One of the reasons that major change initiatives implode, is that their protagonists fail to recognise that it resides in a much bigger system. Invisible, contextual forces collude to undermine the initiative and it develops mysterious but fatal flaws.

Enter Systems Thinking which is a way of looking at the world that acknowledges the interdependency and interaction between systems, including biological ones, like human beings. The ultimate teacher in this field is Mother Nature herself, who has been field-testing system designs for 3.8 billion years and biomimicry is the emerging science that captures and codifies these lessons for transfer to the human domain. Here, courtesy of nature and biomimicry, are 5 design principles to future-proof any major initiative: 

Locally attuned and responsive
Does your solution leverage what is working at a local level?
Resource efficient
Can you make an element do more than one thing and recycle?
Integrated development and growth
Is it small but scalable e.g. modular?
Evolving to survive
Does the solution have the capacity to learn and adapt, building on what works?
Adaptation to changing conditions
How resilient is it to extreme conditions?

Biomimicry gets center stage in our podcast with Lex Amore from the Biomimicry Institute in Texas.

Closer to home and coming soon is our next Advanced Masterclass on  Systems Thinking – Inspired by Nature.