The Regenerative Business Summit 

The Next Socially Responsible Work of Business—How do we rebuild civil discourse and a democracy that works?

Every year, The Regenerative Business Summit applies new thinking to a subject that is controversial and seems horrifically difficult. We ask, “How can we Regenerate the subject?” This year is about ideological wars. We offer a new way to consider regenerating democracy and working together as humans governing society.

Premises:

“A working Democracy depends on an educated citizenry.”
—Thomas Jefferson

And I might add that it depends on what you mean by education.

“The more people participate in the process of their own education, and the more people participate in defining what kind of production to produce, and for what and why, the more people participate in the development of their selves. The more people become themselves, the better the democracy.”
— Paulo Freire

“Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.”
— Franklin D. Roosevelt

How do we have so many people who are increasingly pulled into ideologies across the spectrum? They become so convinced of a position that they vote against their own best interest, listen to people who prey on them, and become tools of powerful, even authoritarian players. The world is becoming increasingly politicized and divisive. We even experience escalating violence in the name of an ideology. How did we get here, and how do we move toward a society and democracy that works?

How do we regenerate how we see governance, the working of society, and Democracy itself? Join us on November 15, from 9 am to 3 pm Pacific Time.

Register 3 persons from the same organization for $597. Additional people are $200.

Regenerating Democracy–From 2022 Summit

Come work on understanding how these are invisible to us but the only place from which we can change our patterns and pathways:

The challenge we have to work on that underlies all global challenges, is an epistemological one concerning how we learn and know! People primarily borrow unexamined ideas from others. We don’t think for ourselves. We don’t know how to anymore. As a result, we don’t borrow well either. We pick someone with a similar worldview and take on their mind. Or more precisely, the output of their mind. Which is likely also borrowed from the unexamined output of others’ minds. But ‘not knowing’ is really scary because we cannot interpret the world around us and that is unsafe from our physiology’s perspective.

The last 100 years created the problem we face. We need to understand how this happened and how to reverse it. It is designed into how we educate, run organizations, and run campaigns. This is not a conspiracy theory but explicit behaviors initiated in about 1900 and has grown, unexamined, misunderstood, and unnoticed for over a century. Unfortunately, most people are convinced now that the answer is a set of best practices. Unconsciously, of course, we are living an unexamined life every day and we are fish in toxic water. Like in the world of the movie The Matrix where people are fooled into believing that they choose their own actions.

“Carol is a visionary, giving us revolutionary, yet proven ideas, of what The Business of the Future looks like and how to create it, NOW. Carol’s work continues to be an amazing source of inspiration for Google Food Innovation Program—her approach to business is one of our foundational philosophies!”

– Michiel Bakker, Director, Google Global Food Innovation Lab

Business Teams Only. No Consultants. Email Carol to confirm fit. No refunds.

Why we are escalating the degeneration of society by HOW we work on Regeneration— causing polarization, racism, and factions

Focus of 2022 Summit:

The path to a Regenerative Democracy and reversing collapse, is dependent on EACH one of us understanding how living systems work. Misunderstandings about this underlie war and conflict, racism and inequality, genderism, violence, authoritarianism and injustice, habitat destruction and climate disasters, pandemics, and do good humanitarianism. All have the same source in human behavior – or more accurately, the paradigm and thinking that underlies the resulting behavior. Working “nodally” using a regenerative paradigm way of thinking is the place for businesses, organizations, and institutions to put their energies and position their change efforts to speed up the evolution of our society and institutions toward systemic outcomes.

“Carol Sanford transforms how to think about business and the world—producing not only sustainable prosperity but levels of meaning and commitment that most firms only dream of. She has created the prototype for the Business of the Future.”

– Rebecca Henderson, Senator John Heinz Professor, Harvard Business School

Business Teams Only. No Consultants. Email Carol to confirm fit. No refunds.

It takes a lot of patience and tenacity to change the course of our endeavors. We need a lot of capability building for everyone – and unlearning of some myths, misunderstandings, and fabrications. As humans we have now had 400 years of old paradigm education and 100 years of behavioral conditioning on how to examine offered knowledge and over 2000 years of building cultures that are hierarchical and autocratic. Plus, we have had since early arrival of humans to CREATE the biological restraints of fear from anything not like us. All this causing degeneration of the social systems and planet. And when something has multi-generational affirmations from every place we live, work, and learn, it is hard to see the flaws in the messages and premises. It takes a couple of years to dislodge the blinders and build new lenses to perceive and ultimately conceive of a different way of making sense of the world. The good news is that it can be changed.

There are enough test cases to know that working this way can bring great and deep change. Democratic governance can be significantly increased, resulting in higher equality across the population. Authoritarianism can be displaced. This, coupled with redesigning systems that undermine “tribal” conflict, changes the patterns of injustice and even reduces violence. We must, each well-intended person, understand that we are part of the problem. Then we can use our businesses to foster the relearning and dislodging of fixed patterns on what we consider “ideal”. Only then can we speed up the change we all know we need.

The Challenge: We each have ideas and ideals about how humans should behave and want to impose them on everyone. Even each of us well-intended folks. Yep! Me too! Yes, impose it as a benevolent answer to our miseries as a species on a planet. We hold tenaciously to our attachments about them in our missions, visions, values, purposes, and causes, thinking they are the role model. We join with others with similar ideals in the collaborations and associations in the fight for what is ‘right and good’. Our good intentions may be our biggest hindrance.

Come learn more about the sticking points of our current practices, missions, and values, all of which we identify with as being the ‘good guys’ and seeing the ‘other guys’ as the bad actors. Come ready to release attachments to your certainty and question what you identify yourself as and with. Maybe you fear letting go of those definitions, not knowing what to replace them with.

Plus: Why don’t people change? Could it be that the way we are working on them as well-intended people is ineffective and we don’t notice? Might our approaches be counterproductive and even escalating the problems we face? And… are we using the wrong measurements to assess our effectiveness in producing change? Do we have the wrong performance indices?

Business Teams Only. No Consultants. Email Carol to confirm fit. No refunds.

Producer and Director

Carol Sanford, founder of Carol Sanford Institute, has an extraordinarily successful forty-year track record of growing businesses responsibly, increasing their revenue by as much as 40%-65% a year. Her expertise includes teaching companies how to build triple-digit margin growth and offer a funnel of products for decade-sustaining earnings in dynamic industries and markets. She is a Senior Fellow of Social Innovation and Executive-in-Residence at Babson College.

Resources are members of The Regenerative Business Alliance.

 “Carol Sanford’s probing questions helped us think more clearly about who we are as a company and how we can become more effective at achieving our mission. How can we, ourselves, and all of our employees shape and resonate with the goals of the business at a deep level? Carol offered ways for placing our highest human values at the center of our business, so that the business can become more relevant in the world and more rewarding to both customers and employees.”

– Dirk B. Wassink, General Manager, Second Use Materials, Inc.

Case stories and testimonials are online at www.CarolSanfordInstitute.com.