1. Ground
Condition: Cultivating underlying fertility
To organic farmers, soil quality is the crucial basis of sustainable
output. They aim to continually improve the reserves and resilience
of their soil whilst increasing its production. By contrast, forced
farming progressively depletes and pollutes the soil, so that output
depends on ever-increasing amounts of external stimulant (fertiliser)
and suppressant (pesticide).
All of this offers us ways to understand, improve and sustain
our own ground condition, our reserves and resilience. By cultivating
the basis, the sources of fertility, our output at work grows naturally
and sustainably. Healthy soil is a living organism which naturally renews
fertility and recycles waste. So are people at work!
2. Natural Energy
The main energy inputs for organic farms are sunlight, water,
air and waste: natural, abundant, low-cost and non-polluting. Forced
farming takes most of its energy from non-renewable sources, fossil
fuels and minerals, whose residues pollute the earth and water sources.
Can you see the parallel in the workplace? Where does your personal
energy come from? Often, work output is fuelled by stress, fear, or
pressure. Pushing output by control systems, deadlines or supervisors,
is like using fossil fuel: it builds up residues that reduce natural
resilience and fertility.
Recall times at work when you felt deeply appreciated, or highly
inspired: remember how energized you felt, how the work flowed more
easily. Appreciation and inspiration can generate abundant human energy,
without polluting side effects, and there are simple ways to stimulate
and harness these energies.
3. Composting Waste
The beauty of any natural cycle is that there is no waste: every
output becomes the input to the next stage of the cycle. The organic
farmer composts both animal manure and plant waste to create a major
source of future fertility, and this is a key to improving soil condition
whilst increasing outputs.
Where is the waste in your work that has discarded energy and value?
Think about negative feelings, like anxiety or conflicts and project
failures. It's often easier to ignore the waste, and get on with the
job, but it builds up within us and around us. Waste is usually messy:
it takes new skills to collect and recycle it, but it can readily be
done. For example, negative feelings can become a source of fresh understanding
and constructive energy.
Composting is quite different than mechanical recycling of glass
or paper. It is synergistic: you get more useable energy out than you
put in. And composting provides a clear model of how to harness human
energy waste in the workplace.
4. Organic Synergy: Growing through Uncertainty
How
do you respond to change and uncertainty? There are three common
reactions: try to suppress it by imposing control; deny it; or surrender,
because it's all too much. Forced farming can impose control and ignore
warning signs for a long period, but problems build up and emerge in
catastrophic form, such as disease or nitrate pollution.
Organic
farmers produce high value and quality with minimal control and
amid high uncertainty. They are great examples of how to work with creative
tension: using uncertainty, finding the 'gift in the problem'. By combining
our active intent and push with the skills of receptiveness and adaptability,
we create a natural process of dynamic growth which harnesses change
to create output.
This
approach, co-creativity, is central to achieving results amid change
and uncertainty in any situation. It is about both-and, not either-or:
combining active and receptive, pushing and yielding, focused and peripheral
vision. The elements in co-creativity include:
· Tolerance for ambiguity, within and around us.
· Developing both intuition and logic, and integrating them.
· Combining forceful intent with observation and flexibility:
the aikido approach.
· Synergy: using tension and uncertainty to find the 'gift in
the problem'.
· Assertiveness, creative conflict resolution and other tools
to work co-creatively with others.
5. Using
Natural Growth Cycles
Most workplaces, like forced farming, have a linear, mechanistic
approach: input A produces output B, one cause creates one effect. This
approach depends upon expensive tailored inputs, and costly, inflexible
systems to apply them. It ignores the side-effects and waste which are
outputs along with the desired result.
The alternative approach is not to 'let nature take its course',
but to work with it. Organic farmers use natural cycles, such as:
Crop rotation cycle: a high value crop, such as wheat, which
demands a lot from the soil, is followed in rotation by a lighter crop,
such as clover, which renews the fertility, and sometimes by a fallow
period when the land is rested. To renew your own energy, try moving
from a demanding task to an easy one, or from a structured to a fluid
one.
The four seasons cycle: the organic farm is aligned with the
seasons of the year, from spring through to winter. Apply this to your
own work: do you include the full cycle of seeding-growing-harvesting-rest?
6. Resilience from Diversity
Even small organic farms have a diverse range of products or
enterprises. This creates resilience: if one crop fails, or if demand
drops, the overall business can sustain the blow. The various crops
support each other: for example, animal waste fertilises plant crops,
and plant waste feeds the animals. Rotating land through a range of
different crop and livestock uses is a key to reducing weed and pest
problems by natural means. The 'wild margins' also help in this: land
left uncultivated as a habitat for wild insects and plants.
The typical large, intensive conventional farm is a monoculture:
heavy capital investment in one or two enterprises on a large scale,
with little flexibility, and high vulnerability to production or market
problems. Wild margins are eradicated.
Diversity has similar benefits at work. We can increase diversity
in the way we work, as well as the range of tasks: for example, rotating
between analytical and intuitive, or high and low structure approaches.
Our personal wild margins often provide the skills or resilience we
need to handle the unexpected.
7. Real Quality
Imagine
eating a piece of fruit: how do you judge its quality? Real quality
is partly intangible and emotional: it's about taste, nutrition and
the feeling of satisfaction. The produce from organic methods may look
irregular, but it delivers real quality.
Forced
farming is geared to deliver nominal quality: size, appearance,
consistency and quantity. The same is true for many work organizations,
and the preoccupation with quality certification schemes risks aggravating
this.
An important
feature of real quality is a deep, flexible, two-way relationship
between producer and customer. The rapport and trust in such relationships
is part of the satisfaction that the product delivers, and this approach
enables both parties to accept more change and uncertainty. For example,
many organic vegetable growers operate box schemes, where they supply
direct to households, who contract to buy whatever crops are in season.
Farm visits and meetings, feedback systems and newsletters mean that
both parties deepen their understanding and responsiveness to each other.
Many
work situations push for nominal quality, but it's real quality
that gives sustained satisfaction for the producer and the clients.
Understanding the emotional value in one's output, building direct and
dynamic customer relationships, helping the organization to appreciate
all this: these are ways toward sustaining high performance.
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