You need nature as your teacher to help you reconnect with Being. But not only do you need nature, it also needs you.
You are not separate from nature. We are all part of the One Life that manifests itself in countless forms throughout the universe, forms that are all completely interconnected. When you recognize the sacredness, the beauty, the incredible stillness, and dignity in which a flower or a tree exists, you add something to the flower or the tree.
Through your recognition, your awareness, nature too comes to know itself. It comes to know its own beauty and sacredness through you! (Eckhart Tolle)
Tolle is the writer of many books that include the Power of Now, a beautiful read that has shifted many lives positively. He is also a great consciousness and presence teacher. Many practices we see and engage in, in the area of grounding ourselves are arguably inspired by his teachings.
Byron Katie’s famous book, Loving What Is, is fore worded by Tolle and it can be argued that Shirzad Chamine’s work has traits we see in Tolle’s writings and teachings. He has done a Google Talk, a special talk that Google organises for its employees where a serious person or trailblazer is invited to speak.
It is his teaching about the importance of nature that has inspired us to start by quoting him today in a statement where he declares that we need nature as our teacher.
We focus on ownership, which has been central to our writing about employee commitment. It is our conviction that nature is driven in her processes and existence by the principle of ownership.
If one observes closely, they will note that there is a clear and traceable thread of ownership in nature. The human being and many animals just by instinct tend to take positions of ownership.
An animal gives birth today and does not push away it’s young one but owns it by instinct. Its participation starts the moment nature, through the reproductive system, places the baby in its womb.
It never says I do not know this thing growing in my womb, no, but allows it to be nurtured until it comes out of its body and stands on its own. While outside, if it is a cow, mother cow then takes care of it now practically without complaining.
The processes of starting a business and establishing a workplace may not have the employees participating consciously but once the business is there as a going concern, the employees come in and if well informed they take positions of ownership.
Sadly, for employees, unlike animals, they most of the time do not take positions of ownership but occupy those of contestation and demand. This is not entirely their fault because in instances where there is no leadership there is no ownership vision and where there is ‘no vision the people perish…’
There is two ways this thing happens. Firstly, employers take ownership as a principle of success seriously and run with it ‘creating winners in the workplace in the process. (Arnold Mol).
It is a win/win game where the employer and the employee come in to participate and you may look at it as nature and yourself where nature wins and you win as Tolle puts it, ‘But not only do you need nature, it also needs you.’
We have something to learn from nature here where the employee comes in with very little to contribute seemingly yet so much and if the two parties copy from nature, a lot is achieved.
Again, Tolle puts it aptly when he says, ‘Through your recognition, your awareness, nature too comes to know itself. It comes to know its own beauty and sacredness through you!’
There is something a human being contributes to nature when they pursue ownership and consciousness in as much as there is something an employee gives to an employer if they are embraced as owners.
Perhaps we need to move away from calling employees by that name. Maybe call them owners and be clear in terms of what stake they own. That would shift things, no doubt. Maybe we need one revolutionary company to just take a dive and go that direction. Legislation can revise the Labour Act and change the title of employee to owner.
This is how cultures are changed. Names carry a certain influence on behaviour and culture. In the Bible we see a lot of people having their names change and it seemed to work.
Maybe the workplace could shift if we changed the employee or worker’s name to owner. Well, if anyone feels uncomfortable, we could go ‘owner 2’ to distinguish them from owner 1. That way they come with that clarity that they are part of the system, and the system is theirs.
If we do not do something about this workplace relationship, we expose ourselves to a lot of ‘vultures.’ Employees, if they do not get official invitations to own, will own by hook or crook. If they do not get it psychologically, they force it by right.
Then you have employee rights and binary oppositions are created where employees stand on the one side demanding certain rights and stakes and employers pull the opposite direction reminding the employee that they do not own the business and can be dismissed anytime.
You then get such structures as workers committees and works council to legitimize broken and irreparable relationships. There is trouble already and the employee and the employer become sworn enemies who work together.
In that relationship model, there will always be conflict which gets institutionalised and becomes normal. I know that because of this ‘normal’ way of employer/employee relationships you are wondering as you are reading this if I have lost my mind imagining things that are farfetched. Well, it might help you to take a look at the name of this column again because we are here to re-imagine the workplace by treading ‘where angels fear to tread…’ Note that we are not rushing but treading where angels fear to tread. We hope that one day workplace revolutionaries will take this up and change the workplace.
We realise as we continue to explore this subject that employers have to decide to embrace employees as some sort of owners if they want to think prudence and growth leading to sound industrial climates that promote productivity and wellbeing.
When this is not done, things go wrong and there is fire fighting and crisis management. This affects productivity and threatens the permanence of the business. An organization therefore does itself a lot of service when it invests in ownership as a principle. Academics have an important subject to explore and create further knowledge on. This is an important subject that has been allowed to degenerate into a cliché.
- Bhekilizwe Bernard Ndlovu’s training is in human resources training, development and transformation, behavioural change, applied drama, personal mastery and mental fitness. He works for a Zimbabwean company as human capital executive, while also doing a PhD with Wits University where he looks at violent strikes in the South African workplace as a researcher. Ndlovu worked as a human resources manager for several blue-chip companies in Zimbabwe and still takes keen interest in the affairs of people and performance management. He can be contacted on bhekilizweb.bn@gmail.com