Permaculture principle #3: Obtain a yield
It is the whole system that yields, not just a series of parts On a Permaculture farm, plants, shrubs, trees, and animals are chosen and organised so that each of them will provide several beneficial inputs to other parts of the overall system (according to the famous permaculture design principle: 1 element = several functions; […]
Permaculture principle #2: Capture and store energy
Increasing the potency of biological fields Permaculture suggests that reliance on cheap oil has shifted our systems’ capacity for resilience and self-reliance. We need to reclaim and implement our capacity to harness, store and circulate energy, and use it with a much higher degree of efficiency than we have accepted so far, under the illusion […]
Permaculture principle #1: Observe and interact
Taking Nature in The first step for a permaculturist when arriving on a new piece of land, or in a new farming community, is to slow right down, and to hold back any urge for quick ‘productive’ action. My friend Rob (https://www.robhopkins.net/ ) even suggests that where you decide to settle, build a house and […]
Permaculture, Organisations and Management – Introduction
Consider this Earth as a 3,8 billion-year old R&D lab; for all this time, over 20 millions species have evolved in co-existence, spinning through their interactions, and interconnections, a web of Life that in return creates the “conditions conducive for more life” (Janine Benyus), in an ever growing yet self-regulating fertile and virtuous cycle. […]
Freedom and unconscious dynamics
How free can we be at work? Anabelle holds a very promising job in the online products department of a prestigious investment company in Paris. She’s been coming for monthly coaching sessions for the last few months because she’s struggling with some management issues within her team, and would like to explore how to […]
“Why?” The ecological transition in search of meaning
“God is dead, Marx is dead, and I don’t feel very well myself,” said Woody Allen. Today, it is what we commonly call “the planet” that is not doing very well: climate disruption, rising temperatures and water levels, collapse of biodiversity, increase in zoonotic diseases, of which Covid-19 is the devastating incarnation. By 2050, planet […]
Owning our part: from denial-based business to a regenerative economy – Part 3
Denial is being challenged In her wonderful paper, the renowned systems-thinker Donella Meadows (1999) explains how, on a housing estate in the US, where houses were more or less identical, the electricity consumption was 30% lower in a particular block, compared to the surrounding blocks. Whilst insulation, number of appliances, cost of electricity, etc., were […]
Owning our part: from denial-based business to a regenerative economy – Part 2
Purpose as a way of working through this splitting Figure 1, adapted from the work of the Grubb Institute1, can help us understand what is at work in Michael’s experience. In that framework, Michael (a Person) works in a pharmaceuticals organisation (a System) that has an impact in the world (the Context). Through his […]
Owning our part: from denial-based business to a regenerative economy
Article published on “Organizational and Social Dynamics” Abstract In this article, we explore a core set of organisational and social dynamics at work in the business world: the denial and disowning of the part we play in co-creating the world we live in; and the splitting needed to protect us from the guilt and shame […]
Embodying both the good and the bad object in Regeneration
The societal and organisational shift that is required of us is unprecedented; it can no longer be about improving the current capitalist paradigm based on endless economic growth (even if we were to call it green growth, or sustainable growth), and has to stem from an innovation of the very paradigm through which we can […]
