Cultivate, Don’t Accelerate: How Living Systems Are Transforming Organisations Worldwide,
Authors: Alexandra Groome Klement and Jeff Su
We are facing an unprecedented social and environmental polycrisis marked by widespread injustice, relentless extraction, and imbalance. Our societal systems urgently need transformation. The current model for organisations—whether businesses, non-profits, or government institutions—views them as machines focused on productivity, efficiency and predictable outcomes. This mechanistic approach has contributed to the polycrisis by prioritising extraction over people and the planet.
The model we choose to design and manage our organisations matters. By choosing to use the machine design, we have compromised the well-being of individuals, leading to widespread burnout and organisational failure. Alarming statistics—only 1 in 4 employees1 feel cared for and 90% of startups fail2—highlight the need for a new approach. The With Life Approach and Cultivator offer a potentially transformative path forward.
The Dominant Model for Organisations is Broken
The dominant model for organisations is the machine. It has been deeply embedded into our consciousness and our subconscious minds, over hundreds of years. We use sayings like “working like a well-oiled machine,” “I don’t have bandwidth for that,” “let’s dial that in,” “we need to move the needle,” and “let’s hit the reset button.”
When we use machines as a model for organisations – the primary focus is on productivity, efficiency, and predictable outcomes. We treat people as if they are parts of the machine, and we measure people for productivity and efficiency above all else. We emphasise rapid acceleration, growth, and quick fix, best practice solutions applied to every organisation. But at what cost?
It is estimated that only 1 in 4 employees feel their organisation cares for their well-being. Moreover, 70% of all change initiatives fail3.
That’s why three organisations leading the movement for regenerative organisational development, financing and growth – nRhythm, Capital Institute, and Zebra Growth – have come together to offer the With Life Cultivator. The Cultivator provides the antidote to acceleration and extractive growth by looking to living systems as a model for organisations, because ecosystems demonstrate resilience, adaptation and emergent outcomes.
The With Life Cultivator
As teams face the challenges of rapid growth and an increasingly complex business environment, many worry about losing touch with their founding purpose and culture. They recognise the potential for success, yet often find themselves overwhelmed by emerging priorities and fast-paced work environments, reacting to opportunities rather than shaping them proactively. The With Life Cultivator empowers organisations to stay true to their core values while cultivating the resilience and foresight needed to thrive in a dynamic and complex world.
By embracing the resilience, adaptability, and emergent outcomes inherent in living systems, the Cultivator helps organisations cultivate long-term health and sustainability, reimagining growth in a way that supports life itself and cares for their team in the process. It helps teams slow down so that they can go fast and create healthy conditions by working together through 60+ hours of capacity building courses and workshops, 1:1 mentorship from experienced operators, access to proven operational frameworks and tools, and peer-to-peer learning opportunities.
The program is designed to build a team’s capacity to embody and operationalise the With Life Approach, an approach to organisations that holds the patterns of living systems at its foundation.
Living Systems Framework for Organisations
The With Life Approach looks to life as a model, because people are living systems, and organisations made up of people are also living systems. Living systems demonstrate resilience, dynamic adaptation, and emergent outcomes. They are inherently regenerative. The Living Systems Framework for Organisations is a flexible framework, grounded in the patterns of living systems, that allows us to organise With Life in many different contexts.
Underlying Health of Organisations
The Framework focuses on the premise that organisations have Underlying Health just like any other ecosystem. The key components of an organisation’s underlying health are energy and information. The figure 8/ infinity loop shows how this framework allows us to manage and monitor how Information and Energy flow and cycle through an organisation, so that we can design for, manage, and monitor the health of the organisation.
Foundational Beliefs & Operational Identity
The framework also shows that organisations are built upon a set of Foundational Beliefs – about who we are, what we want to bring into the world, and the context in which we operate. When we come together around our shared purpose and passion, we reflect on those Foundational Beliefs and design an Operational Identity (our context, structures, and work), which becomes an expression of our Foundational Beliefs.
Managing Energy and Information Flow
Within our Operational Identities we manage on a day-to-day basis how Energy and Information are flowing through our organisation, ultimately to create Emergent Outcomes. We may have predictable outcomes along the way, things that we can measure and see, but our design and management is focused on creating conditions for Emergent Outcomes we cannot completely predict.
Adaptive Cycle and Feedback Loops
Because organisations are dynamic living systems, this framework is an adaptive cycle of feedback loops that enable us to manage and monitor every aspect continuously.
Emergence and Resilience in Living Systems
We believe that organisations can be living systems capable of maintaining themselves within a boundary of their own making, where emergence and resilience are recurring outcomes of underlying health.
An Expansive Opportunity
Every aspect of an organisation can be designed With Life in mind. The regenerative movement tends to focus on environmental and agricultural regeneration, but a living systems approach truly can be applied to every aspect of organisation. This includes purpose, products and programs, business models, partnerships, operating structures, roles and responsibilities, decision-making and meetings as well as an organisation’s impact on the land and environment.
Amidst the uncertainty of what the future may bring, we are living in what John Fullerton refers to as a change in era. “Old organisations are going to die or radically transform. There is going to be a massive upspring of organisations and if they’re going to thrive, they’re going to be part of this metamorphosis. It’s an incredible time to be a young organisation and there’s an incredible responsibility that we do it wisely,” says John Fullerton, program founding member and mentor.
Thousands of organisations from over 52 countries are embracing the With Life Approach across all industries – from manufacturing to real estate, to economics and finance, to business services and community organising. We invite you to join the movement.
Applications are due August 23rd with optional deadline extension until August 30th for Unsustainable Magazine readers, if an applicant expresses strong interest and needs more time. Email us to inquire. team@nRhythm.co
Learn more about the With Life Approach and join the global community: https://join.withlife.community/approach
Sources
1 Gallup
With Life
https://www.linkedin.com/company/with-life
With Life is an approach to organising that holds the patterns of living systems at its foundation. Whether organising in business, policy, government, or community work, the With Life Approach empowers us to create healthy, resilient organisations.
Alexandra Groome Klement
https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandra-groome
Alex is a connector, facilitator, and operator dedicated to bringing world-changing ideas to life. She has led teams in diverse settings, including managing international events for a global network, fundraising to plant 200,000 trees and support over 3,000 smallholder farmers, overseeing a grants program for the creator of the World Wide Web, co-creating a platform to connect the global regenerative agriculture movement, and managing customer development at a vertical farming startup. Now, Alex works with nRhythm at the intersection of Operations and Programs, applying the With Life Approach to organisations worldwide.
Jeff Su
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-jeffrey-su
Dr. Jeffrey Su has led a diverse and international career as an executive director, consultant, ecologist, academic, and psychotherapist in the USA, Australia, Europe, and Africa. Throughout his career Jeff has applied systems thinking and holistic approaches to help organisations address the most pressing environmental and social issues of our time. He holds a Ph.D. in Ecology and Environmental Science and a graduate degree in Holistic Psychology.