The Age of Thrivability with Michelle Holliday

"we need to think of conversations as living systems...this mechanistic story is so all pervasive that we don't even recognise it... " A brilliant conversation with Michelle on creating sustainable conditions for people & living systems to thrive. Michelle offers a refreshing and transformative perspective of thrivability. This concept redefines how communities and businesses operate by viewing them as dynamic, interconnected living systems. We discuss moving beyond the mechanistic approaches and the leadership paradigms that support this, and us embracing a more holistic vision rooted in collaboration, diversity, and shared purpose. This of course asks for different leadership skills and the intention to create practice grounds where individuals and teams can hone these skills. We delve into the wealth of wisdom in indigenous cultures, and within our selves as we walk through the spiral of conversations as living systems. At each stage we can look at new habits, thinking and feeling. Never have organisations been more in need of cultivating and nourishing the human elements of systems and practition-ing sustainable change to a more inclusive and collaborative way of working.  How can we all channel our personal agency to create cultures where we collaborate and care and not compete and compare ?  How do we create regenerative and intentional practice to build Thrivability and competitive advantage ? A platform for world change..  Listen here to find out more as Michelle generously shares her research, experience and models form working with individuals and organisations all over the globe.   The main insights you'll get from this episode are : -      Brand strategy, international marketing and organisational development are all characterised by a lack of relationships with customers, a lack of purpose, and a fiercely competitive internal culture. -      Research into sustainability involved looking into the notion that everything operates as a machine, separate from each other and nature, and exploring biology to see if the facts of being alive apply to communities and organisations. -      Went on to develop frameworks that have now been in use for over 25 years based on living systems, survival of the fittest, an adaptive capacity for change, a holistic view of systems, and the wisdom of natural living systems. -      The four patterns of thrivability – diversity, nourishment, learning, emergence – have significance for us as individuals and collectively; organisations are seen as separate from us and static, but we must see everything as part of a living, dynamic world. -      Thrivability is an informed intention and practice to enable life to thrive - living and participating enable the setting of an intention whilst being informed enables life to thrive, drawing on indigenous wisdom, intuition, poetry, spirituality, biology, etc. -      Organisations as living systems must invite diversity in relationship and flow, enabling the emergence of a new whole beyond the level of the parts – this shared purpose then acts like a magnet to bring parts together. -      Mechanical systems have no capacity for innovation, healing, regeneration, reaction to change, or spark of life - we are the gardeners who cultivate life, without necessarily knowing what we are growing. -      Collective intelligence is about the integration of diverse parts, moving from ‘compete and compare’ to ‘collaborate and compare’, which is a profound and revolutionary shift in terms of social context. -      The starting point is being aware of the wholeness of the present...