In January this year, inspired by the awesome ‘Born to Run’ story, I decided to try barefoot running. As I kid, I spent most winters cross-country running. I loved the isolation, being in nature and the endurance challenge of 10 miles of frozen fields and horizontal pissing rain. But at about 18 I started to struggle with chronic shin pains, then diagnosed as shin splints, I never really recovered and running became just too painful.

So most weekends this year I’ve been out running in these – barefoot/minimal running shoes. Barefoot running is a response to the intervention of the running shoe industry, it is based on a body of medical research which suggests the continuous innovation of the running shoe has resulted in the disconnection of the foot from the earth, an inability of the foot to naturally respond to the terrain beneath it, and using thousands of years of evolutionary innovation to naturally adjust the posture of the body and prevent foot, knee and back problems. That made sense to me.

It’s actually been a very painful transition, because I’ve been learning to run again, but this time by ‘listening to my feet’, noticing how they feel against the terrain, responding to calf pains and achilles aches, understanding how the system works, tweaking my gait and posture accordingly.

Learning to unlearn.

So what’s this got to do with brands and business?

Learning to unlearn is I think one of the uber challenges of the now for brands and business and more accurately the human folk and communities behind them.

Because much of what we have learnt in our marketing and business careers and indeed from mainstream culture is now becoming increasingly irrelevant, and more importantly dangerous, if we are serious about trying to maintain a healthy planet and societies which can provide for future generations.

Or for those in denial that we’re reaching a tipping point of resource depletion, energy constraints, societal inequality and runaway climate change, I would say that the inability of an organisation to learn to unlearn will result in the collapse of the business in the not too distant future.

Arne Naess who kick started the ‘deep ecology’ movement, (essentially a systems thinking idea, which puts people and self as part of and connected to a vast web of life, human and non), said that what is destroying our world is the persistent notion that we are independent of it, aloof from other species and immune to what we do to them. He argued that our survival requires a shift to more encompassing ideas of who we are.

I think this is extremely relevant to business today. Environmentalism aside, what is the role of a business or a brand and indeed a marketeer in the 21st century in the world which we find ourselves in?

Challenging and exploring our ingrained assumptions is enormously difficult, especially in the corporate and marketing world, but without it, imho it is impossible to evolve, at least for the long term, to be fit for the future.

Justin’s post on the future of marketing made me smile, the future according to the majority of male dominated CEO’s of 50 of the worlds most successful companies appears to be the consumer is king, life is digital and growth. Few signs of unlearning there.

Peter Senge from MIT (who if you’re interested in more spiritual approaches to business and organisational learning and development I would highly recommend), talks here about what is the actual purpose of the corporation in the 21^st century? In a world with extraordinary inequalities between rich and poor, with accelerating climate change, massive resource and energy pressures and finite growth. What is the game we are now playing?

For me there has never been a more critical time for learning to unlearn. To start to challenge and explore our everyday business and marketing assumptions, to look at the world we operate in with a much wider lens, to start to try and see things in wholes and to understand that we are part of a vast interconnected system. A creaking system.

To ask ourselves why are we here? What are we really trying to create? Why does this matter?

Part of the mission with the pipeline project is to help support teams to get on this journey of learning to unlearn, of helping organisations be effective in dealing with the realities and complexities they face but at the same time creating an empowering orientation of where they want to go.

Why?

To help create resilient businesses with strong internal cultures built around a shared purpose and a positive legacy vision.

Joanna Macy argues that living systems evolve in complexity, flexibility, and intelligence through interactions with each other. These interactions requireopen-ness and vulnerability in order to process the flow through of energy and information.

Far out? Spot on I reckon.

Open-ness and vulnerability I think are key in learning to unlearn, because challenging our assumptions, acknowledging and accepting that much of what we have learnt in our career’s and what we know about the world is no longer that relevant is at times extremely tough to accept. It requires honesty and trust, compassion, the ability to really listen to others, to examine and be open about our own behaviours and beliefs.

But open-ness and vulnerability are also the sort of behaviours rarely encouraged in organisations.

So here’s the rub, I’d argue we need to rapidly start developing a more reflective, honest and open culture within business to really create organisations that want to learn to unlearn. Only then can an organisation truly progress, evolve and prosper in the long term.

I’m hoping we can help more business and brand teams with this challenge.

And the running?

After several months of pain and late night questioning, time reflecting, noticing, adjusting, researching and experimenting, my feet feel awesome, the pain has gone. I’m running twice a week and l’m feeling reconnected, focused and totally energised.

But I’m still learning.

And unlearning.

And hope I always will be.

Bring on the Cardiff half.