

These are to be the principles, like a golden rule, you will use to manage among yourselves

and will engage the entire organization to aspire to live by.

4. Design a process to share with the organization, including how you developed the principles.

Work with small groups on upgrades, refinements and making them more like principles and

less like rules and standards, if that seems called for.

5. Make them living guidelines: Then have monthly time, company wide, where each team

reflects on how they improving in their ability to live up to the principle. And what they can

work on to improve alignment in understanding and progress.



Pillar 4: The Preeminent Instrument is a Full Dress Inspection

Review: By the time troops get to the parade ground, they should have worked like crazy to have

their shoes and buttons polished, their uniforms ironed and crisp. They know that if they have not

paid attention to these details, everyone will see and this evokes self-accountability. Full-dress

inspection is about readiness to engage in a wider field of action—national defense in the case of the

military or a marketplace in the case of a company.

In many cases, full-dress inspections are just for show, a display of power and threat. When a

Realization Entrepreneur adopts full-dress inspection, the intention is to get everyone to reflect on

how well the company is prepared and whether it is able to be at the top of its game. The ritual of

“calling someone on the carpet,” on those occasions when it is required, is used to build collective

consciousness about the need for impeccability from every member of the company.



Worksheet 7

Dialogue: The Preeminent Instrument is a Full Dress Inspection - Reflection

How do we currently handle inspection and consciousness of the imperfection we want to examine

and improve? Does this means meet the criteria of:

1. It is done in public with no desire to humiliate, only to improve and learn. It is ritual of the

organization and not done in private.

2. Everyone invites examination and is instructive to all.

3. Shared and understood frameworks, so there are no secrets of how it will proceed.

4. The inspection is done to establish a culture that demands the highest level of performance

throughout the company, and instills an appreciation for rigorous examination of thinking and

results.



Creating the Conditions for Full Dress Inspections

Everyone learns how to not take dressings down personally. In companies with a Realization

Entrepreneur culture, it is considered a sign of maturity to stand steady in a full-dress inspection,

extracting learning from criticism but also feeling honored to be part of instructing and inspiring

others.

This means teaching methods of self-observing and self-direction on thinking and reactions, which

are needed ubiquitously in such organizations and any rigorously demanding culture.

Teaching in ‘internal locus of control’ is also routine. This means that people never blame anyone

else for the shortfall in understanding, learning or performance. And also gladly accept appreciation

for their work well done. They feel they are in control of what works and what does not.



Worksheet 8

Dialogue: Full Dress Inspection

Preparation for the dialogue: It is very important on this dialogue to reread the material in Chapters

3, 7, and 8 in the book to ensure it is engaged at the appropriate level.

1. What is to be the framework or organizing method we use to create a culture of relentless

growth and learning publically conducted?

2. Frameworks make it possible to come to agreement about the inspection process before

engaging in it. I have seen groups get much tougher on themselves when they had a

framework as a basis for objective and rigorous evaluation. It actually takes personality out

of the equation and places the focus on the work, which engages the will to get to the level of

perfection that everyone aspires to. What is the rough idea of such a framework?




Dialogue: Full Dress Inspection

3. How do we avoid it being top down where judgment is used to punish? How do we make

people proud to be engaged in reflection on one’s readiness? How is it an honor?

4. What are the principles the highest respected officers in the military use for such

inspections? What purpose does it serve.



Worksheet 9

Shadow: The Unreflective Warrior Becomes Insensitive

Any archetype can be adopted in an unconscious or shadow way. In the case of the Realization

Entrepreneur, this can manifest as insensitivity, the shadow aspect of the Warrior. Insensitivity is

blindness to those around us. It affects the ability of a company to deliver on its promises.

Insensitivity can cause us to fail to see the potential in a person, and to experience him more as a

thing than a sentient being. People find it very hard to keep will and caring alive if they don’t feel

seen, understood, and valued.

Also, teams can take on the shadow side of the warrior. So it is important to examine this tendency

in hard driving entrepreneurial teams.

Dialogue: Shadow: The Unreflective Warrior Becomes Insensitive

1. When and toward what, are we insensitive?

2. What is the effect or side effects of this insensitivity to the people affected?




3. How might you institute practices that promote appropriate sensitivity without becoming

overly sensitive? This is not about catering to people who are overly sensitive and protected

them from experience.

4. When are we insensitive to customers and consumers because of protecting our own internal

concerns? What do we see that tell us this?

5. When are we insensitive to suppliers and contractors that can create weaker ties? What do

we see that tells us this? What is the likely impact on them and our business?

6. Discuss how to get our sensitivity ore calibrated and how we will keep this in our line of sight

and sound?



Upending Social Systems: Four Pillars of The Reconnection Entrepreneur

The Clown as Questioner of Orthodoxies

The role of the Reconnection Entrepreneur goes beyond products and services that are intended to

address current social issues. A Reconnection Entrepreneur is less interested in symptoms than in

underlying causes. So, for example, he doesn’t just seek to help disadvantaged kids get an education;

he seeks to change the social system so that it no longer produces the disadvantage in the first

place. He doesn’t just make a smoke-free stove for people living in Sub-Saharan Africa; he works on

changing the system that fosters inequity among nations and robs people of the ability to determine

their own future. A Reconnection Entrepreneur gets outside of the issue and asks himself how far

upstream he needs to go to make change at the systemic level.

The Reconnection Entrepreneur is descended from a heralded legacy—the court jester. Like the

court jester, he questions the orthodoxies codified in the many diverse arenas of social relationship.

He upends the known and validated rules of social engagement and rank, and he must develop

enough wit and flexibility to avoid being killed by the monarch he serves. His task is to make ugly

truth both palatable and playful.



Deep caring is a primary characteristic of the Reconnection Entrepreneur. Such caring goes beyond

compassion toward individuals currently trapped in systems that limit them. A Reconnection

Entrepreneur understands that if the system isn’t changed then future generations will continue to be

trapped in the same ways. He connects the present with the future to make the future accessible

and intelligible to us. This drives him to challenge and innovate with regard to those systems that

prevent the development of the full potential of people.

Conscience Non-‐attachment

Destabilizing Certainty

Evolving Potential



Pillar 1: Evoking Conscience

Review: Conscience is the natural or inherent human capacity to feel compassion and caring for

others. It allows us to feel what others are feeling. This is a biological and psychological

phenomenon, resulting from the action of mirror neurons, which allow us to produce a pattern of

brain activity comparable to the neurological experience we are observing in someone else. In other

words, “I feel your pain,” can be an almost literally accurate statement.

A Reconnection Entrepreneur uses Clown strategies to meaningfully connect to the people and world

around us. Whether he’s working on connecting to his customers or enabling customers to live up to

their values, he always seeks to help us stay in contact with our conscience.



Worksheet 10

Dialogue: How skilled are they at awakening Conscience?

1. Where must our business reconcile the tension between challenging fixed ideas while

producing new directions and advancing thinking? How might we accelerate the level of

evoking conscience in everyone, not only the already converted?

2. What new thinking can be introduced while respecting legacies that have been seen as a

source of stability?

3. Where do we needs to be courageous about the values we hold and yet respect for other

values we will encounter? How do we avoid judging them so that we do not lose our

effectiveness as a change agent?




4. What principles might help us remember to occupy the high ground, which is about caring

for the evolution of values in society as a whole and caring for absolutely every member of

society?

5. Of those things we considered, what actions are possible to begin now and which others do

we want to build more thinking, capability and planning?



Pillar 2: Relinquishing Attachment

Attachment is the hidden enemy that undermines the development of human potential and the

working of human systems. There is an extraordinary amount of research pointing to why we don’t

change our minds even when confronted with strong evidence that an opinion or belief is wrong. 1

At the social level, attachment is the assumptions and expectations that we are wedded to and that

define our reality. Attachment blocks or inhibits creative flow and is particularly destructive when it

insinuates itself into an effort or task that requires collaboration.

To be truly creative, all parties have to be able to develop their own thinking and open their minds to

ideas they have not considered. They also have to be able to present their own ideas in ways that

enable the group to build something together.

Assumptions act like a hermetically sealed vault that prevents movement in our own thinking, while

robbing others of the opportunity to have their thinking influenced by us. This degrades

conversations and polarizes positions, creating a lockdown on creativity.



How Innovative Can They Be: Relinquish Attachment as an Innovation

Practice

I am speaking here about a practice that is embedded in the everyday life of a business. Let me

explain how that might work.

Every engagement or task can be understood as a flow through three phases:

input/transform/outcome. For example, to prepare a dinner we bring in fresh food and transform it

by cooking in order to create the output of a meal that pleases family or friends. As a basis for

disciplined practice, each of these phases offers an opportunity to become mindful of and relinquish

attachments.

Input Transform Output



Worksheet 11

Dialogue: How Well Do They Work on Relinquishing Attachment?

Prepare: Take a recurring meeting or engagement you feel needs to be examined. E.g. a staff

meeting, a greeting on arriving home., Let’s take these phases one at a time, beginning with input

and find the antidote.

Input: How We Enter

Discuss:

1. How do we second guess what other people will be thinking and expecting.

2. What expectations do you tend to have about how things should proceed and where they will

end? Instead of seeking to meet expectations we state on beginning, which ones might we

let go of to improve creativity? Without the reflections, we’ve limited the room for creativity

before we’ve even begun.



Worksheet 11 - cont.

Tip: When people work together, any time creativity starts to drop or walls start to rise, there’s a

good chance that attachments are the culprit. Pause and ask, “What assumptions are we making and

what expectations are we holding? Are they preventing us from moving forward?”

Transform: How we proceed during the meeting or engagement—how we get from where we are

now to what we believe will be best for all.

3. On what topics and under what conditions do we talk at cross-purposes or start to feel

that the other person is working on things in the wrong way.

Tip: The only way out of this mess is for all parties to agree explicitly about how they are going to

work. In other words, designing the process and getting people to understand and agree to it is key

to maintaining consciousness during the transform phase.




Outcome: How We Think About the Results/Outputs?

The practice for addressing this kind of attachment is develop a deep connection to what the group’s

collective work is intended to serve and to what output it needs to produce.

4. What higher and future purpose do we serve that this meeting or engagement related to?

How do we help ourselves remember this?

In other words, one way to describe this three-phase practice is that it makes explicit what had

mostly been invisible.



Pillar 3: Evolving Potential

A Reconnection Entrepreneur takes direction from his understanding how the system he wants to

affect works when it is healthy. This is different from creating a vision of what we decide it should

look like. Imagining how it works is very different from imagining how we want it to work. Potential

exists and has only to be imaged. This happens when we look at a child and see their unrealized

potential. If we begin to impose our imagination on them, we hide their potential. Imaging is

receptive, where imagining is affirming.

Imaging the healthy working of something is also quite different from simply trying to arrest disorder

in the system-make is less bad. Put another way, rather than fixing illness, a Reconnection

Entrepreneur promotes higher expressions of health. It is a matter of understanding how the system

works when it is whole, healthy, vital, viable and design to enhance and enable that.



Worksheet 12

Dialogue Evolving Potential:

1. Where do we see stopgaps and shortfalls that are system induced? We have designed

systems in society that actually produce the problems and issues we experience. Spend time

imaging the systems and their design, when healthy, that with the current design, produce

problems and issues.

2. For example, in spite of the technological, distribution, and financial prowess of humanity at

this time in history, hunger continues to be a serious problem all over the world. Although

stopgap efforts to feed the hungry will be important and necessary as long as hunger

persists, the Reconnection Entrepreneur takes aim at the systems that keep the problem in

place.




3. Does our business work on issues and problems that are the result of systems

inappropriately designed and even conceived? What is the source of these issues and

problems in terms of the system effects?

4. What examples do we have of the system working in a healthy and whole way?

5. Where are the interventions opportunities to redesign the system, design a parallel system

and circumvent it, or otherwise enter to design out the issues and problems? What is the

business opportunity there?



Pillar 4: Destabilize Thinking to Invite Reflections

The Reconnection Entrepreneur, acting as a jester, seeks to destabilize people’s unconscious thought

patterns and break their attachments. The insight this produces creates the possibility for new

understanding and conscience. This jester role is not conventional business practice, but it needs to

be brought into companies as an intentional way of working. Destabilization snaps people out of their

normal frames of reference and pretty much always produces discomfort. The gift of the Clown

archetype is to make this discomfort compelling, inviting, and even fun.

Destabilization can be produced by humor or surprise. One successful method is to ask a question

that seems to come out of left field and yet has been designed to get people to see what they’ve

been working on in a new way. Another helpful method is to introduce a thinking framework that

slows down responses and has no obvious answers, which opens the space for really provocative

questions. The idea is to invite discovery rather than project old ideas into the future. This kind of

conversation allows a group to discover and awaken its own conscience, which is far more effective

and far less self-righteous than admonishing people about the right way to think and behave.



Worksheet 13

Dialogue: Move from Ameliorating Issues to Changing Systems

1. How might we use court jester or clown practices to wake people up to systems that need

redesigning; for example, make a movie or create an event.. Start a lecture series in

communities. Run a poetry slam competition on the subject and invite the local college to

hold it.

2. How might we do that in a way that benefits our business at the same time, but not as

marketing? The benefit would be to give the system ideas without the intention of calling

attention to the need to change a system. This kind of humor is used by several businesses

who advertised during a Super Bowl.




3. How might you invite people who are experts or knowledgeable to be part of the dialogue?

For example, bring task forces together to discuss the challenges faced in the arenas of you

business; to develop new directions. DuPont’s Chad Holliday did this to bring new ideas to the

Board of Directors on every subject arena their business units touched. He, as a

spokesperson for DuPont, exercised humility in bringing in the outsiders who had knowledge

and experiences DuPont did not have. He brought in Green Peace on subjects that were very

sensitive. It destabilized most of what they were certain about, but lead to assumptions being

overturned and new methods and means being pursued.

4. How can you set up a way to laugh at the business’ shortfalls in perspective? Have a comic

interview many people and then write a routine about the culture. I watched this happen in

Europe with each country who was a part of an innovation lab be tarred and feathered. But

they laughed at themselves and went back to the global task with more transparency and

openness.

.



Worksheet 14

Shadow: Projection/Hypersensitivity

The shadow of the Reconnection Entrepreneur consists of three potentially destructive tendencies:

hypersensitivity to criticism, projection of shortcomings, and “satisficing,” seeking to console

ourselves for our deficiencies (“I did all I could.”). The only way out is to laugh at ourselves and be

humble if we want to help.

Dialogue:

1. Where are we hypersensitive to input from inside and outside? In what way are the system’s

stakeholders defensive and protective, showing great sensitivity, making it difficult to

examine a system and potential to reimage it? How can the clown intervene? How can we

introduce that?

2. Where are constituencies likely to blame others and not look at their lack of attachment? If

we were to expose the whole system, including ourselves, taking no prisoners on any

perceived side, how might we take that one?



Cultural Paradigm Domain: Four Pillars of the Reciprocity Entrepreneur

Reciprocity is About Wholes, Not Parts

The Reciprocity Entrepreneur asks, “What is good for the whole, through time, and not just for this

moment or for this group.” Most people work on what they think is good but overlook other voices

and different perspectives. This role tells the story from all of the different perspectives and

mindsets.

Reciprocity is, when conceived of systemically, takes into account far more than the effect of a

simple exchange. This is because action always happens within context and thus tends to create

ripple effects, which set up resonances or dissonances at higher levels of system. Taking on the role

of Reciprocity Entrepreneur is stepping into this complex web of relationships, actions, and

consequences, and taking stewardship for the working of the cultures and belief systems that must

be reconciled for the sake of the vitality and viability of the system as a whole.



Initial Dialogue:

1. What does our business forget to be grateful for? Who is generous with us?

2. Who or what do we need to appreciate since is different from us. Where do we need to see

others as making up a side or portion we do not represent and observe our defensive and

territorial divisions? The role of the Reciprocity Entrepreneur is to un-stick the certainties and

create space for an evolution in understanding—not only of others but of ourselves.



The Reciprocity Archetype Role Carries Bigger Risks—And Rewards

Playing this archetypal role utilize the Hunter archetype, including reading a context and able to

make sense of patterns that are unfamiliar to most. The Reciprocity archetypes calls on a leader to

be ready to redefine self and what self means, to reframe the idea of “other,” and to generate

compelling alternatives to existing cultural worldviews.

The Hunter is the “provisioner” for her tribe. She goes out into a dangerous world to get what’s

needed for the health of the community. At its best, Hunting has two key dimensions. The first has

to do with releasing ego in order to become one with the terrain and the movements and behaviors

of animals. The second has to do with the discernment needed to nourish the tribe without depleting

the larger living community that it depends on for future nourishment.



Worksheet 15

Dialogue: The Reciprocity Archetype Role Carries Bigger Risks—And Rewards

1. Draw three nested concentric rings and place your business in the center. Discuss what is

greater and encompassing of your organization and in which you need to stay in reciprocity.

And what holds even that second ring. You will likely notice, the middle ring also has in it

competitors and those with which you have a difference, but still you are nested inside

something even larger; e.g. the business, the industry, the nation. What are the implications of

this nested set of relationships for all involved?

2. How might we create an tell the business story in a way that is more encompassing of all the

players in the field and be more inviting of differences to be used to open up possibilities?

3. What cultural beliefs exclude and can be lifted? Work on cultural paradigms or beliefs can

create a deeper and more lasting impact than work on social systems. However, it is also

much more challenging.




4. A Reciprocity Entrepreneur has to approach her task indirectly. Rather than destabilize, her

work is to erode unconscious assumptions over time. Many Reciprocity Entrepreneurs

choose to be internal agents, using the resources and platforms provided by existing

organizations to support their sustained efforts.

5. What initiatives and projects, that are key to business success, might be a platform for

raising cultural assumptions?

6. 4. What is important about what is the working of the organization or group that can be

taken into account, but also lifted up as inconsistent with achieving the project or initiatives

aims? How can this be made more concrete or exemplified?



Discernment is the Reciprocity Entrepreneur’s primary virtue. It expresses itself through two

particular practices. The first is intentionality with regard to effects. A Hunter recognizes that she

lives and works in a dynamic living context and that whatever she does will inevitably have an effect.

By becoming intentional, she can make those effects more meaningful and positive. But this requires

discernment, which is based on understanding how an action or choice will play out through time.

7. How might we decide and through time reflection process that looks at scenarios?

8. How might we design the project or initiative to expose this possibility?

The second practice is to relate to people as developmental beings who are growing and changing

throughout their lives. If she has the capacity for discernment, a Regenerative Entrepreneur can

participate in the growth of individuals and groups in ways that take into account their stages of

development at given moments. She rethinks how to engage each person or group with every new

interaction. This practice is one of the fundamental drivers of success in building community and

stakeholders.



The Four Pillars of The Reciprocity Entrepreneur

Like the other Realization and Reconnection Entrepreneurs, the Reciprocity Entrepreneur is working

on a complex system. In this case the complexity is related to the internal and often unconscious

beliefs that drive the way we construct our social arrangements. To do this work needs a method

that is correspondingly whole and complex. The four pillars offer a dynamic and systemic way of

thinking about this

Destiny

Camaraderie

Wholeness Significance



Pillar 1: Wholeness

Wholeness is the overarching goal of the Reciprocity Entrepreneur. She is always cognizant of her

own thinking, language and imaging in order to ensure that the characteristic of wholeness shows up

in her leadership and business actions.

This is always easier to do in a consistent and rigorous way when she has some way of structuring

her thinking. There are five characteristics of any living whole. A Reciprocity Entrepreneur can use

these characteristics to evoke the experience of wholeness in herself, her product offerings, and her

interactions.



Worksheet 16

Dialogue: Five Characteristics of Wholeness

Think of an entity or system you feel the cultural mores might be questioned? Then consider these

five characteristics.

1. Nested: What is the entity we are engaging nested in, that its life is in exchange for

nourishment and security?

2. Nodal: Where are the intersections and leverage points that are pivotal the all the rest?

3. Essence: What defines the entity and differentiates it form all other wholes?

4. Working: What is the working of the whole in its system context? Maybe draw the image on

paper to show the way it works.




5. Purpose: What is the purpose or critical work of the entity within its larger whole that

differentiates its purpose and secures its place and therefore vitality and viability?

Summary: How do we respect these and at the same time lift up questions that cause reflections on

paradigms?



Reciprocity Entrepreneurs set out to make changes that are reciprocally nested in larger wholes that

almost no one else can see. Their task is to make this wholeness self-evident by evoking living

images that make it compelling and intelligible and to grow this new understanding into the larger

culture through their businesses and offerings. This is how they bring nourishment to their

communities and the world.



Pillar 2: Significance – Can They Stay Connected To What Really Matters?

To get up above the distractions and pressures of daily operations and see what really matters, a

Reciprocity Entrepreneur has to shift scope. She has to step up one or two levels of system beyond

what she would ordinarily be expected to consider her territory or responsibility. In my book, The

Responsible Business, I described one way to do this by using a framework I called the Stakeholder

Pentad. The pentad illustrates the relationships among the five key stakeholders in any business and

provides a way to think about:

a) the business’s customers;

b) how the business’s co-creators, including employees and suppliers, can contribute to

its customers' lives;

c) how local ecosystems and Earth as a whole can benefit from better choices about

the use of resources;

d) how business’s work can support the communities it touches; and

e) how investors can get the enduring “virtuous” returns that they count on.

Customer

Co-‐Creators

Local Ecosystems & Earth

Community

Investors



Understanding that a business has a living context is the important first step to entering into a

reciprocity frame of reference. The mistake most businesses make is to base their work on

transactional relationships, asking only what they need from stakeholders and what they have to give

in return.

Systemic reciprocity is never merely transactional. In the world of the Reciprocity Entrepreneur,

significance is defined from the perspective of stakeholders and what makes it possible for them to

make contributions to larger wholes. Creating this image of interrelated stakeholders in the minds of

the people internal to your business makes them better able to comprehend systems and

understand the meaning that their decisions will have for your stakeholders. They can then begin to

see how they are contributing to significant change in the larger world simply by showing up at work

every day.

You begin to show up in the world of the Reciprocity Entrepreneur when you let go of the idea that

reciprocity is nothing more than a two-way street. Instead, it is a complex set of dynamic

relationships among nested systems that nourish and evolve one another. You build reciprocity

when you make choices based on what is significant at least two levels of system beyond the

immediate effect of your actions.



Worksheet 17

Dialogue: Significance

1. Walk through the pentad and reflect on how each point must build on the previous one,

starting with the customer and their life.

2. What is significant now for each point and to each stakeholder, in turn? Frame these

significances as aims for that stakeholder?



Pillar 3: Destiny – Can They Stay on Their Aspirational Path?

It takes a strong sense of direction to stay on an aspirational path, particularly for the Reciprocity

Entrepreneur who tends to think big. She must anchor her work in the destiny of the living systems

she wishes to serve. Destiny is defined as “the events that will necessarily happen to a particular

person or thing in the future." A Reciprocity Entrepreneur seeks to understand how a system, if it is

to remain true to itself, will necessarily behave and what it will necessarily become.

I call destiny, this inner necessity, a Global Imperative. Global imperatives are articulations of the

right and proper working of something when it is operating and evolving as it was designed or

created to do. Global imperatives are not negotiable, in the same way that breathing oxygen is not

negotiable for a human body. They are a form of social or natural law. For example, “Democracy only

works when it has an educated and engaged citizenry.” This is a Global Imperative in the social

arena (one that Seventh Generation used to guide its work) and describes the destiny of

democracy—if it is to truly remain a democracy.

Global imperatives provide reference points, helping us understand how a thing really works, before

we intervene in a situation. For example, if we wish to change voting patterns, we need to

understand the relationship between voting and democracy. If we were to buy votes, we’d be

violating the social imperative described above. Because human beings can and should intervene in

the flow of life, they need social and planetary imperatives. These provide the rigor that helps us

contribute to the working of systems and processes in ways that benefit all of life. It is important to

remember that we generate imperatives and also that they will be limited by the level and quality of

our understanding. Imperatives serve as reference points, and as our understanding evolves so can

our articulation. They help us make wiser decisions, but even more important, they help us become

wiser about our decision-making processes.



Worksheet 18

Dialogue: Destiny – Can They Stay on Their Aspirational Path?

Each party spends time composing their statements of global imperatives. This is the way to find

clarity on what are often called values and where the non-negotiable boundaries are agreed to.

Share these and come into alignment of a set you all stand for and how you will use them in

decision-making.



Pillar 4: Camaraderie within The System – How Will This Be Built and

Renewed?

A Reciprocity Entrepreneur works to build camaraderie as her primary instrument for creating

change within a system. This is because so much of her work is about overcoming the

fragmentation that arises from the ways we put people in boxes and then shun them for not being

like us. The societal impact of this exclusionary process is extremely costly to the individuals who

are excluded and also to the camaraderie that binds us together as a society.

Dialogue: How will be build strong bonds?

How will we spend regular time together? When the time comes to pull together to get work done,

the group can draw on the spirit and good will it has developed.



From Pattern-Following to Pattern-Generating

Given the difficulty of re-integrating systems that have been broken apart, the Reciprocity

Entrepreneur needs to have a strong grasp of change theory and how to move large groups toward a

shared destiny.

The set of five critical patterns that was necessary to accomplish permanent individual and collective

change.

1. Frequency

2. Intensity

3. Duration

4. Mentoring

5. Holism



Worksheet 19

Dialogue: Pattern Generating

Select from the reflections thus far: what changes are important and stand out in our engaging

dialogue? This section is about getting those changes embedded in life patterns.

1. Frequency: Profound change requires, at the minimum, weekly engagement and

reinforcement. How will we do that and in regard to the work that needs doing?

2. Intensity: What is the quantifiable amount of time we plan to spend together in order for

bonding to take place. (This quantity turns out to be 8 to 12 percent of the waking hours

within a seven-day period, which translates to one to two hours a day or a full day once a

week.)

3. Duration: A group needs to gather consistently over time in order to build trust and

fellowship that are strong enough to be easily accessed when called for. The research

showed that after three to seven years it was really difficult to break a well-developed bond

and that it would take significant disruption to pull even one person out of the community.

How might we embed these changing into cultural practice to ensure they endure?




4. Mentoring: The ideal mentor is someone who is a part of the community, not set apart from

it—someone who has already been successfully on the road ahead of the others, discovering

and transforming the obstacles encountered along the way. Who will be the mentors to this

community and in regard to what subjects?

5. Holism: To become comrades, each person in the group needs to work not only on skills and

ability, but also on traits such as character, attitude, and self-directed motivation.

How will the team build in time for development, to work on building capability of people to

assess their own values and how well they were being lived out?



Camaraderie with Nature

As a Reciprocity Entrepreneur grows in her work, she comes to realize that camaraderie need not be

limited only to human beings. It can be extended to include all living systems. We can become

“brothers and sisters” to the animals we share the planet with, and colleagues to the rivers, forests,

and wetlands. When we spend enough time with nature, we can enter into a collaborative

relationship that can benefit the whole world.

Dialogue:

How will the group learn more to work form Living Systems thinking rather than fragmented idea of

doing less harm or doing good?



Worksheet 20

Shadow: Isolation

A Hunter drops into the shadow expression of her archetype when she loses contact with her

mission to provide for the larger community. With the shadow at work in the Hunter, she withdraws

into her well-stocked bunker and loads the guns. Both are concerned with provisioning, but in the

shadow expression the Hunter has collapsed into a solipsistic and defensive stance.

Dialogue:

1. How will we avoid withdrawing and excluding others that do not seem inside our family of

relationships?

2. How will she avoid falling into the shadow, where the weight of responsibility rests on her

shoulders alone?



Revitalizing Founding Agreements: Four Pillars of the Regenerative Entrepreneur

Wilma Mankiller was the first woman to be elected chief of the Cherokee Nation. She was speaking

as a Headwoman when she had this to say about how native peoples have survived European

contact: “We are constantly revitalizing tribes. After every major upheaval, we have been able to

gather together as a people and rebuild a community and a government. Cherokee people possess

an extraordinary ability to continue moving forward, because our culture, though certainly diminished,

has sustained us since time immemorial. We find our way back to it and forward from it.”

Headmen and Headwomen work on transforming our relationships—as businesses, communities,

and nations—to the founding documents, ideas, and agreements that bring us together and unite us.

They are interested in the core purpose of governance, which is to provide the structure, stability,

and opportunity to enable a people to express its true potential. Time and again, they direct their

people’s attention to the deeper meanings behind the organizing principles of the institutions to

which they belong in order to offer a new experience of what these institutions are really for and

what they have the potential to be.



Regenerative Entrepreneurs Unify Us Around Uplifting Purposes and Principles The chief pursuit of the Regenerative Entrepreneur is unity. Businesses, groups, or nations are made

up of individuals. It takes a high order of leadership to unify them around an uplifting purpose and set

of principles. In the Western world, and particularly in the United States, there is a tradition of

individualism that, when carried to an extreme, devolves into anarchy or an inability to create order.

In a disunited community, diverse abilities and perspectives have no way to be reconciled toward

some larger purpose. The work of the regenerative entrepreneur is to reveal unifying purposes and

principles that inspire the desire to be a part of something larger, to work for its success, and to

support its evolution.



The Four Pillars of the Regenerative Entrepreneur

The four pillars of the Regenerative Entrepreneur orient her to the potential embedded in the essence

of every living system, including living institutions created by human beings. These pillars bind

people together in order to achieve collective purposes of a higher order than any individual could

accomplish alone. Businesses, universities, cities, and national governments are all examples.

Transformation – move beyond current form

Accomplishment – for the entire value adding process

Dialogue

Impossible Dream



Pillar 1: Transformation

Transformation is the overarching goal of a Regenerative Entrepreneur. Transformation literally

means to enable something to go beyond its current form in a way that is irreversible. The challenge

for a regenerative entrepreneur is to look at something as complex and unmanageable as a nation

and locate the key points at which beneficial transformation can occur.

Undertakings of such scale and ambition require discipline and rigor and, almost inevitably, some

method for making the complexity of systems intelligible and manageable.



Worksheet 21

Dialogue: Transformation Leverage Points – What Are the Team's Thoughts on Pursuing Each These Points?

1. Cohesion—where wholes become unified: The Regenerative Entrepreneur builds unity and

cohesion. When something is cohesive, it’s difficult to pull apart.

2. Complementarity—polarities completing one another: The Regenerative Entrepreneur takes

that which seems divided, unrelated, contradictory, or oppositional and reframes it as that

which is necessary for wholeness.

3. Creativity—moving beyond the ordinary: The Regenerative Entrepreneur enables individuals

and groups to believe in themselves as people with agency, which frees them to see

possibilities that had previously not been apparent. He is not so much a source of creative

ideas as an illuminator of the process that brings people together to lift themselves into an

exciting future.




4. Connection—linked through commitment to an overall direction: For a community to be

healthy and viable, all members need to exercise their individual creativity in ways that move

the whole forward. Each person’s way will be (or at least could be) unique. The most effective

way to do this is to help people feel connected to an overall direction.

5. Capability—enabling a developmental life: The Regenerative Entrepreneur starts from the

premise that all people are inherently capable of growth. He supports the ability of people to

work on himself and thereby to contribute more to the collective. One of his methods is to

invite people into roles that are beyond their current capability.

6. Coalescence—reciprocity with one’s environment: Growth and nourishment depend on an

exchange with our environment and are sustainable only when that exchange is reciprocally

beneficial. The Regenerative Entrepreneur seeks to join and bond with—coalesce with—the

growth and success of her stakeholders.




7. Change-ability—from pattern follower to pattern generator: Let’s face it, human beings get

into ruts. This is a tendency we share with other great apes, all of whom project into the

future what they’ve learned from the past. Humans have the additional and very powerful

capacity to image a different and better future and to move themselves and their

communities toward it.

8. Correlate-ability—linking internal and external effects: Regenerative Entrepreneurs see a

strong correlation between their internal state (and the internal state of their business) and

the external effects they are able to create in the world. For this reason, they know that they

must maintain a continuous practice of personal development. They also invite others to

make this correlation, because they know how critical it is to grow appreciation for reflective

thinking within their company’s culture.



Pillar 2: Accomplishment

Accomplishment has a special meaning for a Regenerative Entrepreneur. For a Regenerative

Entrepreneur, it has more to do with discerning the right indicators that a system is evolving in a

beneficial direction.

From a traditional business perspective, accomplishment is something that you work to develop

personally, in your team, and for your organization as a whole. But for a Regenerative Entrepreneur,

the real purpose of business is to enable the accomplishment of his downstream customers and

other stakeholders. For example, rather than measuring his own yields or waste, he measures the

increase in his customers’ success with regard to yields or waste.

Measuring Success from a Value-Adding View: If you envision a flow of materials from earth to

earth—through your supplier’s hands, through your operation, though your customers’ consumption

or conversion—you have a better idea of how the Regenerative Entrepreneur invites people to

manage and measure accomplishment.



Worksheet 22

Dialogue: This is a reflective dialogue on a business's progress.

1. How well do their customers serve their communities and buyers, and how can you help

them do better?

2. How about the other stakeholders? Employees?

3. Are the communities you impact becoming better able to provide for the wellbeing of their

members?

4. Are the ecosystems you affect getting healthier?

5. Are your suppliers creating increasingly valuable inputs to your business and becoming more

economically viable in the process?



Pillar 3: Impossible Dream

In “The Impossible Dream,” the hit song from the musical Man of La Mancha, Don Quixote sings of

his aspiration to “follow that star, no matter how hopeless, no matter how far, to fight for the right

without question or pause, to be willing to march into hell for a heavenly cause.” The big question for

the Regenerative Entrepreneur is, “What does it mean to fight for the right?” Not surprisingly, a

regenerative answer goes beyond conventional ideas of right.

Often what is right is framed in a fairly concrete way. Businesses talk about it in the context of tasks:

“Do it right, preferably the first time.” A more sophisticated thought is “Work on the right thing,”

which recognizes that one can do a task perfectly and yet be working on something that may not

matter in the long term. Philosopher Matthew Fox made the concept more developmental when he

called on businesses to “Do right work.” This thought challenges individuals and organizations to

bring their decisions into integrity with their values, taking into account the many other people and

systems they affect.

Regenerative Entrepreneurs hold themselves to a higher standard, one based on the understanding

that all entities affected by a business are evolving toward their own uniqueness. The challenge for

them is to “Do what’s right for all through doing what’s right for each.” This is very different from

trying to do one thing that is right for everybody, and as an idea that is alien to most business

decision-making; it is a sort of impossible dream. Yet just as with so many impossible dreams, if you

are willing to follow that star, what started out as impossible can change the world.



Worksheet 23

Dialogue: Impossible Dream

Take some subject that is worth a conversation on “what is right? Do you have a subject selected?

What is your subject?

Consider from each of the four levels of ‘right.’ How would your answer change with each?

• Do it right, preferably the first time.”

• “Work on the right thing,”

• “Do right work.”

• “Do what’s right for all through doing what’s right for each.”



Pillar 4: Dialogue

The Regenerative Entrepreneur works on change through skillful engagement rather than top-down

directives or simplistic participatory processes. What distinguishes a regenerative level of work is

developmental dialogue.

Developmental dialogue starts from the premise that no one knows the answers to the most

important questions. They must be discovered or revealed through the engagement itself.

The purpose of developmental dialogue is to awaken capacity for new insight and wisdom. It is the

act of tapping expertise, of which everyone has some, in order to do something creative. It is about

discovering answers that no one has had before.

Capabilities: To foster developmental dialogue, a Regenerative Entrepreneur needs a set of

advanced capabilities, all of which are learned with time and dedication:

1. Prevent oneself from being mechanical (that is, from automatically repeating old mental

patterns).

2. Develop the ability to act as midwife to the birth of new ideas and direction in others.

3. Understand and work on pattern rather than just responding to form.

4. Work with every person with humility, as if there is no difference in class or level.

5. Recognize that the work is never finished; understanding is never complete; and the search

should remain open ended and alive.

These capabilities are useful for reflection on how we run meetings, offer training and development,

design work systems and many other activities. Are we exercising and developing these capabilities

through time?



Worksheet 24

Shadow: Aloofness

Regenerative Entrepreneurs are able to see and seize opportunities for fundamental change because

of the depth and consistency of the inner development they engage in. But that can become very

heady work.

All the Regenerative Entrepreneurs I have known have struggled against the tendency to build

distance between themselves and their troops, colleagues, and customers.

Dialogue on Shadow

1. Where are we falling short on this achievement and avoiding distancing ourselves?

2. Where are we going overboard to try to compensate?

3. Where are we getting it about right?

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