Let’s Get Metaphysical!

Source: Image by House of Beautiful Business, used with permission

Our world is undergoing profound changes: global warming and loss of species, growing social division and far-right populism, toxic tech culture and looming cyberwars, the pandemic, a crisis of loneliness, The Great Resignation, and more.

And business is changing fast, too.

We want business that doesn’t reduce us to productivity and efficiency, to numbers and figures, to shareholder value and bottom line. We want business that makes meaning, that senses and makes sense, that generates and regenerates. Business that is always unfinished. Business that is not bigger, but greater, wider, deeper. Business that connects us to our heart, spirit, and body. To nature. That is nature.

It’s time to remember the “unbusinesslike nature of business,” as philosopher Dr. Bayo Akomolafe put it.

In response to The Great Reduction—replacing distinctive human processes, relationships, and experiences with AI simulations—we need The Great Expansion. We need business to lift its veneer and come all the way down, to look up and within, with its head in the cloud(s) and both feet underground — like a tower with a foundation as deep as its height.

Welcome to the new paradigm: the metaphysical.

Sounds abstract? Well, it is. And it isn’t. It’s time to realize that what seemed beyond reality yesterday will be mainstream tomorrow. And is already acutely relevant today.

Let’s look at the four main attributes of metaphysical business:

First, meta, as in the metaverse.

The metaverse has finally arrived on the scene in full force. The Great Immersion comes with great responsibility. This is true whether you are a proponent of virtual supremacy or not. In his new book, Reality X, David J. Chalmers argues that virtual worlds will rival and ultimately surpass an increasingly unalluring physical reality. Following that line of thinking, we must make the metaverse worth living in. Otherwise, it will just become one gigantic shopping mall.

And yet, the real world isn’t going anywhere. In his essay, “The Dream of Virtual Reality,” the philosopher L. M. Sacasas contends: “The claim that, even now, virtual realities can outstrip my experience of the world is increasingly plausible when I have lost the capacity to wonder at and delight in the gratuity and beauty of the world.” In fact, research by ReD Associates suggests that younger generations, in particular, spend a big chunk of their time online to enable more meaningful social interactions (entertainment, romance, study) in the physical world.

So, ask yourself what you and your organization can do not only to make the virtual world better but to use it to make the real one better. “What if the virtual realities we created didn’t make us want to stay, but what if they inspired us to want to come back and build a better actual world?” Shannon Mullen O’Keefe, founder of The Museum of Ideas, wonders, “What if we visited our world as it might be if we cared for it?”

Secondly, metaphysical means physical.

We must balance our presence in the virtual world by becoming more aware of our bodies. Meta sana in corpore sano. This is not just a personal effort but a political one. Social progress happens when our shared knowledge becomes sensuous, as the Afro-feminist writer Minna Salami argues — when we become one body. So we need to get physical.

This begins with re-acknowledging that the body-less bodies we bring to the workplace have deprived us for too long of too much of our knowledge. We perform better, make better decisions, are happier and more fulfilled at work if we show up with our full bodies. As leaders, we will only come alive and inspire others to come alive if we mean what we say — or, in other words, if we embody what we believe in.

This is why airlines have begun to incorporate yoga in their pilot training. This is why ballet dancers and choreographers teach CEOs what it means to step into the unknown and make creative choices. This is why teams start their meetings by singing together. Indeed, if a workforce formed a choir to sing the new company strategy every day, adoption rates would go through the roof.

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Thirdly, metaphysical means natural.

The physicality of business implies a humbler notion of our relationship to nature. We need organizations that are as complex as nature, that are nature-like.

Nature-like organizations co-design with nature beyond bionics, biomimicry, and synthetic biology, toward nature-like business models and organizational designs. They must not only be ecologically minded but also become ecologies, with seasonality, circularity, and fluidity as their core DNA, thereby becoming more resilient to ever-changing environments.

Nature-like organizations apply a regenerative approach to all their resources, humans included. As Giles Hutchins and Laura Storm suggest:

“​​Regenerative means to renew, replenish, heal, revitalize. Which, in practice, means to understand and work with the living-system dynamics of the organization and its wider ecosystem; to work in ways that allow the business to become life-affirming. Essentially, ‘regenerative’ is to attune with the way nature works.”

Finally, metaphysical means spiritual.

Metaphysical business means moving beyond the human-centered. It honors our spiritual selves. It connects us to something that is greater than ourselves, cherishes the subconscious, and strives for a heightened consciousness. It plays with psychedelics and entangles with quantum thinking.

Metaphysical business is confident enough to look to the stars to shape its strategy. It views astrology and astronomy as an invitation to humility. “For when we are nothing… It is then that we are gods,” as the poet John Lars Zwerenz wrote.

It is a business that knows its demons. And is not afraid to summon its angels when it needs them.

The future will be more virtual, physical, natural, and spiritual. To thrive in it, business must get metaphysical.