Resources for Regenerative Organizations
Resources for Regenerative Organizations
nRhythm has compiled a series of videos, books, articles and quotes to serve as a resource to you on your regenerative journey. This set of resources is organized by nRhythm's Regenerative Design Principles, which are based on the foundation of key insights from living systems science. These Regenerative Design Principles help us frame our questions and guide our design, decisions, and day-to-day management or our organizations. Our hope is that this set of resources can help you continue to build your practice and live into a principle-based approach.
This is a living list of resources that we will continue to add to over time. Is there anything you'd like to recommend we include? Email us info@nRhythm.co.
General
A series of resources that cross multiple principles.
The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between how nature works and the way people think. ― Gregory Bateson
The world is a complex, interconnected, finite, ecological–social–psychological–economic system. We treat it as if it were not, as if it were divisible, separable, simple, and infinite. Our persistent, intractable global problems arise directly from this mismatch. ― Donella Meadows
Life creates the conditions that are conductive to life. ― Janine Benyus
The fertility cycle is a cycle entirely of living creatures passing again and again through birth, growth, maturity, death, and decay. ― Wendell Berry
Holism: The whole is more than the sum of its parts
We recognize that in living systems, regeneration, and life can only be understood when viewing the system as a whole. We design and operate in a way that values the entirety of the system and creates conditions for abundance, resilience, and impact to emerge from the interdependent contributions of all team members, clients, and partners.
Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty. ― Albert Einstein
[Holism is] the tendency in nature to form wholes that are greater than the sum of the parts through creative evolution. ― Jan Christian Smuts
Instead of the animistic, mechanistic, or the mathematical universe, we see the genetic, organic, holistic universe. ― Jan Christian Smuts
When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world. ― John Muir
Mechanistic thinking focuses on "what," and holistic thinking digs into "why. — Pearl Zhu
Interdependence: Inherent value of all relationships
We recognize that in living systems regeneration, resilience, and abundance emerge from the diversity of interdependent relationships of all kinds in the system. We design and operate our organizations in a way that recognizes the complexity of our deep interdependence with our clients, suppliers, partners, and even competitors.
Meditate often on the interconnectedness and mutual interdependence of all things in the universe. ― Marcus Aurelius
One of the fastest ways to learn interdependence is to shift how we show up in relationship. Primarily, we get more honest… Radical Honesty… ask the questions you really want answered, speak your truth and let the relationship build inside all that reality. ―Adrienne Maree Brown
All living beings are members of ecological communities bound together in a network of interdepenencies. When this deep ecological perception becomes part of our daily awareness, a radically new system of ethics emerges. ― Fritjof Capra, The Web of Life
The more complex the network is, the more complex its pattern of interconnections, the more resilient it will be. ― Fritjof Capra
There is a strong current in contemporary culture advocating ' holistic ' views as some sort of cure-all... Reductionism implies attention to a lower level while holistic implies attention to higher level. These are intertwined in any satisfactory description: and each entails some loss relative to our cognitive preferences, as well as some gain... there is no whole system without an interconnection of its parts and there is no whole system without an environment. ― Francisco Varela
Evolutionary: Maintains a dynamic balance with ever-changing environmental conditions
We recognize that life creates the conditions for life. We design and operate in a way that both responds to and also creates change in our organizational environment to maintain a dynamic balance with constant change.
Developmental: Growth and development of all members
We recognize that all members of living systems are in constant growth and development and that the health of system is dependent on the health of its members. We design and operate our organizations in a way that creates the conditions for all members to grow and thrive in conjunction with the health of the system.
There is a global shortage of workers with the critical-thinking skills, technical agility, motivation, and independence needed by the emerging economy. What is urgently needed now is an approach to work design that educates workers to be successful in the 21st century. ― Carol Sanford, The Regenerative Business
Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and do try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answer, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. The point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. ― Rainer Maria Rilke (1903)
Uniqueness: Original and the possibility of individual genius
We recognize that each living system and every member of the system is unique and expresses their individual genius. We design and operate our organizations in a way that fosters the expression of the genius of all members within the greater context and purpose of the organization.
Everyone is born a genius, but the process of living de-geniuses them. ― Buckminster Fuller
The most important thing each of us can know is our unique gift and how to use it in the world. Individuality is cherished and nurtured, because, in order for the whole to flourish, each of us has to be strong in who we are and carry our gifts with conviction, so they can be shared with others. ― Robin Wall Kimmerer
Nodal: Decentralized and distributed
We recognize that living systems are not centrally controlled and organized and that resources and functions are distributed throughout the entire system. We design and operate our organizations in a way that does not rely on centralized command and control structures and allows all members of the system to be resourced, empowered decision-makers.
The systemic understanding of life is the recognition that networks are the basic pattern of organisation of all living systems. Wherever we see life, we see networks. Indeed, at the very heart of the change of paradigms from the mechanistic to the systemic view of life we find a fundamental change of metaphors: from seeing the world as a machine to understanding it as a network. ― Fritjof Capra
In a connected world, power no longer emanates from the top of the heap, but the centre of the network. ― Greg Satell
The temptation to lead as a chess master, controlling each move of the organization, must give way to an approach as a gardener, enabling rather than directing. A gardening approach to leadership is anything but passive. The leader acts as an “Eyes-On, Hands-Off” enabler who creates and maintains an ecosystem in which the organization operates. ― Stanley McChrystal
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