Abundancy Is
Abundancy refers to the resilience and abundance of planet earth and the possibility of mankind living in harmony with nature. It also refers to the abundance within the human spirit which, once unlocked through the flourishing of a wellbeing-economy, can surmount the challenges we face today. Our consultancy is devoted to being part of driving breakthrough innovation.
Abundancy is an opportunity to radically innovate and evolve our communities, businesses and other institutions, rather than attempt to overthrow them. We see what’s ahead as a challenge, but also a potential renaissance. Our approach is inspired by the I Ching, where Abundancy is described as ‘clarity within, movement without – this produces greatness’. We believe that all organisations can and must transition to a state where natural and human abundance and resilience is maximised to deliver a more prosperous and sustainable way of life for all.
The root cause of most sustainability problems is a ‘mechanistic’ worldview that assumes the world operates like an industrial machine with no connection to the natural systems and flows of life, degrading natural and human capital with no sense of where value is extracted from and how much is left to continue creating value from it. Findings from areas as distinct as agriculture (permaculture) to modern IT networks (social production and open innovation) point to an alternative paradigm which is self-organising and self-supporting, working elegantly with the least effort and the highest value. Such systems are usually grounded in co-operation, partnerships, new ownership models and shared values – the antithesis of the old and broken ‘management science’ view where the world was a factory to be controlled.
Evidence of this emergent worldview is shared by others. In May 2008 a group of 35 practitioners – including Chris Argyris, Henry Mintzberg, Peter Senge, Gary Hamel and Kevin Kelly – spent two days at Half Moon Bay, CA, where they created an ambitious new management agenda. The results are published in “Moon Shots for Management”, an article written by Gary Hamel in the February 09 issue of HBR. Point #1 on the Moon Shots list is “Ensure that management’s work serves a higher purpose. Management, in theory and practice, must orient itself to the achievement of noble, socially significant goals”.
We too see organizations as whole systems, functioning in a market, society, economic and ecological context. We view them through lenses of purpose (to maximize wellbeing) and ecosystem dynamics (minimum resource use, maximum resilience, self-renewing) alongside financial success and leadership, rather than ‘lean and mean’ productivity.