Shifting to the Ecosystem
a speech by
Claire Nuer
The following is excerpted from a speech given to the World Business Academy
earlier this year by Claire Nuer, founder of Learning as Leadership (LaL), World
Business Academy Fellow and Trustee, and Member Consultant of Peter Senge’s Society
for Organizational Learning (SoL). These excerpts are translated from French.
Claire: I want to share a little about my journey and the questions that have driven
me for a long time. I was born in 1933 in the Jewish ghetto of Paris; not a wonderful
idea to be born at that time in that place. Then, as today, many people were talking
about commitment: grand ideas about defending noble values such as "work, family, nation."
We were all talking about recreating the world. We didn’t call it "a new paradigm," we
called it "a new order," but it was no different. The communists, the capitalists, the
nationalists, the leftists, the fascists, and all the other "ists" – everybody wanted to
make a difference. That is what I grew up hearing as a young child, and yet it all led
to unprecedented destruction.
Today as well, we all want leaders who make a difference. We talk about the need for
clear vision, passion, enthusiasm, commitment. Hitler provided that to millions of people,
as did Lenin, Stalin, and Mao. These people and others, hoping to make a difference for
their people, but only for their people, led us to some of the worst destruction,
massacres, and genocide in the history of mankind.
The perpetrators of these crimes were not barbarians, but well-educated people like
you and me. Millions of men and women, leaders, scientists, philosophers, physicians,
professors, artists, engineers, bankers, and business leaders became killers without whom
such destruction would have been impossible. This has always posed a big question for me,
because it shows me our daily responsibility; if we do nothing to take a stand, then we
become implicit participants.
During the Holocaust, for example, businesses made a fortune exploiting racism and
hatred for their own financial gain. Witnessing that led me to ask myself, if I had
been born in Germany in 1923 instead of the Jewish ghetto in Paris in 1933, would I
have been a Nazi? It is not an easy thing for me to consider. I wish I could say,
"Who me? Impossible!" The thought alone gives me vertigo.
But if I look at my own behavior today – with my colleagues, my daughter, my husband,
mostly with my husband – when I know that I am right, or when I fear that somebody is
going to "make me wrong," what do I do? What do you do? Every day in subtle ways we
"kill" each other with our thoughts. We kill with our anger, our prejudices, and
our strong attachment to being right.
We fear for our own survival or loss of power. How can we learn from our awareness of
this process? How can we become leaders who will not perpetuate this kind of destruction?
How is it, in fact, that we become killers in the first place?
Babies are born learners; they are constantly learning, and once they learn something,
once they know, they let it go and move on to something else. But as we grow older and
take on the culture of our environment, we lose this natural state and begin to do the
opposite. We hold on to what we know and more and more chase after acknowledgment – and
so we hold on to our certainties, to being right.
Our need for love and compassion is replaced with the constant search for other people's
acknowledgment. In a world of acknowledgment, however much we wish to be equal, equality
is never enough. For our ego, equal is not possible; our ego needs "more than." Our ego
seeks "more than" in order to be acknowledged. "More than," however, means pushing others
down, being right over them, "killing" others by word or deed. When I operate in this
ego-system, I cannot be a functional team member. It is foolish to think that we can create
functional teams or families as long as we each want to be the star that shines, rather
than a link in the chain of humanity.
Learning about the prison of our ego takes a lifetime, but the shift, the decision to
leave the prison, requires just one second. Once we really see what we no longer want,
sensing it at a cellular level, we see very clearly that there are two contexts we can
choose to create: one of destruction or one of humanity. Each time we have a decision to
make, we can assess whether we prioritize a humane or a destructive context. Life becomes
much simpler and clearer.
As we work on no longer being killers and enemies, we enter into a place that is very
different, that of the "eco-system." In the eco-system, we operate beyond competition,
where there are no stars; we are all a link in the chain, adding upon each others' strengths
and giving support for each others' weaknesses. We are safe and we make others safe to be
and to express who they really are.
I am not speaking about a rosy Utopia. In this space there is compassion, trust, and
communication, and creating that often demands going through our greatest fears. Instead
of protecting ourselves, as we do in the ego-system, and perpetuating problems, we take the
risk to surface tough issues and communicate directly about them. We find and use our own
inner resources and support others in a way that brings us towards our collective goals,
whether those are the goals of a marriage, a school, or a company.
But operating in this new way can create disturbance. Pioneers have always created
disturbance and turbulence, and that is the difficult part: Are we ready to bear with that
for the sake of our goals for peace and humanity?
Please do not walk away without changing anything within yourself. You can make that
decision I have been describing right away. Do you want to remain a "killer"? Do you want
to contribute to "killer" families, "killer" schools, "killer" companies, and "killer"
countries? When you decide that you do not, that clarity already provides you with a
different starting point to experiment with something new.
That something new can be strongly shaped by your life goal, what I call a "noble goal."
A noble goal in life is one that supports everyone. It supports all of humanity as well
as myself as an individual human being. When I am guided by my noble goal, and support
others in whatever situation I find myself, then I am no longer a "killer." When I am
vigilant moment by moment, I am at choice about in what context I choose to put my thoughts,
decisions, and actions. This state of choice, which allows us to operate from a context of
humanity, is the first step towards bringing about radical change in our world that protects
all living beings on the planet.
Claire Nuer (March 20, 1933 - March 26, 1999) was an international
consultant and lecturer who, as a survivor of the Holocaust and cancer, turned a lifetime
of challenges into a commitment to creating a humane context for today and future generations.
She pioneered a set of conceptual and practical tools for business leaders from around the
world to learn leadership and personal mastery skills for healthier and more productive teams,
companies, families and communities.
Claire's work and legacy continue on through Learning as Leadership’s leadership coaching,
consulting, and training programs.
Contact Learning as Leadership:
Learning as Leadership
PO Box 150090
San Rafael, CA 94915-0090
