Eiffel Over

Tag: feedback

  • Stone circles on the beach

    Hundreds of years ago, the inhabitants of the Île de Ré, just off France’s Atlantic coast, developed an ingenious way to catch fish. At low tide, they built large stone circles, say 20 metres or more in diameter, and formed by a rock wall about 50cm high. At high tide these stone circles are completely submerged. But as the tide falls, water remains trapped in them, and so do the fish swimming in that water. At low tide the water eventually drains out of the walls, leaving the fish lying on the beach, for the local fishers to just pick up.

    These stone circles, or ‘écluses’ in French, were very effective in providing a local food supply. So much so that during the Napoleonic Wars, recruiting officers for the army tried to destroy the walls in an attempt to starve the local population and force them into joining the army. Later, the owners of commercial fishing fleets sought to have them shut down as they proved a risk to their own market domination.

    Through a regenerative lens, in this example we see:

    • A local population connected to a local source of supply. 
    • A low-tech method for harvest that the community itself can build and adapt.
    • The resilience that local supply can provide (and therefore why the army and larger commercial operations sought to remove it).
    • A scale of operation that is necessarily limited – they can only harvest fish that swim over the beach; there’s literally plenty more fish in the sea. This is in contrast to the super trawlers that can take far more than their fair share.

    Community, ecology, supply and resilience. These are the sorts of stacked, multiple benefits that we are seeking to create through regenerative design.

    Today, groups of volunteers are protecting and rebuilding the walls. Perhaps for posterity. And, or, perhaps they see a time in the future when harvesting in this way may return stacked, multiple benefits to their community and ecosystem.

  • How much does your website weigh?

    It’s a funny question. How much does my website weigh? Is it heavy? It is light? I have no way of knowing. 

    But I like the question, because it is a good proxy for the energy impact of my website. What is its footprint? What is the energy used in keeping the servers whirring in the cloud (which is not in fact fluffy and is in fact a warehouse). 

    And the reason we don’t know the answer to the questions is that there is no feedback loop. When I write a post and add some data-heavy images I don’t feel that extra load. 

    (more…)

  • An experiment in foundational capital

    Last year I read about foundational capital in Lean Logic. It’s the idea of the capital that systems depend upon to live. For us Earthlings it’s clean air and water, a thriving biosphere, sufficient minerals. But it can also be intangible things: trust, knowledge, peace. In an extractive economy, we seek to mine these resources and use them to create a financial surplus. This financial surplus we can then invest to invest in growth. But not growth of the foundational capital, but growth of the business. In this model the foundational capital is repeatedly depleted. This extraction works for a while so long as there remains sufficient foundational capital, but at some point the foundational capital is so reduced that it can no longer support life.

    The idea of investing financial surplus is so ingrained that it is hard to imagine alternative models. As a business owner, I feel it myself: the instinctive thing to do with any profit the business makes is to invest in growth of the business.

    But we can see an alternative approach in more traditional approaches that seek to re-noursish the growing environment with each harvest. For example, I have heard permaculture teachers talk about sharing the harvest three ways: one part for me; one part for the community; one part for the soil. That final third is left to rot on the the plant to return nutrients to the ground. Contrast this to a more extractive approach, which would harvest all the fruit, leaving the ground more depleted. More profit but less foundational capital.

    Last year I thought how could I experiment with this idea at Constructivist Ltd. A traditional business approach would be to charge clients as much as possible to run training. But that sets our aims against the aims of our clients. The more we can extract, the more profit we can make and the more our clients are depleted.

    Another way to look at things is to say that if we’ve made a profit this year it’s by charing our clients more than we needed to. What is the equivalent of returning this harvest to the ground? Well we could return the extra fees. Another approach is to use the funds to support the flourishing in some way of those organisations that are our clients, which we depend on. The latter option is easy to administer, but the bigger reason I prefer it that it isnon-financial exchange. It is specific, rather than interchangeable (non-fungible), building interconnections and therefore the capacity for feedback. It is also greater than zero-sum (a topic for another post).

    Since most of our work with clients involves direct collaboration with individuals, we decided to return the surplus to the system by running a regenerative thinking retreat at Hazel Hill Wood for this group of individuals. Much like the work done in winter by soil-plant systems – quietly, underground – this gathering deepened connections, allowed knowledge to be exchanged, repaired damage from the last season of growth. In other words, fed the foundational capital of the system we are in and set the scene for a new season of growth on a more resilient grounding.

    In regenerative design we are seeking to create thriving socio-ecological systems. By noticing foundational capital we can start to tune in to how the projects and processes we are involved with deplete or nourish foundational capital. And we can start to think about how to design systems that aim to grow this capital.

  • The incredible system that will save us

    Good news. There is an incredible system that can save humanity and will enable us to thrive on planet Earth.

    Here’s how it works. 

    • It is entirely powered by the effect of the sun and the moon.
    • Using simple elements it can establish itself in new locations and in a few iterations it can rapidly scale up, complexifying and adapting to meet its operating conditions. 
    • The system produces no waste at all – all outputs from one process are inputs to others.
    • It creates incomprehensibly complex structures from a small palette of abundant, local materials.
    • The system purifies and circulates water. 
    • It keeps the air in the atmosphere breathable, and maintains levels of greenhouse gases at a level appropriate for system survival.
    • It even screens out harmful rays from the sun.
    • It creates food and nutrients.
    • It even creates abundant construction materials.
    • The system has built-in resilience to enable it to respond to shocks. 
    • It has the capacity to learn and to develop new designs. These designs are optimised to ensure the health of the whole system, not just the individual element within it.

    It is the system of life in the biosphere of planet Earth. If we step back and think about it, there is no system that humans have created that can compete in terms of its resilience, life-giving potential and ability to adapt. 

    This life giving system is out there, it surrounds us, and it is still just about intact. This is good news.

    There is more good news. 

    We, human beings, have been evolved as part of that system, and it is interwoven with us. As I heard fellow Regenerative Design Fellow Michael Pawlyn describe, there are more microbial cells than human cells in our bodies. So there is no meaningful separation between us and this system. 

    And if all parts of the system have evolved to increase the health of the system, then we too have been created by that system to fulfil a role. 

    So, there is this incredible life giving system that we are in extricable part of. So far so good.

    Now some not so good news. Since the Enlightenment, in the Global North we have started to see ourselves as separate from that system. That same school of thought which used reason to take power away from the divine, placed rational ‘man’ at the top of the hierarchy of life. 

    We became separate the system and then we started exploiting it. Initially the system had enough elastic capacity to respond to the damage being rendered by its human population.

    But having become separated from that wider living system ourselves, we no-longer paid attention to the feedback loops that might otherwise have limited our behaviour.

    Enraptured by our our own reason, we lost sight of the incredible power of the capacity of the wider living world to heal us, for it to be important for us, and so we devalue it even more. Dazzled by the spectacle of our own creations, we lose sight of the incredible, overwhelming, delicate, powerful and fragile system that we are part of.

    Now to the really bad news.

    We are like engineers working for a foolish developer who asks us to take bricks out of the foundations to build extra storeys at the top. We have extracted, depleted and destroyed so much of this system that it is about to collapse. Without this life-giving support system, we stand little chance of surviving on this rock in the solar system. 

    And so, what do we do now? Clearly we need to revive the health of our life-support system.

    We can think of our ailing living system on planet Earth as a sick patient displaying multiple symptoms. Without being doctors, we can probably see that if we treat one symptom at a time we may never treat the underlying cause of the disease. Holistic medicine in contrast seeks to consider factors that enable the health of the whole person. Things like diet, sleep, exercise, living environment. Adjusting these factors to increase overall patient health can increase the patient’s ability to respond to illness. Long-term observation of the patient can help work out what factors are having the best effect. 

    This approach recognises the body as a complex system that is not fully knowable and so needs cycles of careful intervention and observation. This approach also recognises that when this system is thriving it is much more resilient and therefore able to respond to shocks and recover. 

    Applying this same logic to the living system on planet earth, if we can enable the conditions within which it can flourish again, then the system can do what it needs to heal. The questions we should be asking are what are the equivalents to diet, sleep, exercise and living environment for our living system on Earth, and what can we do adjust these conditions to bring the system back into a healthy state?

    Creating the conditions for flourishing is an example of intervening higher in the system. Rather than treating the individual elements in the system we are seeking to change the relationships that dictate how the system behaves. 

    But there is one fundamental relationship that we need to change. And that is the one between humans and the rest of the living world. Its decline has led to our almost total separation from the ecosystem that supports us – physically, culturally, psychologicically and in relation to our concept of power. 

    In the analogy above we treated the Earth’s living systems as a patient that we are treating. To change that fundamental relationship between humans and this wider living system, we have to see ourselves as the patient. We are part of that living system. We are inextricably linked to it. When it is healthy, we are healthy. When it is sick, we are sick. 

    So, how can we conclude this news bulletin?

    • We are part of an incredible system. 
    • If we want to heal it we need to treat it holistically. 
    • We need to rediscover our role – not as controllers, not all-seers, but as a unique part of the system that can help the system bounce back and change course where it needs to. 
    • We are new on the planetary scene. We have evolved incredible brain powers, very recently we have seen that, used unwisely, our powers can be hugely destructive, but re-tuned to the system we have evolved in, humans could add terrific resilience to our living world. 
    • If we can create the conditions for the system to thrive, then the system will take care of the rest.
    • And if we help it thrive we will, by dint of being part of that system, be thriving too.

    More blog posts about regenerative design

    Right here

    My work on regenerative design is generously supported by the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851. Read more about my Fellowship in Regenerative Design.

  • Restorative versus regenerative design

    Restorative and regenerative are two words I am hearing used interchangeably. Both are relevant to engineering and design. Both are approaches to design that are valuable. But they need differentiating.

    (more…)

  • Making the Regenerative Design Lab a Regenerative System

    In today’s planning session for the Regenerative Design Lab with my co-facilitator Ellie Osborne, we asked what if we made the lab itself a regenerative system?

    Based on my working definition (see my previous post on the four characteristics of regenerative systems), a regenerative regenerative design lab would:

    • Be able to renew its sources of material and energy;
    • Thrive within wider ecosystem boundaries; and,  
    • Adapt to a changing operating environment. 
  • Four characteristics of regenerative systems

    Four characteristics of regenerative systems

    Work on regenerative thinking progresses on all fronts. Book writing with my friend James on Monday (read his excellent blog on this process), developing regenerative practice at Hazel Hill Wood Tuesday and short-listing candidates for the Regenerative Design Lab Wednesday. I love that all of these initiatives inform each other.

    To aid all three I have synthesised my understanding of how regenerative systems operate. This framing is informed in large-part by Donnella Meadows’s book ‘Thinking in Systems’, which is helping to understand the conversations are having across all these fronts.

    (more…)
  • Start by lighting the fire

    Start by lighting the fire

    It’s the first thing we do at Hazel Hill Wood. Light the fire for everyone else. A clutch of tiny twigs, a handful of finger-thick branches, and some small logs. I can do this because other have prepared the materials.

    A year ago someone felled a tree and cut its trunk into lengths that fit the stove. Others took these logs and arranged them into seasoning stacks in the forest, where for a year or so they lose their moisture. More people have transferred the partially seasoned timber to the wood stores, where they get bone dry. Finally, someone has filled the baskets with twigs, branches and logs so that I can light it this morning.

    When the room is warm I meet people, and we talk amongst other things about how to manage the forest that provides us with this renewable source of fuel.

    There’s lots that I like about this human-natural system. Every stage is visible, which makes me much more aware of where the things I use come from. The stock levels in each of the stages are easy to monitor, providing me with feedback about how the system is operating.

    I like the long time frame. We have to make decisions now about how many trees to fell in order to meet demand in two to three years. Over an even longer time frame, we need to think about how to manage the forest to ensure there is sufficient regrowth to provide firewood in thirty years time.

    Rather than destructive, this process of carefully felling trees seems to create life: making openings in the forest canopy that form new habitats for plants, for invertebrates and the animals and birds that live on them.

    Most importantly for me, it is a brilliant example of how we can manage human-natural systems that regenerate to meet our needs with little more than the energy of the sun.

    When I start by lighting the fire, I am engaged with this human-natural system. It primes me to think, what work do I need to put into the system today to ensure it continues to regenerate.

    Photo credit: Joseph Watts

  • Think resilience to observe and enhance a system’s restorative powers

    I underlined these words in Meadows’s Thinking in Systems primer. ‘Thinking about resilience enables us to observe and enhance a system’s restorative powers.’ As with so much in this book it is an efficient sentence that carries so much meaning. This is my thinking-out-loud (not so efficiently written, but I find it helpful).

    This quote that I have pulled out is at the end of a section of the book on the characteristics on well functioning systems. The three ingredients are resilience, self-organisation and hierarchy. Natural systems are very good at using these three ingredients to build ever more complex systems that can respond to a range of scenarios in a self-organising way.

    (more…)

  • Regenerative Design Lab working notes

    Sharing my working notes from today.

    (more…)

  • From would you think to what do you think – avoiding hypothetical feedback

    Today I’m sharing a principle of workshop design about how we gather feedback in workshops. But the principle also applies more widely to how we get feedback in design.

    (more…)

  • Working notes on feedback as a design tool

    This week I ran a workshop with undergraduate students at Imperial College working in design teams at imperial. the aim was to show that it is much easier to give feedback when you a working from a common set of expectations. But this feedback approach can go much further than supporting good team dynamics – itself very important – it can be used as a tool for creative thinking and exploring new ground. Here is a summary of the ten most common points that came up during my conversations with students.

    (more…)
  • Building creative culture in engineering companies

    Building creative culture in engineering companies

    I am starting to shift my attention away from creative tools for engineers. Tools are still important. But I’ve realised that you need a creative culture for individual creativity to thrive.

    Recently, I rediscovered in Laloux’s ‘Reinventing Organisations‘ the Wilbur four-quadrant model. The model describes how culture, systems and worldviews interact. We can use this model to understand a phenomena in an organisations from four different perspectives:

    • How the phenomenon can be measured from the outside
    • How the phenomenon feels from the inside – intuiting how it feels
    • How the phenomenon appears to the individual
    • How the phenomenon appears to a group of people.

    Like all engineer-friendly models, Wilbur’s is a two-by-two grid. The columns divide the grid into interior perspecitve and exterior perspective. The rows divide the grid into individual and collective perspective. According to Laloux

    Wilbur’s insight, applied to organisations, means we should look at: 1) people’s mindsets and beliefs [individual interior perspective]; 2) people’s behaviour [indvidiual exterior perspective]; 3) organisational culture [collective interior perspective]; and, 4) organisational systems (structures, processes and practices) [collective exterior perspective]”

    From Reinventing Organisations, Laloux (2016)

    Applying the four quadrant model to organisational creativity

    I’ve assembled some quick thoughts on how the four quadrant model might apply to understanding creativity in an organisation. I have written the statements for a fictional, ideal case. This difference between this ideal case and reality can give us some suggestions for what we might need to do to build a more creative organisation. 

    (more…)
  • Notes from ISEE 2018, UCL London

    Notes from ISEE 2018, UCL London

    A very interesting couple of days at the 7th International Symposium of Engineering Education down at UCL. Here’s something I found interesting which I am sharing with colleagues and collaborators.

    (more…)