Entering the Symbiocene – From Ego to Eco

This blog post has been inspired by an article from Glenn A. Albrecht “Exiting the Anthropocene and Entering the Symbiocene”. I have been writing for a while about how to find new ways of doing business and to create new codes for humanity. In my mind we need to develop a new Operating System (OS) for business and, essentially, for humanity. Contrary to others that claim we just need a new release to our current OS (Compassionate Capitalism, New Capitalism), I am convinced that yet another release on the same operating system will not bring the change we need because our current platform has become too disfunctional. We have experienced this over the last 20 years as we introduced new release over new release in politics, in business, in education, mostly in form of regulations, laws, and recommendations. Apart from more complications on an already broken system we didn’t achieve any improvements and mainly created disillusionment in people and fierce resistance from the beneficiaries of the status quo. Like in software, the new releases merely tried to fix some of the most obvious flaws of the previous release, whereas we needed bold and long term changes to preserve and advance humanity and our live on this unique planet. Therefore, we need to create a new convention, a new code for our civilization, we need a new OS altogether. What an exciting and unique opportunity! We stand at the gate to a next eon. However, if we look at the three pillars of our world and the state they are in, our biosphere, our societies, and our economies, one could feel quite hopeless whether we will be able to create the transformation needed to survive as a species.

If we look at the main topics of planetary distress we recognize that our current form of capitalism has developed from of old style feudalism and has reached the limits of its abilities. Glenn A. Albrecht calls it “corrumpalism”, others refer to it as “corruptalism”. But what is then the way out to improve our world with respect to planetary health and health of humanity? I like the name of the next eon being called “Symbiocene” which origins from “symbiosis” that implies living together for mutual benefit. Despite the wide-spread hopelessness and despair, I actually see many positive signs that a change is in progress. When 15 years ago companies like Salesforce or Patagonia were relatively alone in their efforts combining doing business with doing good, there has been a further awakening and other industry leaders and turned their organizations into net-positive companies, among them even juggernauts like Unilever or high-tech companies like PayPal. More importantly, more and more companies recognized that with establishing a long term purpose they can rally their employees and all other stakeholders from suppliers to customers behind their mission. In other words, purpose and being responsible is also good for business.

Another trend I see is that small and medium size companies, startups as well as established family or founder owned companies have become increasingly dissatisfied with the limited options of legal entities for businesses that want to preserve independence and the commitment to a long term company mission and purpose. The ownership structure is at the core of the company culture and sets the rhythm and beat for the business. However, it is often left out when we talk about responsible or sustainable businesses. With ownership structure I don’t mean classic limited employee participation or stock option plans but the concept of steward ownership that enables long term leadership and where the management and employees see themselves as temporary stewards of the business with the goal to uphold the mission central to the reason of being with the goal further develop the organization along its mission path and to preserve its independency for generations to come. A company under steward ownership separates voting power from economic power and prevents that the business can become a pawn in the hands of purely shareholder value oriented investor. Companies like dm-drogerie markt, Zeiss, Bosch, or Carlsberg have proven that following a long term vision and purpose is not contradictory to business success. But there are more signs indicating that we are in the middle of a fundamental transformation: The conversation about work-life-balance, the epidemic of burn-outs that took hold of employees of mostly large and shareholder value driven companies or other institutions focused more on employee exploitation than on following a purpose people can identify with, or the latest developments of “quiet quitting” and the “great resignation”. The latter trends didn’t emerge because of Covid-19, the pandemic just served as a catalyst for people to rethink their values and to find out what really drives them and to look for their personal purpose in life. And for many the answer to regain purpose and meaning is to finding a work environment where they can align behind an organization’s vision and mission that is based on long-term existence, active participation of everybody and responsibility.

Following are some practical approaches for businesses that want to transform themselves into purpose driven organizations. The first one is the “One Planet Living Concept” from bio regional, a UK non-profit organization. Essentially it is based on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals 2030 developed and published by the United Nations in 2015. It took those relatively high level and not very tangible goals that also contain a certain complexity when it comes to practical implementation and translated them into 10 easy to understand principles that build the One Planet framework. These principles can be used to develop a hands-on strategy and plan for an organization to become a sustainable and responsible organization (health and happiness, equity and local community, culture and community, land and nature, sustainable water, local and sustainable food, travel and transport, materials and products, zero waste, zero carbon energy). Along those themes one can build a transformation plan that includes all stakeholders. Another approach to transform businesses into purpose driven organizations is to work with the concept of Theory U developed by Otto Scharmer. Theory U offers a methodology to transform a business or organization and become purpose driven.

Despite the dire outlook we get from following the daily news I am excited to see more and more companies, also multi-national and publicly traded companies, transforming their business to become net-positive and purpose driven and to follow the core characteristic of the Symbiocene, the “love of living together” (sumbiophilia) as Glenn A. Albrecht called it. Since we evolved with a pre-existing ecological matrix as an intensely social species and lived in relative harmony with all other life forms, this “love of living together” must also be deeply ingrained within us. And this love of life will eventually prevail us from committing ecocide.

Hans Witschi, 2023