The Tri-Focal Living Systems Lens

So, what changes — and what becomes possible — when we acknowledge our organizations as living systems and we enter into the practice of thrivability?

The answer is: it depends.

The possibilities the living systems perspective holds depend on the lens we use to see it.

The living systems view has gained significant traction over the past two decades. And yet what I have observed is that not every organization or community has enjoyed equal benefit from it. Most achieve only modest improvements to their culture and operations, leaving plenty of opportunity on the table. But a small number cultivate something vibrantly generative — and even regenerative — creating unimagined benefits, so that:

• Workers and customers experience more aliveness, health, joy, justice, learning, self-expression and self-awareness;
• The community discovers more connectedness, creativity, resilience and self-reliance;
• The organization achieves its intended purpose creatively, gracefully and resiliently, while attracting and cultivating necessary resources;
• The biosphere is supported in its ability to be healthy and regenerative over time.

What makes the difference between generic and generative?

Certainly, there must be many factors at play. But here is a simple yet potent metaphor for what I’ve noticed: if the living systems lens were actually a pair of glasses, it would be trifocals, offering three distinct views. And what you do with it — what that perspective changes and makes possible — depends on which of the three parts of the lens you look through. All three are needed. But only one leads us the full distance to thriving.

The first lens is instrumental and transactional — the lens of the hands. Focused on matters closest at hand, it looks for best practices, proven solutions and tactical adjustments. This view recognizes that, like a map or a tool, the living systems patterns have direct operational value. As my colleague Michael Jones suggests, it poses the question, “How can we do things differently?”

In my own client work, this has included interviewing employees and customers (now that their divergent voices clearly matter), changing a company name and logo (to convey the genuine care that united the people within it), and improving retail décor (to make the space of infrastructure and relationship not only functional, but nourishing to living people).

Actions guided by this lens bring useful results. But ultimately, the value is limited. In general, a tool has incremental impact at best, particularly when it seeks to introduce or improve existing solutions.

The second of the three lenses is intellectual — the lens of the head. With a slightly broader view, this lens suggests new vocabulary (network, ecosystem, self-organization, emergence), and it reveals new strategies, asking, “How can we do different things?” Here, my work has included introducing the practices and mindsets of applied improvisation (to embrace and support emergence and collective intelligence) and reshaping governance structures (to engage more of the ecosystem in decision-making and to align with life’s organizing patterns).

Actions guided by this lens have a more dramatic impact. But they still don’t fundamentally shift the nature of the organization from generic to generative. They still don’t fully create the conditions for thrivability.

Only the third lens — the lens of the heart — is fully transformative. The question becomes, “How can we see differently?” And here, we discover the most far-reaching — and profound — implications of the living systems lens, as we truly begin to perceive the aliveness in our organizations, our communities and ourselves. This is the lens that sees radical, transformational potential within the living systems view, discovering a depth of value and implication that isn’t evident from the surface.

This third lens draws our attention to the aspects of our lives that exist alongside and apart from reason — things like love, beauty, inspiration, meaning and purpose — and reveals them as different but equally valid expressions of what is true and valuable. What is most wounded in our world is our connection to this dimension of life. With the Modern Era and the rise of the industrial economy, we created a world out of balance. Scientific reason rose to dominance and our subjective experience fell into disrepute. In organizations, for example, our visions and plans became dry and lifeless, unaccompanied by the stirring story of who we are, what we stand for, what is our shared quest and why it matters. Similarly, our communities lost coherence and character, serving as nothing more than barren backdrops for impersonal transactions. With the loss of the meaning-filled dimension of our lives, we no longer had access to gratitude and awe at the mystery of life within and around us. We were no longer held and inspired onward by a story of wholeness and wonder.

In embracing the living systems lens, then, our work is not only to offer new tools or to enable intellectual awareness and agility. It is also to invite an expanded set of beliefs: belief that there is vibrant aliveness and creativity within and around us (this alone is to be savored and celebrated!); that each organization and community can (and must) shape and live into an unfolding epic narrative; and that thriving is possible and we are worthy of it.

Julian Giacomelli, CEO of raw, vegan, organic food services company Crudessence, commented on these beliefs in the context of his company:

[Thrivability represents] the real belief that what we are doing here is actively helping us create the world we want to live in, so that all the activities in this company aren’t just interesting or good, but vital to the well-being and ongoing creation of a world that makes much more sense than what we see.

It was this belief that led the company to adopt the tagline “Servir la vie” — “Serving life” — referring both to the fact that they are serving their customers “life” in the form of raw, living food, and also to their commitment to be in service of life in everything they do.

With such expanded beliefs, we open up to new conversations, new priorities, new possibilities, new relationships, new agreements, new actions, new business models, new architecture, new governance — all more fully aligned with life. We step together into wise, compassionate and meaningful engagement with life, wherever we find it — and we find it everywhere.

With this lens firmly in hand (or perhaps I should say, “in heart”), we can then connect back with our head and hands in new ways, enabling truly substantive regeneration, not only of ourselves, but of our world.

In these ways, “thrivability looks like people working together, bringing their best, contributing to a project or a plan,” says Julie Bourbonnais former Assistant Director of Space for Life, Canada’s largest complex of nature museums. “It looks like people meeting some really important objective.”

It looks like “an organization where people are first of all happy to come in, where they find meaning in what they do,” adds Enspiral’s Seb Paquet, “where they are in their own learning stance, and where they are taking care of each other. The organization is attending to people’s needs in a responsible fashion.” More than that, “There is a kind of radiance or glow around a thrivable organization that people sense when they come in contact with its people or products.”

For Sophie Derevianko, internal organizational development consultant at a major hydro-electric company, thrivability represents “a possibility to really tap into that raw energy that we all have inside us, and to stay connected to that raw energy as much as possible, as often as possible, and to awaken the passion within us through that energy to do good in the world.”

In fact, beyond “doing good” in response to the urgent need for transformation of our ailing world, the third lens reveals the glorious opportunity for transformation. It shows us that the reason we do most anything is to be transformed — to become more fully alive and to contribute to more aliveness around ourselves. Every interaction is an opportunity to be transformed. This is life’s fundamental urge. Anything less is simply transactional, falling short of fulfilling life’s true yearning.

This perspective is evident in the “transformational experience” Apple seeks to offer within their stores. “In 2001, when Steve Jobs and Ron Johnson first decided to open a store to sell Apple products, they didn’t start with a vision to sell stuff,” explains Carmine Gallo, author of The Apple Experience. “They decided the vision behind the Apple Store would be to enrich lives.”

A similar approach is also evident at Zenith Cleaners, where “cleaning as practice” is seen as an opportunity for transformation of the space being cleaned, but also of client, cleaner and society. This, in turn, is leading to transformative opportunities for Zenith itself. Says CEO Tolu Ilesanmi:

By allowing the individuals to thrive and allowing thrivability within the organization, it’s leading to a whole world of opportunities [for Zenith]. And so cleaning is contributing to education. Cleaning is contributing to organizational development. It expands what is possible. Because we are contributing on a higher level as an organization, it leads to a whole world of possibilities, and that’s what’s happening for us as an organization.

Language school CLC Montreal has a similar philosophy, viewing language instruction as a means to enable human connection and therefore individual and societal transformation. On their website, for example, this is how they describe “what they care about most”:

We want many things from our work together: happy and successful students, a feeling of excellence and accomplishment, a thriving business, personal growth and recognition, a strong sense of community.

But at the deepest level, we want to contribute to a world in which there is more joy, more understanding, more love. And to us, learning a language is a powerful way to do this:

* We create a space and an experience in which people can feel joy, understanding and love.

* And then, with greater ability to connect with others through language, our students leave us well-equipped to create even more joy, understanding and love in the world.

These are the things we care about most.

These are rare examples, but they don’t have to be. Says Zenith’s Ilesanmi:

It’s our natural state to be thrivable. It’s our natural state to be fully engaged at every level of our being. [Thrivability is] not something we use. It’s what we are. It’s how we are supposed to be. And it’s why when there’s thrivability in an organization, everything comes alive…. It affects every aspect of the organization. It affects the relationships internally, externally. It affects sales. Because you want to move toward this organization. There’s something exciting, joyful, playful. And you want to participate. It’s more than useful. I see it as our true state as human beings, to be thrivable, to be fully alive.

Through these examples, we see that only by looking through all three facets of the living systems lens do we open ourselves to the full possibility of thriving. Only in this way is our practice of stewardship fully enlivened. Only here do we discover a pathway into an Age of Thrivability.

[This is an excerpt from The Age of Thrivability: Vital Perspectives and Practices for a Better World, by Michelle Holliday, 2016.]

[Some portions of this chapter originally appeared in a HuffingtonPost.com article entitled “What You See Is What You Get: The Full Promise of the Living Systems Lens,” published on February 25, 2015. Other portions appeared in a paper, co-authored with Michael Jones, called, “Living Systems Theory and the Practice of Stewarding Change,” within the June 2015 issue of the journal, Spanda.]