Global Ecovillage Network/Solution Library/Holistic business and self­organisation

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The principles and what to consider when building holism, self­-organization, and emergence into your business or organisation.

Eventually, we will wake up and realise we have been living in a global village all along...

— Anon

We can view humanity as being separate from Nature or being an integral part of it. If we choose the latter view, then we ought to look to Nature to be our teacher. If we do this, we see the following principles at work:

• Holism: where all parts of a system are recognised and the parts together add up to more than the whole.
• Emergence: we can try to plan for every eventuality and control external events (people, situations and so on) or we can allow ourselves to be led by life and for the path to emerge in front of us.
• Rhythms and cycles: nature follows rhythms and cycles, decay, death and rebirth. Why not our ideas? Our organisations? Our plans? Our stories that we hold onto so dearly?
• Self­organising: as opposed to entropy, which classical physics points to, where everything degenerates out of chaos, the opposite seems to happen with the self­organising principle.

A moment is reached when the chaos organises itself into order, or beauty. And to bring these principles into your life and work does not require a check­list of things to repeat each day. It involves being fully present to what is in front of you, giving everything to it and letting go.

• Contextualised Design.

• Diversity & Cohesion.
• Leadership & Governance.

• Reinventing the Organisation.
• Frederic Laloux Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm.
• Stephen Harrod Buhner.
• Submitted by ­W. Graham Stewart, Still Consulting / Wind Harvest International.