From business as usual to enterprise for all-life flourishing — a Syntropic World
This week, and maybe a few more times between now and September, I will share articles from the Syntropic Archive.
We have over 2900 articles published on our site for those who do not know. Most of those are from my daily blog, Beauty of Beginnings, which I started on January 1st 2018. Sign up here.
This year, we will publish our first book, a curated edition of Beauty of Beginnings. 365 short contemplations on life, business, syntropy, leadership, and culture. Plus, a beautiful sunrise photo, unique to each day.
Stay tuned for advance purchase options for Beauty of Beginnings. Here is a small taste. I hope you enjoy it.
From business as usual to business for all-life flourishing
*This article was inspired by the Three Horizons of Change.
Business-as-usual = same, same. Innovation in business-as-usual is creating an iPhone, using the very business-as-usual platforms and thinking. In reality, there is no move towards a future supporting Earth’s increased wellbeing and all her creatures. Business-as-usual likes to pretend they are master innovators, but their innovation is designed to keep the wheels on the existing bus turning for more profit.
Business in transition — businesses that see a different future and are attempting to be the bridge between business-as-usual and what we call Syntropic Enterprises. These might include Bcorps, although some Bcorps are business-as-usual dressed in disguise. Business in transition is important work, the slow and steady path to change. Innovation here is to create the bridging pathways. This might include technologies such as blockchain. The danger is when innovation reaches into the business-as-usual tool kit and shrouds itself in the legal codes, governance and systems of the business-as-usual world. Often this happens inadvertently. We forget to see the water we swim in.
Business for a future that supports Earth and all her creatures. This is an entirely different way of thinking, being and operating. The organising principle is that anything we do in business, enterprise, community or government is for the increased wellbeing of Earth and all her creatures without ecological offence or the disadvantage of anyone. This is the domain of Syntropic Enterprise. We start with a clean sheet of paper. How would we design enterprise, coordinate humans, consider and account for value, govern, lead, steward, and comprehensively consider the future? How do we ensure we are in deep and reverent partnership with Nature, Earth, our home planet? Innovation is seeded into everything.
The shift from business as usual to business for all-life flourishing is not easy. The operating systems of business-as-usual are entrenched, held tightly by the monopolists.
I wonder if it is far easier to focus on Business for the future rather than business for transition. This is what we at Syntropic World have chosen as our path.
Beauty of Beginnings July 26th 2023
Take a lesson from the sunrise
Imagine if Barbra Streisand did not sing. If she said she would no longer sing at all.
Or if Leonardo DaVinci did not paint.
If Banksy never put his work into the world. If Donald Glover stayed small and safe?
Some artists have a talent that is singular and soaring. Inarguable.
Others, people like us, are no lesser bestowed with gifts. They are simply different. A radiant smile that leaves only joy in its wake. A tender touch at exactly the right time. A feisty protection from those not able to speak. A brilliant skill at convening people and creating spaces.
When we diminish our gifts and compare our majesty to the current canvas of fame, we diminish the light in the world. We are diminished in our own diminishment.
Our responsibility as alive humans is to shine our light, in its perfect and imperfect peculiarity, with full magnificence, without apology. To not do so is to deny others the experience of our unique song.
Take a lesson from the sunrise…
*In Syntropic World, we call this expressing our Pattern Integrity
Beauty of Beginnings July 16th 2018
To the aggressor, the lover
In our hyper-tech, hyper-masculine, hyper-neocapitalistic world, the spoils go to the aggressive. The takers.
Those who are fluent in selling illusion. Who seek insta fame through fakery and deceit, accumulating likes as status and money as power. Who increases the asymmetry of knowledge and access with each step they take, deriding social giving to those with limited access, yet insisting on being sponsored by the state as their power grows.
The carers, the lovers, the gentle, are devoured.
Women and men who know how to build trust in community, who tender the broken, who understand relationship. Invalidated.
In the end, the lion who eats it all will die of hunger.
And when dying, it will be the gentle and the loving holding his hand.
Too late then.
Let us invite another way. Let us honour nature’s wisdom, where diversity enables resilience and anti-fragility.
We need the Yin to the Yang. To the aggressor, the lover. To the ambitious, the steadfast.
To the sunrise, the sunset.
Perhaps Beauty, invited in, might be the bridge between the poles.
*In Syntropic World, the Synergistic Accounting tool enables us to account for the whole value of everything. The carers and lovers count and are never forgotten or sidelined
Beauty of Beginnings July 9th 2018
The law of averages
When we seek the average, which is what happens in consensus-ruled organisations, there is a downward trajectory of intelligence and decisions.
This is acceptable if average is desired.
Average removes the laggards and the edge dwellers.
If we want to be exceptional, if we long for excellence, if we want to be a stand for something, it cannot be found in the average.
AI works on the law of averages. We are entering a period where we will be overcome by average.
If you seek the exceptional, if you want to be a change-maker and new world creator, then be prepared to take risks, rock the boat, push the envelope, and not appeal to everyone.
You cannot have both.
Beauty of Beginnings July 19th 2023
The polarity pendulum is reaching its extreme
I have been ruminating on the state of corruption in the world.
Corruption — of material matter, especially dead bodies, and of souls and morals. Spiritual contamination. Soiling, seducing, bribe.
When we understand how nature works, that polarity is required for existence, and when the polarity becomes either too negative or too positive, we have an explosion of collapse, we can prognosticate an impending future without knowing either the inciting incident or the timing.
Corruption is rife in almost every democracy on the planet. It is certainly the ground of being in authoritarian states.
The amplification of corruption and the arrogant belief by politicians, executive officers and bureaucrats that lying is normal operations, obfuscation is the master craft of their trade, and the supreme right to get away with blatant corruption without incurring any responsibility or punishment is reaching its zenith. The polarity pendulum has swung too far.
People are beginning to see rules for those holding the power deck are different than for those exploited to carry the burden of keeping the lights on.
When a government relentlessly and cruelly comes after the most vulnerable, whether it be those rendered unemployed within a nation, or those forced to relocate nations because of climate or war, yet they get away with everything, including pocketing huge amounts of taxpayer-funded salaries, the polarity pendulum is reaching its extreme.
Explosion and collapse are imminent. When we do not know. But soon.
I love that the word corruption has in its etymological roots both corruption of material matter and souls and morals. There is something deeply satisfying in knowing that people who couldn’t give a f$#%k about other humans, especially the most vulnerable — more often in the most vulnerable positions because of repeated actions by the corrupt — are indeed soulless and morally bankrupt. There is something about that state that evokes my pity.
I see them as the walking dead. A terrible way to not-live.
Perhaps that is why our pop culture is so obsessed with zombies. They are the ones currently running the show in real-time.
Beauty of Beginnings July 10th 2023
The master mesmeriser
People gather from around the world to witness dawn.
She is the master mesmeriser. She weaves her spell to any who dares to walk past her as she throws her glory down.
She often starts with a small shift in colour, then moves, all too quickly, to a crescendo, and then, in her full glory, we mortals cannot continue to watch as she makes her way across the sky.
She dares us to contemplate our place in existence. She evokes awe, even in those most hardened by the trials of life. She insists that each day will be different. That each day, no matter our circumstances, we get to begin again.
She reminds us to bear witness to the world around us as we insist on being busy.
And she refuses to hide a single photon of her glory.
In her generosity she gives life. We are her light expressed.
People gather to witness dawn because this and more is present in the witnessing, and we, being human, forget, each day, the good, the true and the beautiful.
Beauty of Beginnings May 23rd 2018
To say yes to a gift
Gifts can be transactional, come with strings, or simply be offered in purity.
When we offer a gift with our whole heart and it is accepted, there is a sacred transfer that speaks to honour, respect and gratitude.
To say yes to a gift is a choice. The responsibility of that choice is woven with respect and gratitude for the gift.
People offer gifts all of the time. A smile. A kind word. A helping hand. Or something more substantial.
To accept a gift and abuse it, squander it, discount it, or discard it, is to be complicit in the violation of the offering.
Better to say no. There is more honesty in no than in a yes that is careless and selfish.
Most of us have the experience of offering the gift of our work, our heart, our love and attention, to have it abused, disrespected, ignored and exploited.
Syntropic World has woven into its Pattern Integrity a different way of being in exchange, be that an exchange of gifts, work, or attention. One element is zero exploitation. The other is a deep and abiding respect for each other, to treat each other in the way we desire to be treated. To be reverent. To be seen for our work in its wholeness.
Often this is simple to enact. Thoughtfulness. Gratitude. Advance notice of a missed commitment. Humility. Sincere apology. Being our word. Taking responsibility for what we say yes to.
If we want a more beautiful world we need to be the change we seek.
Beauty of Beginnings — June 29th 2023
- The Synergistic Accounting tool from Syntropic World is an elegant way to honour all offerings and exchanges, including gifts.
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Syntropic World is a global education and community of practice applying the organising principles of nature to enterprise design and human coordination. Creating ecologies of trust, ensuring integrity in everything, enabling collective sense making, and organising around a central purpose — how to create a world that works for 100% of humanity without ecological offence or the disadvantage of anyone.
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