Regenerative Leadership - the future of sustainable fashion?

Rachel Kan, with over two decades of experience working from within the fashion industry, comments:

I have seen with my own eyes how the fashion industry harms the world and ethically degenerates people.

As Founder of Circular Earth, she stands for a world of fashion with integrity and transparency. Now consulting and coaching brands on how to, not only be sustainable with their choices, but also in their integral action and how it will impact the planet, people and profit. Instead of framing things in terms of climate disaster, she chooses to take a more proactive and intelligent transformative approach, believing it has a better prospect to evoke lasting change. 

However, Rachel's commitment doesn't stop there. Leveraging her industry-wide knowledge, experience and networks, she also has a role to play in helping build sustainable fashion's wider ecosystem and infrastructure, to support the change that she promotes through supporting her clients on their respective journeys. One part of this is reimagining leadership. That's when she stumbled upon regenerative leadership and realised that it could be the key to reframing how sustainable fashion could evolve.

Rachel unpacks this theme and shares her thoughts in our Be The Difference Q&A interview...

#1 What is Regenerative Leadership? 

Good question, it's kind of everything.

In my understanding, it is about applying a living systems thinking to a business structure and the products within it. This means that we are always creating outcomes conducive to life, that can be:

• physically in a product in the circular economy (which in the regenerative thinks about all access points of the product and right down to each component in biodynamic terms)

AND

• in a business / structure / community / system / government - how you organise that team or structure in terms of living systems thinking - using biomimicry - not hierarchical, self-organising, agile teams

AND

• in a personal point of view also, ask yourself, if you have the mindset of connection (inner and outer or masculine and feminine for example)? On top of making sure that you are sustained as a human being - you need to have abundance in your world too. It's not about being a martyr, for example. You need to regenerate YOU as well as the company / organisation.

#2 Why would you like to apply this to the sustainable fashion sector? What difference do you think it will make?  

I think that it would have the CEOs listen and be more curious with their teams - allowing them to be more innovative, to play, to create. It would offer an access point to drive change from within and, ultimately, in the products of service that they produce.

#3 How will it work in practice? 

It takes a leadership of a different style - for the CEO or leader to take on a role of facilitator, rather than being the dictator. He or she would be coached to listen and react in living systems being and thinking. The teams would be allowed to self organise and decisions made in occurrence with the collective purpose.

#4 What other things have inspired you to go down this road? Why have these proved so inspirational? 

I was looking into different business structures to apply to the fashion industry, I looked at the co-operative structure which does give some great elements and I liked the non hierarchical approach - and it at least has a tangible access point - yet it lacked something for me.

So, I was looking and enquiring on how to create a business using the columns of permaculture..and I am obsessed by new economic thinking as I felt that this is the way forward in terms of organising our systems. I shared this in the group that I was talking to on the Cambridge Sustainability Leadership Course and the tutor, Alex Base, said that I must look at a book called Regenerative Leadership (by Laura Storm and Giles Hutchins). I read the book and it was the best thing that I'd read on the matter; it collates many of the ideas and has you use them in a bespoke way to fit each business as it is and as it wants to be. One great structural book is Reinventing Organisations by Frederik Laloux - it is a great practical book on how to bridge from our old story to the new one. I joined the course and here I am talking about ecosystemic transformation! 

Buurtzorg* is also a transferable model that I'm looking into, albeit for a different sector than social care. It was something that I understood having been on the regenerative journey and reading the book, also Frederick Laloux in reinventing organisations uses it a lot as a marker for the regenerative structure.

I am empowered and I am a warrior from within - with the knowledge that I gleaned with them and my background knowledge in sustainability, I see that this is the future.

*Buurtzorg is a pioneering healthcare organisation with a nurse-led model of holistic care that revolutionised community care in the Netherlands.

#5 What else do you need in place to build this ecosystem? How can you ensure that these are in situ? 

The ecosystem is as the self-organised teams would like to create it. It must at first come from internal change. Each and every person (including the CEO and top management) must look into themselves, as well at themselves, as part of the ecosystem. Then that will start to show up in what they are creating - keeping the purpose in mind - inner and outer.

#6 What challenges/barriers will lie ahead? How will you overcome them? 

I have no idea - and a lot of it is about stepping into not knowing. Laura Storm suggests that to embrace the regenerative, we need to be a bridge of understanding towards the ecosystem. Much of the frustration for many is in leaving the old story behind; it is safe and it is scary to come out and look at other ways of being with things. So, I think it's most important not to make the old systems and companies wrong - they were just doing the same things that they were taught to do without question. There is not only one way to live on this earth - it is not simply the choice between communism or capitalism. Spend time trying on that there are many varied ways to be - just as there are many glorious species of flowers or animals in the world.

#7 How will you know once regenerative leadership has made a difference? 

When the hearts and minds are truly with each business hive and not in reactivity to the system. How many times - and I know that I have been there - have you sat at your desk and said "Oh my gosh. I can't do this anymore". Only to then move to another company that has only ever so slightly greener grass out front but dirty bins out the back instead. 

I'll know when we start to create with true innovation and agility. I don't think that having a certain goal for it is needed really - goals I see as the old story of control. But I guess if there was one for it, it would be the word 'thriving'.

#8 Anything else that you wish to add?  

Having patience... 

Further Reading

• Regenerative Leadership: The DNA of life-affirming 21st century organizations - Authors: Giles Hutchins & Laura Storm Many of Rachel's learnings stem from this seminal book.
• Jenny Anderson - immeasurably helpful as a mentor on Rachel's journey, particularly in helping her access frameworks.
• Reinventing Organisations - Author Frederic Laloux - greatly inspired Rachel.

Sustainable Fashion Industry

For more of Rachel's thought leadership, check out:

• Circular Earth, Rachel's consultancy.
• Rachel's Lecture Series for creating fashion start ups from both a mechanical and regenerative point of view.
• Stay in touch with Rachel on LinkedIn

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#regenerativeleadership #circulareconomy #goodsynergy #sustainablefashion #ecosystembuilding #systemsthinking #SDGs #socialimpact

Annie Moon, Founder of Be The Difference, serves philanthropists, wealth managers, Family Offices and changemakers, supporting them to get strategic about unlocking their impact assets to create more social good by applying an ecosystem building lens.

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