The Ecosystem

Explained

Simon Robinson and Maria Moraes Robinson

Holonomics: Business Where People and Planet Matter is a ground-breaking book which argues that people in business must adopt a ‘holonomic’ way of thinking, a dynamic and authentic understanding of the relationships within a business system, and an appreciation of the whole. !In January 2015 Holonomics was selected as one of Sustainable Brands Top 36 Sustainability Books of all time, alongside both older, well-known books like Biomimicry, Natural Capitalism and Cradle to Cradle. !What lies at the heart of Holonomics is the practical implementation of deep, profound and lasting transformational change. If we analyse this in relation to organisations, what we often find is that the leadership only focus on the structural aspects of strategy. The behavioural aspects are ignored, therefore resulting in sub-optimal execution.

An Introduction to Holonomics

The Holonomics Ecosystem

The Holonomics Ecosystem was created to show the connections and pathways through our book. The four major elements of holonomic thinking are: !Systemic – Understanding the organisation as an organic and dynamic system of interrelated organs. !Experiential – Understanding the lived experience of each person – employees, management, leadership, stakeholders and the community. !Meaning – Understanding how shared meaning emerges in the organisation over time, allowing the organisation to be able to become agile, efficient and transparent – an authentic whole. !Ethical – Understanding how human values are the foundation of authenticity, agility and change !So in the Holonomics Ecosystem the books are generally organised together around these different elements.

The Ecosystem

The Ecosystem

The dynamic philosophy of wholeness and the dynamics of seeing come from Henri Bortoft’s The Wholeness of Nature and Taking Appearance Seriously. These are therefore central in the ecosystem.

Henri was a physicist who studied wholeness with physicist David Bohm. He was an expert in Goethe, phenomenology and hermeneutics, and was one of the creators of Holistic Science at Schumacher College, teaching Simon in 2009.

The Ecosystem

Holonomics starts with the dynamics of seeing. The top line refers to theories of the divided brain and their different contributions to the way in which comprehend reality. !First Steps to Seeing is by Emma Kidd, another student of Henri. !The I l lus ion of Separat ion shows how sustainability issues today are due to our separat ion f rom nature. Holonomics is referenced in it. !The bottom line links Holonomics to Henri to Goethe. Much of our work is inspired by Goethe in relation to how to study qualitatively in organisations, and how to break out of theory driven seeing using Goethe’s phenomenological approach in The Theory of Colours and The Metamorphosis of Plants.

The Ecosystem

Henri references Rudolph Steiner’s early writings about the scientific works of Goethe. !Otto Scharmer took the spiritual aspects of Steiner’s later work into change management . He a lso interviewed Henri for Theory U. !This line therefore develops our thinking about the need for a change of consciousness in business.

This second line is The Dynamics of Business. !Thomas Johnson and Anders Brömes quote both Henri and Bohm, and we quote Profit Beyond Measure in a number of sections. Johnson reviewed Holonomics and gave us permission to adapt his table showing the shift from mechanistic thinking to holonomic thinking. !Giles Hutchins wrote The Nature of Business. His book represents that aspect of our work taking the principles of biomimicry into organisational design.

The Ecosystem

In Holonomics systems thinking plays a major role, hence the proximity of Fritjof’s new book. Holonomics complements his work as we take a phenomenological (experiential) and hermeneutical (meaning) approach to understanding systems in their wholeness. !We also quote a lot of complexity and chaos theory, including Lynn Margulis’ What is Life (which helped inform the section on the Deep Time Walk) and Ilya Prigogine (Order Out of Chaos) who radically changes our ideas about chaos, emergent properties and also challenges us to rethink the notion of cause and effect.

We revisit David Bohm in his book with F. David Peat Science, Order and Creativity. This section is all about understanding the role paradigm shifts have played in the history of science. !Arthur Koestler’s book The Sleepwalkers focuses on the story of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo and shows the role creativity played in developing our new conception of the cosmos with the sun at the centre of the solar system. This is all about mental models and how they fix our world views.

The Intuitive Way of Knowing is a tribute to Brian Goodwin, great friend of Henri and Fritjof, who also created Holistic Science and developed a methodology for using intuition. He was one of the great complexity scientists but died in 2009 just before Simon went to Schumacher College.

The Ecosystem

This section covers ethics, mindfulness, spirituality, values and dialogue, and includes the work of Joseph Campbell, as well as the programme Human Values in Education developed by Sathya Sai Baba which Maria studies and now teaches. !Satish Kumar’s Soil, Soul, Society represents the whole of his work. Satish wrote the foreword for Holonomics, describing it as a “manifesto for mindful living”. !Life Changing Conversations by Sarah Rozenthuler is a well-known expert in dialogue. Authentic dialogue can only take place once leaders have fully understood the dynamics of seeing and how their representations of the world, their organisations and nature may differ radically from those in their social and business ecosystems.

The Ecosystem

Holonomics gives us a very profound way to understand experience, where you go upstream into the act of seeing itself. Very few people, including designers, have this way of seeing. !In order to understand the customer experience, and indeed the very soul of an organisation, you have to understand two things. !The first is to understand business processes and how organisations need to have a systemic view of the organisation and the flow of work across o r g a n i s a t i o n a l s i l o s ( t e a m s , departments, units etc). !John Seddon is an English systems thinker who writes about the need to break away from command and control hierarchies, especially in relation to call centres, service design, systemic measures and the role of quantitative targets etc.

Simon has a background in customer experience design and created the concept of customer experiences with soul, which comes from the philosophy of wholeness in Holonomics. !Matt Watkinson’s The Ten Principles Behind Great Customer Experiences is an excellent introduction to the concept of customer experience. !Holonomics provides a powerful new w a y t o u n d e r s t a n d c u s t o m e r experience at a strategic level, including the full input from HR who h a v e a r o l e i n t r a i n i n g a n d development of people who can fully express the soul of the company in every interaction they have.

The Ecosystem

Henri knew Hans-Georg Gadamer, and in Tak ing Appearances Seriously he extended his work on the dynamics of wholeness and Goethe into hermeneutics and phenomenology - understanding meaning in texts and speech. !It is often the case that leaders do n o t u n d e r s t a n d t h e l i v e d experiences of their employees and therefore fail to communicate strategy and other things as there is no joint understanding of meaning.

A customer experience can only truly be understood by understanding the dynamics of wholeness - the relation between the parts and the whole and how the whole comes to presence in the parts. !Products and services all have ‘being’ and Holonomics provides a way for executives to develop the dynamics way of seeing allowing them to really understand the whole organisation, business where people and planet matter.

Bohm, David and Peat, F. David (2011) Science, Order and Creativity !Bortoft, Henri, (1996) The Wholeness of Nature: Goethe’s Way of Science !Bortoft, Henri (2012) Taking Appearance Seriously: The Dynamic Way of Seeing in Goethe and European Thought !Campbell, Joseph, and Moyers, Bill (1991) The Power of Myth !Capra, Fritjof and Luiso, Pier Luigi (2014) The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision !de Geus, Arie (1999) The Living Company: Growth, Learning and Longevity in Business !Gadamer, Hans-Georg (1980) Dialogue and Dialectic: Eight Hermeneutical Studies on Plato !Gadamer, Hans-Georg (1989) Truth and Method !Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (1840) Theory of Colours !Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (2009) The Metamorphosis of Plants !Hutchins, Giles (2012) The Nature of Business: Redesigning for Resilience !Hutchins, Giles (2014) The Illusion of Separation: Exploring the Cause of our Current Crisis !Johnson, H. Thomas and Bröms, Anders (2000) Profit Beyond Measure: Extraordinary Results through Attention to Work and People !Kidd, Emma (2015) First Steps to Seeing: A Path Towards Living Attentively

McGilchrist, Iain (2010) The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Modern World !Koestler, Arthur (2014) The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man’s Changing Vision of the Universe !Kumar, Satish (2013) Soil, Soul, Society: A New Trinity for our Time !Lambert, David, Chetland, Chris and Millar, Craig (2013) The Intuitive Way of Knowing: A Tribute to Brian Goodwin !Margulis, Lynn and Sagan, Dorion (1995) What is Life? !Prigogine, Ilya and Stengers, Isabelle (1984) Order Out of Chaos: Man’s New Dialogue with Nature !Robinson, Simon and Robinson, Maria Moraes (2014) Holonomics: Business Where People and Planet Matter !Scharmer, C. Otto (2009) Theory U: Leading from the Future as It Emerges !Seamon, David and Zajonc, Arthur (1998) Goethe’s Way of Science: A Phenomenology of Nature !Seddon, John (2003) Freedom From Command and Control !!Steiner, Rudolf (2000) Nature’s Open Secret: Introductions to Goethe’s Scientific Writings !Wachterhauser, Bruce (1999) Beyond Being: Gadamer’s Post-Platonic Hermeneutical Ontology !Watkinson, Matt (2013) The Ten principles Behind Great Customer Experiences

The Books

Simon Robinson !

Simon Robinson is the founder of Holonomics Education, a consultancy which helps organisations to think and innovate differently, allowing the development of high value customer experiences, the development of powerful and effective strategies, and of meaningful and sustainable brands. !Simon is an international keynote speaker at innumerable conferences including Sustainable Brands, London and San Diego and TEDx Florianópolis. He was one of the co-founders of the world’s first mobile internet portal, Genie Internet, which received many media awards for innovation, and has been a developer of cutting-edge innovations in technology and new media at BT, O2 and Digital Bridges. He is the editor of the blog www.transitionconsciousness.org and is a Harvard Business Review Brasil author. !!

Maria Moraes Robinson !Maria Moraes Robinson is an internationally recognised expert and keynote speaker in strategy, change management, sustainability, human values and the Balanced Scorecard methodology. Recent conferences she has presented and run workshops at include Sustainable Brands, San Diego and London, and Harvard Business Review Brasil summits on both Corporate Education and Leadership, and she is a published author in Harvard Business Review Brasil. !As a business consultant Maria has helped to introduce Kaplan and Norton’s Balanced Scorecard methodology into Brazil across many sectors including telecoms, technology, petrochemicals, steel, energy, transportation and education. Her current work is focused on developing innovative new business courses which integrate insights from the Indian programme Human Values in Education and complexity science, with business strategy, change management, sustainability and organisational redesign.

Contact Information!!

www.holonomics.co.uk (English) www.holonomics.com.br (Portuguese)

www.holonomics.org (book) www.transitionconsiousness.org (blog)

@srerobinson (Twitter) @DoraMoraesR (Twitter)