Considerations for a Beautiful Syntropic Business
Unlocking the power of enterprise for a more beautiful world
This article and my body of work are for those of you who seek to create enterprises and institutions that support the present and future well-being of Earth and all her creatures.
Following an introduction to the work of Buckminster Fuller in my 20s that insisted that I question EVERYTHING (right down to questioning the existence or not of straight lines), I have spent my life exploring models of human enterprise and engagement that enable all to thrive.
As this work evolves in 2024, we are clear that a Syntropic Enterprise places the sacredness of life at the centre of all we do.
People need their tribe, their family, community, and workmates. They also need to feel that the work they do and the time they spend matters and has meaning and value. They bring their whole selves to their enterprise daily and are seen and recognised for their contribution. When we create the right ecology, people do good and great things. When the needs to belong and be connected to the sacred are met, it creates the space to achieve together, to experience love, beauty, intimacy, awe, and reverence in the whole of life, including work.
We want to do great work. To kiss the sacred in our work. We want to be challenged. And we want to leave the world better for our time upon it.
Our current business and enterprise models work against this ecology in which we are better together.
Capitalism is breaking us down and failing our future.
We have handed over democracy to plutocracy, oligarchy, corporatism and technofeudalism.
The people and organisations who have created the problem want to be the ones who solve it, which is like having the arsonist become the firefighter.
The Earth is screaming from our abuse of her beautiful complexity.
We are short-term-focused rather than considering the 100-year plan for enterprise and the increased well-being of all humanity.
We create from the view of the machine: linear, mechanical, logical, predictable, and controllable. Yet we are learning fast that predictable and controllable are false gods. Uncertainty is what actually rules life.
Few of us know the extent and depth of the issues underpinning the systems we take for granted, so we set out with great intent only to find we have rearranged the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Instead of working on rearranging chairs on the sinking Titanic, let’s build a whole new boat.
This means rethinking everything from the beginning: legal structures and entities, organisational design, human coordination, and every traditional business department (HR, Compliance, Risk, Sales, Marketing, Customer Service).
A Syntropic Enterprise is a complex, unpredictable and autopoietic living system. Uncertainty is celebrated as a generative function of creativity. Logic pairs with the mystery and magic of Kairos time and synchronicity. These are Syntropic experiences that even the most logical and rational people have had. A Syntropic Enterprise is not linear but spiralling and circular.
The words love, beauty, art, joy, reverence and grace are grounded in the language of a Syntropic Enterprise. We bow in awe of our work and the work of others.
Leadership is stewardship. It involves holding the space to enable ecologies of Synergy, where your people are brilliant because they work together in the carefully created space.
When we create ecologies of Synergy, we enable the greatest exponential technology to be present. Human minds working together Synergistically. When we do this, there is no problem we cannot solve.
A Syntropic Enterprise comes with a warning.
If you plan on building today’s version of the cathedral that will stand magnificently through time, then the prerequisite investment of time is not only required but wise. If you plan to create as much money as you can and exit as fast as possible, then this is not the path for you.
Save yourself the heartache of a broken down future or tomorrow for a loved, comprehensively considered today.
One principle that underpins this entire model is Integrity. Integrity means “one” (integer). When a system is in Integrity, it is whole and holds its shape.
Integrity is the ground, the air, the fire, the light, the soul, the spirit and the purpose for all.
A Beautiful Syntropic business is worth beautiful design, contemplation, invitation, and aligned activation. “To speed up, let’s slow down.” Bayo Akomalafe
The 6 PILLARS OF SYNTROPIC ARCHITECTURE FOR A BEAUTIFUL SYNTROPIC ENTERPRISE
Pillar 1. Clarity of the Source Idea – the original impulse and Evolutionary Purpose
Pillar 2. Self-development as a leader/steward.
Pillar 3. Structural Integrity of Organisational Design. Creating Ecologies of Trust and Synergy
Pillar 4. People, teams, culture. A company of people and relationships.
Pillar 5. Networks and the field. A healthy economy is a healthy network of relationships with people, creatures, our Earth, the future, and the sacred.
Pillar 6. Strategy and Implementation. The Dance of Time, emergent strategy, strategic intention, and the autopoiesis of a living enterprise.
Note: Not all of these apply to all enterprises. When I review an enterprise, step #1 is always to determine its Pattern Integrity and its stage within the larger ecosystem of enterprises.
From there, it is an ongoing co-designed process to ensure that the Pattern Integrity is evident in all domains in a way that supports the best for the enterprise and the humans who invest their care, attention, time, money and life towards it.
Over the next six weeks, I will cover each Pillar’s elements.
Please join me, reply with your comments or questions and if this resonates, share this work far and wide.
