“Schadenfreude: When the Banana Peel Is on Someone Else’s Floor and What Psychological Safety Has to Do with It”
Some time ago, I was looking for material to prepare a talk on the topic of being colleagues and psychological safety, and I came across this term, schadenfreude, which struck me, on the one hand because, with some embarrassment, I recognized some situations I had experienced in the past, and on the other because the […]
Walking with systems: learning experience 1
The most brilliant concepts can be very simple and yet difficult to assimilate. That’s how I felt when I discovered the systems approach and the work of Donnella Meadows. Powerful but complex. It took me a long time and a lot of miles to understand. Every summer since 2021, I’ve gone walking alone in the […]
The unanswered mail case
What is a liberated company? That’s the question I’m asking myself after leaving the company I founded ten years ago. I began by reviewing the different approaches to the liberated company. I felt it was superfluous and boring. Then I thought about the highlights of this adventure, the emotions I’d felt. Because that’s what it’s […]
Permaculture, Organisations and Management | Conclusion
So here ends our exploration of Holgrem’s 12 Permaculture principles, and how they can apply to the world of organisations and management. They have proven highly useful and creative as a bridge between natural ecosystems and human, socio-systems; indeed, permaculture being a nature-inspired design system, it creates a ‘space for thinking’ about how Nature operates […]
Permaculture principle #11: Use edges and value the marginal
Edges are the richest, most productive spaces in the natural world In Nature, edges tend to be places of trade, where elements of both ecosystems exchange their goods and create new, unprecedented wealth. The edge of a forest is a place where light is more accessible, thus enabling species that could not otherwise develop to […]
Permaculture Principle #9: Use small and slow solutions
Reminder: Life on Earth is 3,8 billion years old Permaculture is a design method that seeks to mimic Life, as it unfolds through natural ecosystems. It is based on the premise that life as we know it is the result of 3,8 billion years of R&D, of trial and error that consistently eliminated forms that […]
Permaculture Principle #7: Design from patterns to details
Patterns are a central feature of the systemic nature of life on Earth There is something magical about patterns: you can’t see them, yet they orchestrate everything that you see happening around you. From bare ground, a primary forest starts with pioneering plants, then shrubs, then pioneering trees, then longer-living trees, then really big trees […]
Permaculture principle #6: Produce no waste
This is so simple in Nature! One of the many wonders of natural ecosystems is that they produce no waste. Only human systems do. In Nature, any output from one element is an input for another element. Ecosystems have grown through a principle quite central to the systemic paradigm of which they are such an […]
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. […]
In search of happiness?
During a coaching session, my coachee’s request fell like a sentence: I am looking to be happier. What makes people happy is happiness. But what is happiness? Luck (the good luck charm) or the state of fully satisfied consciousness. There are countless quotes on happiness: “Happiness, wrote Roger Martin du Gard, is not a cup […]
