Tag: LivingSystemsBlueprint

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How do we know if we are moving forwards?

Facilitation is an intense business. It requires you to read lots of social cues and to judge what’s the best next step. It’s not surprising therefore that when travelling home in the train from a workshop I usually drift off, the sway of the carriages gently quickly sending me to sleep.

And it was in that just-before-sleep moment that I realised I had no way of knowing if I was moving forwards or backwards. Once the train had reached a steady state there was no impulse forwards or backwards, just the jostling and shaking of the carriages. With my eyes closed, I couldn’t see. And it was dark outside in any case. For all I knew we could have been stationary and just shaking on the spot..

Cue a metaphor for how we perceive change. If we are in the daily hustle and bustle of delivering projects, all we feel is the shaking and the jostling. If we can’t see into the distance we can’t see if we are getting closer and further away.

Back in the train, when the driver accelerates we feel pushed in to our seat (or pulled slightly out if we are facing backwards). But acceleration in organisational systems change is often much more imperceptible. We might not know it until things get out of control or ground to a halt.

So what can we do? Try this:

  • Ask what would it means to see the horizon? Maybe it’s something external to your daily frame of reference. Are you getting closer or further away?
  • Ask what it would it mean to see the rate of change? This might mean trying to find some sort of trace. Eg – Invoices, customer queries, sick days, species count, maintenance outages. How does that of these compare to last year?

If we can access these external frames of reference, we can start to understand our direction of travel, speed and acceleration.

The Living Systems Blueprint is our tool for assessing progress towards regenerative systems outcomes. Its three components – interconnection, symbiosis and capacity to change – give us a direction of travel and a framing for assessing progress.

Whether you use this framing or a different one, we need external reference to check our progress. 

Without them we might just be busily shaking on the spot.

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Why everything falls apart — and what to do about it

The second law of thermodynamics says that the universe is heading towards disorder. 

Life is the daily channelling of the flow — temporarily creating new structures: life forms, habitats culture.  

Life on Earth gets a daily boost of energy from the sun, and the movement of the planet and the moon. As long as there is energy available, we can work against the force of entropy to carry on creating complexity and richness. 

But when the energy stops, dismantling begins. And when what we have becomes too expensive to maintain with the energy do we have, the system breaks down too.

This is planning as governed by the second law of thermodynamics.

For millennia, humans have lived within this flux of energy and entropy, working with the available energy and resources. And when civilisations have overreached, they have declined.

Fossil fuels changed all of this. This concentrated energy source allowed us to escape the limits of the solar cycle and unlock extraordinary complexity. 

But again we have overreached. 

While fossil fuels have not peaked as quickly as expected, the climate breakdown caused by greenhouse gas emissions will shake civilisations apart. What have built has become too expensive to maintain – energetically, socially and ecologically. 

Sustainability asked us to think about doing less harm. Regenerative design is a fundamentally different approach.

How can we create life, habitats, homes, culture using the available energy that we have — creating things that are just complex in enough to thrive, but not so complex that  maintaining them uses the entire energy budget?

This requires much more acute awareness of the systems around us. 

  • What is connected to what — how could better connections create better conditions, and where is connection unhelpful? 
  • What is in flow, surplus and abundance – and what could we harness? 
  • What is the system trying to do?  — how could small interventions unlock something much bigger*

Left to their own devices, all systems will fall into decline. That’s the second law of thermodynamics. 

But every day we get an energy boost from the sun and the moon. THat’s our budget – the energy to resist the entropy. 

The question of regenerative design is simply this: 

How do we use that energy to create the conditions for thriving for humans and the rest of the living world?

*These three bullets map directly to the Living Systems Blueprint. See below.

Regenerative Design Lab
Living Systems Blueprint
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Feedback = understanding

I’m grateful to my friend and Regenerative Design Lab colleague Ellie Osborne for this model. 

On the second day of our Cohort 5 Autumn Residential, we were sitting around the fire discussing interconnection in design. More explicitly, how connected do we feel to the places where we take materials from to build our buildings. 

A key factor in how regenerative systems stay in balance is through local feedback loops: knowing how much material is available and how much can be used without causing harm.

The feedback loop gives information about what is available. But perhaps a more human way to understand this feedback is to think of it as understanding. 

If a developer decides to build a new building in the city using material dug from just outside the suburbs, I am likely to have a much stronger view about this decision than if the material comes from a distant place I have never heard of.

I have an understanding of what it would mean to double the size of the open-pit mine if it were right here, compared to elsewhere. 

Now, mining, at small scale, can have a positive impact on habitats, and has been an important part of human construction for millennia. But that’s not the point. 

The point is, the closer the site, the stronger the feedback. The stronger the feedback, the stronger the understanding.

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Letting things done

Anyone into productivity books will probably be familiar with the classic Getting Things Done by David Allen. It’s a book title that transcends the book —it becomes a value system. Done things are good things. Undone = unorganised.

So here are three alternative work modes I’ve been playing with:

Letting things done

This mode is for going with the flow — doing what needs doing in the moment. It’s a way of working that responds to feedback from your environment, especially your connection with others. It is about noticing what signals say more of this and less of that.

Doing things fun

This mode is the of energy flow. When things are enjoyable, it mysteriously unlocks hidden energy. ‘In every job that must be done, there’s an element of fun, you fine the fun and… the job’s a game’, or so said productivity consultant Mary Poppins.

Letting things go

This mode is for the work of relinquishing control. It is letting something go. It is exchanging with others. It is opening the work up to reciprocity. You have to breathe out in order to breathe in again. It’s the same with plans and ideas.

So we have:

  • Getting things done
  • Letting things done
  • Doing things fun
  • Letting things go.

Whereas getting things done signals our intent to exert our will, the other three signal working with interconnection, following available energy and emergent potential. It’s a nice map onto the Living Systems Blueprint:

  • Interconnection (letting things done)
  • Symbiosis (doing things fun)
  • Capacity to change (lettings things go)

As far as we are aware, humans are the only species that produce productivity text books. The other species just to seem to get on with it, using the resources available to them to live in harmony. Now, that’s the productivity book I want to read.