WE ARE NATURE: An Invitation to Shift our Perspective

Daniela Elster
Sep 22
5 min read

“The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between how nature works and the way people think.”

GREGORY BATESON

DO YOU KNOW WHAT IS SOURCING YOUR WAY OF THINKING?

What principles and beliefs drive your decisions and reactions?

We live in a time when planetary boundaries are being stretched to their limits. The symptoms of climate breakdown, biodiversity loss, and social fragmentation are reflections of how we, as humans, perceive and organize ourselves in the world. For too long, we have acted from a paradigm of separation: humans apart from nature, economy apart from ecology, organizations apart from communities. This fragmented way of thinking is what has created the mess we now face.

Yet the same mess carries within it an invitation: to shift our perception, to realign with how life actually works. We are not separate observers of nature—we are nature. And if we truly understood ourselves as part of a living, interdependent system, our leadership, our organizations, and our economies would look very different.

PARADIGMS SHAPE WHAT WE SEE

A paradigm is a way of seeing and making sense of the world, like a pair of glasses through which we interpret reality.

Carol Sanford describes four paradigms that shape how people see and act in the world; they have existed in parallel for decades, generations, and in some cases, centuries. And, as she explained, “most of us today think and behave inconsistently because, although we are in general governed by one of the four, we are constantly influenced by all. We don’t reflect on them and don’t perceive them ruling us, and therefore we aren’t able to sort out and order ourselves”.

CAROL SANFORD’S 4 LEVELS OF PARADIGM

VALUE RETURN

Seeing the world as a set of resources to be taken and used for profit or efficiency, everything is transactional.

ARREST DISORDER

The aim is to reduce negative impacts, but still within the logic of control and limitation.

DO GOOD

Efforts focus on philanthropy or corporate social responsibility, often adding “good” alongside business-as-usual, but “good” according to whom?

REGENERATE

Working to evolve the capacity of living systems—the land, communities, and ourselves—to express their unique potential. The aim is to create conditions for life to thrive.

Regeneration is a property of living systems and can only occur within a context of evolutionary dynamism. The fourth paradigm is about aligning with the principles of life itself. As Fritjof Capra reminds us: “The more we study the major problems of our time, the more we come to realize that they cannot be understood in isolation. They are systemic problems, interconnected and interdependent.”

FROM LINEAR TO LIVING

The most urgent shift required is moving from a linear mindset—focused on extraction, growth, and short-term returns—to a living systems mindset, where value emerges through relationships, reciprocity, and regeneration.

In a linear paradigm, leadership is about control, prediction, and efficiency. In a living paradigm, leadership is about cultivating the conditions for life to thrive, for emergence to unfold, and for systems to evolve. It is not about fixing problems one by one but learning to see how the parts interact, how patterns and potential arise, and how small changes can ripple across nested systems.

NESTED SYSTEMS AND EMERGENCE

Every organization is nested in larger systems: industries, societies, ecosystems, and ultimately the Earth. Each decision an intrapreneur makes has effects that cascade beyond the boundaries of their team or company. This is both humbling and empowering: no single intrapreneur can solve the complexity of planetary crises, yet every intrapreneur is a node in the web of emergence.

In his Cards For Life training course, Thomas Mansfield explains the concept of Emergence in this way: We come out of the world, not into it— our bodies are extensions of the Earth body. You are something the whole world is doing in the same way that a wave is something that the whole Ocean is doing; or just like an apple tree ‘apples’ the Earth has ‘peopled’. What is emerging? Complexity emerges out of many simple interactions and relationships.

ASSESSING OUR STATE OF BEING

If we are to create better conditions for life, we must also turn inward. Our state of being, our inner landscape of attention, beliefs, and assumptions, shapes the quality of everything we bring into the world. Are we acting from fear, scarcity, and fragmentation? Or from curiosity, humility, and wholeness? Regenerative leadership begins with this self-assessment. It asks us to continually evolve ourselves so that the systems we touch can also evolve.

REDEFINING LEADERSHIP FOR A REGENERATIVE FUTURE

Global Intrapreneur Week 2025 is our opportunity to rethink leadership and planetary boundaries as creative thresholds, guiding principles for reimagining the role of business. True leadership is no longer about heroic acts or technical fixes, it is about aligning with the wisdom of living systems. It is about cultivating regenerative cultures within our organizations and beyond, where innovation serves not just efficiency but the flourishing of life. It is about connecting to place, understanding and integrating the history, traditions and essence of the places in which we live and participate.

EVEN FIRST PRINCIPLES OF REGENERATION

WHOLES

Experiencing a being as singular, unified, and with a role to play within a larger system, rather than as made up of interconnected parts.

POTENTIAL

Experiencing something in terms of what inherently it could become and contribute, rather than in terms of its current existence.

DEVELOPMENTAL

Living systems are not static; they develop and evolve. Regenerative practice supports continuous growth, learning, and adaptation.

ESSENCE

Recognizing that each being is different, has its own nature, and will express itself distinctively, rather than lumping things together in generic categories.

NESTEDNESS

Recognizing that every whole is embedded within other wholes, such that impacts to one level affect all levels and the potential of one contributes to the potential of all.

NODAL

Revealing essence-sourced dynamics within a system in a way that allows one to find focused interventions that transform it toward a greater expression of its potential.

FIELDS

Discerning and shaping the source of the qualitative state of something, which either limits or enables the work it could be doing.

Source: Carol Sanford and Ben Haggard

Each of us has a role to play. As intrapreneurs, we are uniquely positioned to shift mindsets within organizations, to weave systemic awareness into strategies, and to remind our colleagues that we are nature in action. The question to hold is:

What is required of me - of us -here and now, to create

conditions for life to thrive?

AN INVITATION

This is the shift our times are calling for. From separation to connection, from linear to systemic, from doing less harm to regenerating life. It begins with how we think, how we perceive, and how we choose to act.

We are nature. When we remember this truth, our leadership can create the conditions to unlock potential and make all life thrive.

Daniela Elster is Head of Community and Strategic Partnership at the League of Intrapreneurs and a consultant in regenerative development, sustainability, and experience design, with global experience and a background in strategic communication and social innovation.