Embrace Death. Hello Birth.

Are you fat?

Maybe literally? Almost certainly metaphorically. Overloaded with stuff. And loading more on.

This stuff is clogging up our arteries. Slowing us down, dulling our instincts, kneecapping our creativity, our ingenuity.

We are stuck in our armchairs, connection to each other, to nature, to ourselves lost.

This is no way to live, to function, to thrive. Which is why we’re dying. Slowly, but surely. Ecosystems collapsing. Species disappearing. Seas warming and dying. This is no way to live.

We need to re-energise our systems, our companies, our work. We need to reconnect to what is powerful.

Let nature be our teacher. Look outside. It’s Spring. Life manifesting in the trees, the flowers, the birds. Life and growth and change manifesting with more potential than any Master of the Universe might muster.

Our companies are no bigger than nature. They are products of nature. Like you.

And nature is full of growth and change, of birth and death.

You know the biggest cause of death?

Birth.

And, by extension, the biggest cause of birth? Death.

We need to embrace death.

We are ‘adding’ machines. Adding ideas, thoughts, practises, behaviours, products, divisions, money. Add, add, add. Layer upon layer.

Adding makes us fat and when we’re fat we’re slow. And dull. And boring. Shadows of our potential selves.

We need to embrace death. Revel in it. Love it.

And in so doing we’d be tapping into wisdom and insight thousands of years in the making. No management fad here.

Think Potlach. An ancient ceremony where wealth is demonstrated by how much you give away. And in giving away you make the group stronger and invite the opportunity for new growth. Death to growth.

Or Fire Stick farming. Australian bush fires are a phenomenon which arrived with colonial settlers. Carbon testing tells us. The Aborigines knew that everything has a time to burn. Constant burning of the right things at the right time energises the whole, keeps it fresh and alive. Burning invites new growth.

We urgently need to energise our systems. We need it individually, socially, commercially, ecologically. Millions upon millions wallow away time in jobs they don’t enjoy for companies they don’t respect doing work which is neither useful nor energising. This is no way to live.

And these companies? They are like fat old men. Stuck in their arms chairs. Unable to move, think, respond. Looking for a TV remote lost in the rolls of their fat.

What a waste.

These companies are where we spend our time, invest our energy. They are where we gather, where we find meaning and value and contribution.

And when we work together, we can achieve so much. This is the potential of the company, a group of people.

We need more ambition, not less. Ambition to grow piles of money is a limiting, narrow idea. Yes, money is important. Make more of it, nothing wrong in that. But use it. Don’t sit on it. Be useful.

And then orientate your people, your resources to usefulness. To tackling the many problems ecological, social and environmental which sit before us. As a species, we rise to the challenge before us. So aim high. Higher than that.

Use your money to fund a growing army of workers tasked with solving the biggest problems of our days.

Kill off the companies are stuck in an old mindset, in an old way of working.

Abandon growth and embrace change.

Be useful and in service more than self service.

Say hello to death to invite birth.