Realising Potential

Every business has its unique potential within its socio-economic-ecological context.  The realisation of that potential emerges through the combination of the investor, investee, and the context.  A standardised approach to realising potential is not likely to be effective since a business’ dynamics are always unique to itself and its context. 

Guidelines for Realising Potential 

Discover Essence:

In the current business paradigm, we tend to think transactionally with little regard to the uniqueness of the participants or the context.  The regenerative investor moves the engagement with the investee from a superficial, returns-based conversation to a deep level of connection, where the investor is driven to discover and work with the essence of the investee and its context. The essence is core to what and how any action is taken, therefore understanding it is a major step to the realisation of potential.

Define Imprint: 

A business has an imprint on its context through its activities and its relationships. The process of defining a desired regenerative imprint starts with the investor connecting to the essence of both the investee business and its context. This moves the investor away from a mechanistic approach where, often, a predetermined view of how things should be is imposed with no regard to the the participants and the context; to a collaborative approach where the investor focuses on seeing potential in the context the investee operates in and aligns its activities to support realisation of that potential.

Design Processes: 

One of the challenges with designing for regeneration is that regeneration cannot be created, it can only be allowed. Our models have taught us how to design, then control events so as to create outcomes that we desire. Any system designed in this way needs constant top-down control because left to itself, it will revert to its own way of functioning. Regenerative investing is based on understanding the principles of the phenomena that we are working with, then using iterations to work with the system’s self-organization property in order to arrive at a desired imprint. This process relies heavily on feedback and learning loops. The focus shifts from controlling to learning.

Develop Capacities: 

The regenerative investor supports its investee in developing capacities to deliver on the designed processes – with the goal that investee can fully realise its potential as a regenerative business. These capacities are the ‘tools’ that the business (and individuals) deploy to be and act in alignment with living-systems principles while implementing the designed processes.

Perhaps the most important of these capacities is that the regenerative work starts within the individuals – without which there cannot be a successful implementation for the businesses. A regenerative functioning of the person brings mind and heart, intellect and intuition, love and action, and individual and community together.

Please return to this page as we continue to develop the guidelines for realising potential.