Regenerative Concepts
“Complexity refers to a condition of the universe. It is so integrated and varied it’s difficult for us to understand with simple mechanistic or linear thinking. The larger and more complex the phenomena they can only be understood as principles, concepts and patterns. This is because the detail is constantly changing. Complexity deals with the nature of emergence, innovation, learning and adaptation in living systems.” Santa Fe Group. 1996
Core Complexity Concepts
An introduction to the core concepts that will help you make complex systems easier to understand, manage and apply in your life and your work.
- Initial conditions
- Defining boundaries
- Feedback loops
- Seeing patterns
- Collaboration
Interrelationships
Coevolution
Both individuals and businesses compete for survival to thrive in a VUCA World. Being fit for purpose has two dimensions. Looking within at the capability and potential of the enterprise to keep pace in the face of rapid changes in the environment and to find new opportunities to learn and grow new skills to react quickly to what is happening around you.
Conserving Tendency
As a living system, we are intrinsically linked to our environment. Change depends on this relationship and our ability to commit and communicate effectively. We must think in very different ways. Our conserving tendency can get in the way of our capacity to adapt. As human beings, we have to learn how to thrive on volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity – like an octopus.
Biology of Care
Why should we care about the consequences of our actions? Is depends on whether we have ethical concerns about honesty and self-respect. Research evidence from the work of Cognitive Biologist, Humberto Maturana, a pioneer in the ontology of living systems, that love is biological, a disposition, a natural state of our nervous system.
The Nervous System
To understand how we can adapt to rapid change in our environment we have to understand how we as human beings are coupled with our environment through our nervous system. One insightful way to understand this is to look at how we operate as human observers. This makes sense because everything we feel, describe, relate to and act from is an inside assessment of outside experience.
Circularity
Butterflies and moths undergo a complete metamorphosis at different levels of complexity. This means they adapt in dynamic ways to continuously regenerate to produce the egg, larva, pupa, and eventually a viable adult, able to thrive and reproduce itself. This is a circularity process that grows, consumes and extracts energy, producing waste, that returns to the earth where it started.
Biodiversity
Biodiversity is the variety and abundance of the world’s plants and animals. Paradoxically, a rainforest harbours tens of thousands of different species, making it rich in biodiversity, yet one million species are at risk of extinction. This is because a palm oil plantation often has only one type of tree so it lacks biodiversity. This loss is one of the biggest threats facing human and planetary health
