The basics of a Syntropic Enterprise
**If you have not yet downloaded the ebook “How to Start a Syntropic Enterprise”- made with the contribution of many of the Syntropic Blue Community of practice members – then please do as in this article I will be referencing many of the ideas expressed in this ebook.
Ideas are in abundance. We can have ideas ranging from making a peanut butter sandwich to building an education platform and community that completely redefines how humans do any form of engagement and coordination. Whatever the idea, it needs to trigger an action, otherwise it remains ephemeral.
To bring an idea to life, we need a combination of elements that might include people, things, resources, knowledge, technology, community, capability, capacity and physical matter.
In Syntropic World, these are the key elements required to commence a Syntropic Enterprise or animate an idea.
Part 1. Purpose + why + evidence
We need to know the purpose. The why. We need to tell ourselves the truth about the purpose. If I am making a peanut butter sandwich am I doing it because I am hungry and this will satiate my hunger? Or am I responding from greed and desire? Or to assuage my emotional state? Is it from boredom?
If I am building a global education and community platform that completely redefines any form of human engagement and coordination am I doing this because I care about humans surviving? Is it about ensuring all-human-dignity and respect, where our multidimensional values are honoured? Is it because we cannot keep doing the same thing and expect a different result?
A question we can ask to check in with the truth and integrity of our why is, “How will I know that my work is creating the difference I seek? What will be the clear evidence of this?”
How will I know my peanut butter sandwich has done what I wanted? I might feel satiated. Nourished. Content. I might momentarily find an interruption to boredom.
How will I know the global education and community platform has been a success? I will see a world where there is zero exploitation, zero extraction to extinction and zero colonisation of Earth and all her creatures. A milestone towards this evidence might be that we achieve a tipping point of the number of Syntropic Enterprises, where those who apply the principles of Syntropy demonstrate thriving in all domains. Perhaps the number of Syntropic Enterprises we need is not a huge number, rather a number that tips the scales towards transformational change and accelerated acceleration of Syntropic Enterprises as the normal way of doing business. Estimates for this would live between 10 and 15 % of all enterprises.
Specificity of this why and ‘how will I know’ question is critical. It cannot be ephemeral or vague. It needs to be grounded and clear.
As a side note, we can apply these same questions to our own self – our being and remembering.
What is my purpose? How will I know I have lived my purpose specifically? What will be evident because of my lived purpose?
NOTE: a purpose on its own is not enough. We need the Source Idea that animates us towards the Purpose. When we have these two elements, we create a vector of movement, a force of direction and action. Without this directionality, we will waft around with an untethered purpose.
Part 2. The Source Idea and its Pattern Integrity
A purpose needs an idea to birth it. Every purpose might have infinite options to bring it to life.
Our unique combination of skills, background, knowledge, experience, perspective, shadow and access means that when an idea seizes us to act, we have the ability and capacity to steward it to life. Certainly not on day one, as every Steward Leader grows into their capacity and capability, learning through emergence.
Every idea at the moment of arrival has its own Pattern Integrity – a set of particularities and values that are integral to the idea.
Our idea to make a peanut butter sandwich has at the moment of its arrival the Pattern Integrity of that particular idea. The Pattern Integrity might be to fuel hunger and do it by eating something that feels appropriate in the moment. Or it could be to take pleasure in the taste of peanut butter as a response to boredom.
The Pattern Integrity of the idea of Syntropic World has several components, some already mentioned.
Zero exploitation, zero extraction to extinction, zero colonisation. Integrity in everything. Application of the laws of Universe/nature to all that we are doing. Building models. Having the models guide future emergence and adaptation.
If you want to determine the Pattern Integrity of your Source Idea then go back to the very moment the idea arrived for you. Remember the moment and the feelings, textures and elements. Perhaps the shape. The sense of it. It has its own identity and expression, even though it doesn’t yet have a form.
Too often we get caught in the glamour of the idea and drive it into a form or shape that we want, ignoring completely the form the idea with its Pattern Integrity needs to be.
This misinformed driving action is taken from the textbook of imperial colonisation. We want to dominate the idea we have been gifted to steward. This is a business-as-usual practice and might even include a business plan and a timeline. Drive drive drive. This is a very entropic expression of the idea and the antithesis of a Syntropic Enterprise.
Our role as Steward Leader is to be the guardian of the Pattern Integrity of the Source Idea, never allowing it to be violated no matter what form the idea is expressed in.
Sometimes the Source Idea takes its time to arrive. (Kairos time) We are invited to be patient, to keep building our tool kit and metaphysical knowhow, to prepare ourselves as steward leaders to be the person or people who can steward the Source Idea to life.
In the meantime, smaller ideas will seize us, ideas that might appear random and divergent to the purpose. Everything we do will contribute to becoming the Steward Leader needed to steward a large Source Idea to life.
Part 3. The Trust Manifesto
So easily forgotten and stepped over in our drive and haste, the foundational agreements we make in advance with those who are actively participating in the creation of our purpose through the manifestation of the Source Idea are critical to the success of any Syntropic Enterprise. These agreements are the Trust Manifesto that allow the Source Idea to be stewarded, its Pattern Integrity to be honoured and the Evolutionary Purpose to continue to lead.
At the individual level we might clarify our personal Trust Manifesto. What are the agreements and commitments we make with ourselves? These agreements and commitments include:
Do we commit to Clean Communication?
Do we commit to act in integrity?
How do we ensure we do not become arrogant if we achieve success, power and status? Do we have a personal Integrity Council?
As a team of people, how do we behave towards each other? How do we manage disagreements? Who takes responsibility? What is the level of transparency of operations? What is the level of risk? How do we account for value contributed in multiple domains? How do we make decisions?
Read the Trust Manifesto for Syntropic World here. You are welcome to use this as a template for your own enterprise. https://syntropic.world/trustmanifesto/
Too many times have I seen great people convene around a Source Idea without the equivalent of a Trust Manifesto and have the enterprise fall into a messy human heap. Partnership breakdowns, enterprise stagnation, and energy spent on cleaning up human relational mess rather than creating the thing we came together to create.
Part 4. The next step
Syntropic Practice is emergent. It doesn’t live in a linear timeline or a sequence of goals.
One of the best ways of describing this is through the poetry of David Whyte.
Start close in,
don’t take the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step
you don’t want to take.
Start with
the ground
you know,
the pale ground
beneath your feet,
your own
way to begin
the conversation.
Start with your own
question,
give up on other
people’s questions,
don’t let them
smother something
simple.
To hear
another’s voice,
follow
your own voice,
wait until
that voice
becomes an
intimate
private ear
that can
really listen
to another.
Start right now
take a small step
you can call your own
don’t follow
someone else’s
heroics, be humble
and focused,
start close in,
don’t mistake
that other
for your own.
Start close in,
don’t take
the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step
you don’t want to take.
Too often we are focused on the 3rd or 10th or 100th step. Or the final step, which can bury us in overwhelm and a sense of impossibility.
It is only the next step that we need to take. Once taken this step changes the field, as the field has also changed. We cannot know the second step because it will not reveal itself clearly until we are standing at the end of the first step.
In our rush, haste or panic, or indeed in our imposing our wants and desires of a timeline onto the idea, we ignore all of the vast communication that comes from the field.
We cease to pay attention.
The Steward of the Source Idea needs to remain in deep communion with the idea itself. What does it need now? What will be the natural next step?
We do not need to know how to achieve the next step. Once we know what the step is we then need to trust the field in provisioning the next step.
This provisioning is often counterintuitive. It may not arrive from an obvious place, in an obvious way.
Our role as the Steward is to hold the space for the provisioning to become evident. To look in places we have discounted. To make daring asks.
When we are the Steward of an idea far bigger and more significant than us, a Daring Ask is easy. This idea and purpose matter more than what you think of me.
We can and will ask for anything. When the ask is for a clear purpose, maintains the Pattern Integrity of the Source Idea and is a response to what the idea needs to bring it to life as the next step, the field will provision. We cannot guess the timeline or from whom, how, or even what the provision might be. We can trust it will happen.
We take the next step. And then we repeat.
These four elements are the critical keys of a Syntropic Enterprise.
Within the dynamic of these four elements we can bring to life the form the Source Idea needs.
The moment we get attached to driving a particular form then we have reverted back to that dominating colonial impulse, the very energetic impulse that has us as humanity exactly where we are on the threshold of extinction.
In building a Syntropic Enterprise we get to demonstrate how nature creates:
Emergent, in deep communion, honouring all values, trusting the wisdom of the field, holding the shape for integrity in all things and refusing to design around exploitation, extraction to extinction and colonisation.
In this process, earth, creatures and we the people can live syntropically in a world with a future.
