Tag: interdependence

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How do you write a contract based on regenerative values?

Today I’ve been thinking about that question as we finalise the participant agreement for the Regenerative Design Lab. People are about to hand over their money, and that deserves clarity. But it also raised a deeper question: what would a contract look like if it genuinely reflected the regenerative values we teach — interdependence, emergence and abundance?

Most contracts start from a worldview of separation, scarcity and control:

  • You are the customer
  • We are the provider
  • Something might go wrong
  • Let’s protect ourselves

That’s not unreasonable. But it’s also not how the Lab really works.

The quality of the Lab doesn’t come from what we deliver. It emerges from how people show up, support one another, care for each other, sit with uncertainty, and learn together.

So instead of asking “how do we protect ourselves?” we tried asking different questions:

  • How do we bring people together?
  • How can we remain flexible and adapt to what is emerging?
  • How do we unlock the potential of the group?

Interdependence

Interdependence is about our reliance on one another. The Lab works because the group forms a shared connection, grounded in care, trust and mutual support. This isn’t a group of co-located parallel learners — it’s a learning community.

The agreement makes this explicit. It names that interdependence and sets some simple ground rules to help it establish itself.

Emergence

Most contracts try to fix things in place: you get this, I get that. Valuing emergence is different. It means relinquishing some control so that the best outcomes can arise through a series of complex interactions.

There’s nothing wrong with having a plan — and we do have a detailed plan. But we’re also clear that the programme can evolve in response to what happens along the way.

Trust plays an important role in working like this. Being honest upfront about the emergent nature of the work helps turn uncertainty into a shared expectation rather than a disappointment.

Abundance

Abundance was the hardest value to translate into a contract. It’s the opposite of a scarcity mindset, and it doesn’t show up as anything goes.

Instead, it appears in small choices:

  • Offering tiered pricing based on what people can afford, trusting there will be enough overall to cover costs — and ending up with a richer mix of participants as a result.
  • Recognising that circumstances change, and allowing people to move between cohorts where possible.
  • Creating Creative Commons–licensed tools, based on the belief that we don’t need to control what we create — that value grows through sharing, and that there will be enough to continue the work.

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In the end, the agreement isn’t long. This isn’t a perfect or complete solution — it’s an attempt to align a practical document with how the work actually happens.

I hope it feels like an invitation into a particular way of working. Most importantly, it helps transmit our values right at the start of the process.

Changing Mindsets
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Signs of local weather

I’m enjoying being absorbed by The Secret World of Weather, by Tristan Gooley. It reveals to the reader secret signs all around us about how the weather is likely to behave. Signs that hide in plain sight, that we have forgotten to notice.

The repeating theme in the early chapters: modern forecasting models deal with macro effects, the movement of large masses of air or wind high above our heads. These are what the weather apps tell us about. 

These models ignore the local effects: landscape, ground cover type, sun traps. But it is at this scale that we experience the weather, and it is at this local level we need to make decisions: what to wear, where to sit, where to plant things.

Reading those signs is to reconnect ourselves with our local landscape, an example of the sort of local interconnectedness that regenerative design needs. 

When we ignore the local detail, we have to compensate with more effort: more heating, cooling, protection. We end up working against the conditions rather than with them.

When we appreciate the local lie of the land, we can learn to work with what’s already there – and learn to live and even thrive within it. 

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In the interests of health and safety…

That’s how the sign started its instruction. But health and safety is not a person. It has no interests.

But people do. 

They have interests. They are interested in staying healthy and safe. 

And we are interested in them, because we are empathetic. We want other people to stay healthy and safe.

So why not start with “to help you stay healthy and safe…”?

Or, warmer still, “because we care about you.”

(Or even, because we love you, as fellow human beings?)

What “in the interests of health and safety” really signals is “in the interests of us having discharged our responsibility to tell you’. Which is empty of empathy. 

And love.