The Ecological Organisations Framework

A Reimagined Organisational Story of Interbeing, Ecosystem Responsibility and Responsiveness, and a Fertile Web of Relationships

I didn’t set out to design a framework. Yet, that’s what happened; and I mostly feel that I’m just along for the ride. While designing it, I was reminded of the repeated observation by George Box that ‘all models are wrong but some are useful’. Fortunately, after much research I realised that I was designing a framework, not a model, which was a huge relief, as I can now be right and useful.

In case you think I’m being modest, I really didn’t set out to design a framework. What I meant to do was clarify for myself what my perspective on organisational design and facilitation actually is, having realised that my views have evolved quite considerably over the last seven years. But, like the slug that W and I recently found when we arrived home from my first multi-day hike that had traversed up the outside of our house, across the roof, up the chimney, down the chimney, and across our bathroom floor, this framework has a life all its own and is on a mission.

It is therefore with many different and strangely-felt feelings that I introduce the Ecological Organisations Framework, and the reimagined organisational story it asks us to create together.

It’s a story of organisations as rich, fertile webs of relationships that are deeply rooted in ecosystems and social systems that they cannot (and should not) be detangled from. A story of organisations as radically responsible for and responsive to planetary, ecosystem, and social system health. A story of organisations listening deeply to non-human voices and incorporating their needs into decision-making and strategy. A story of organisations shifting from profit-based metrics to an alignment-based compass, from domination-oriented goals to ecosystem-triggered introspection, and from organisations as legal entities that belong to us to organisations as living systems we steward (just for a little while).

The time has come for reimagined organisational stories; stories born of all that our ancestors have carried forward and that we’ll carve into the layer of rock that our collective descendants will build their lives and stories upon; stories that speak of deep time and mutualism and ecological relationships.

The time has come for ecological organisations.

Ecological Organisations Framework 1.1 © 2023 by Anna-Marie Swan is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

The Source as Parental Steward

When I meet parents that inspire me, they share the same perspective: even though their children are born of them, their children don’t belong to them. As parents, they have the honour of stepping into parental stewardship: ensuring that their children are nurtured well and equipped to step into their rightful place in the world as soon-to-be-adult human beings.

I hope to be that kind of parental steward to this framework.

I’m curious and excited by how this framework will evolve when it is in the world, not just in my head. I’m curious to see how it will grow when it’s entangled within other hands, ideas, relationships. It needs people. It needs people to apply it to their organisations to discover new shoots, so it can evolve, and old growth, so it can become good soil (as Sophie Strand might phrase it). It needs the messy, rich soil of voices, perspectives, and lives: unique ancestry, unique ways of rooting into and knowing place, uniquely insights that the rest of us can’t see. It needs people to give voice to non-human beings, so they can be weaved into the story. It needs the voices of diverse bioregions, cultures, and myths. It needs as-close-to-real-time data. And it needs mulching, tending, and unfurling. Ultimately, it needs to be brought to life.

And… The Source as Holding a Clear Perspective

Yes. And… this framework is born of seven years of full-hearted, full-attention immersion in the work I do; and from that immersion, a perspective has arisen within me that this framework embodies in two important ways:

1. Embodying diversity

There is consideration, care, and intentionality in the framework not offering suggestions about how an organisation embodies becoming a more ecological organisation. Just as, when untouched by man, every ecosystem is an intelligent, unique response to its environment, so every organisation must discover the unique approaches, actions, strategies, intentions, behaviours, and governance choices that make sense for them and their environment.

It’s intentional that the framework offers guiding questions instead of suggested answers. By doing so, the framework invites organisations to honour, celebrate, and embody rich diversity and cohesive disruption. The moment that the framework starts to offers universal absolutes that can be applied without organisational introspection and wider ecosystem and social system consideration, this framework has failed.

2. Reaching for deep time

The Ecological Organisation Framework invites us to be always becoming more; more nuanced, more place-based, more wisdom-based, more ecosystem-aligned. There is no ecological organisation end state, there is just becoming a more ecological organisation. There is only the consistent unfolding, self-discovery, and evolution of an organisation with the same seasonality that unfolds on this planet: layering birth and evolution and death and birth, again and again, into rock; until that rock becomes the foundational layer of something new.

In the same way, this framework whispers of deep time: birth and death and evolution and death and life within and for our organisations, so they too can become the foundational layer of something new. The moment this framework shifts from embodying a deep time perspective, this framework has failed.

You and The Ecological Organisation Framework, In Relationship

To enable a good balance between protecting what the framework embodies and ensuring that the framework can be shared, mulched, tended, and evolved, the Ecological Organisation Framework is shared under the Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International.

This license requires that reusers give credit to the creator. It allows reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, for noncommercial purposes only. If others modify or adapt the material, they must license the modified material under identical terms. To read more about the license, click on the link above highlighted in green.

Living The Questions

My cells have been regularly rearranged the work and words of Ken Liu, Sophie Strand, Bayo Akomolafe, Charles Eisenstein, Ruby May, Maryam Hasnaa مريم حسنا, Sean Wilkinson, The Emerald podcast, Donella Meadows, Elinor Ostrom, Margaret Wheatley, and Frederic Laloux (among many others), and I am grateful to them for sharing their ideas and living questions with the world with such courage and care.

In particular, thank you to Joey Nakayama, a deeply loving human-centred designer, workshop facilitator, and innovation manager (and fellow co-founding member of Open Facilitation); Charlie Fisher, an often collaborator who is committed to intertwining regenerative land ownership, housing, finance, and governance, and make them available to us; and facilitator, coach, and instant kindred spirit Daphne Van Run, who inspires me with her embodied wisdom. Joey, Charlie, and Daphne offered in-depth reflections as I developed the framework, elevating it immensely.

Finally, thank you to the educator, activist, speaker, catalyst, and author Daniel Christian Wahl. I started reading Designing Regenerative Cultures when I thought my framework was finished and his entreaty to live the questions - since ‘[q]uestions, more than answers, are the pathway to collective wisdom’ (p19) - fundamentally morphed the framework from something that could easily have become static and stale and too focused on answers to something alive and amorphous and permeable and curious, as all frameworks (and beings) should probably be.

There are many questions that are still alive in me as this framework moves from my hands to a shared holding. I’ve spent many days wondering if there are key elements missing, such as ‘decolonialising our perspectives, norms, and actions’. It is imperative that organisations understand their role, within and without, in perpetuating neo-colonial ideologies, mythologies, and systemic norms, so that we change current and future behaviour. When I reflect on it, I wonder if this urgent focus is actually an answer to a question, or numerous questions, that is being asked in the framework, i.e. ‘decolonialising our perspectives, norms, and actions’ is one of the ways we can be moving closer to right relationship and/or activating ecosystem responsiveness and responsibility. But perhaps it is needed as a framework element, that then asks its own questions. My hope is that this is exactly the kind of possible framework blindspot that will come to light when held up in a collective gaze.

An Ending Practice

To end this article, it feels right to look to a new practice I’ve been establishing with the guests of the Generative Worlding podcast (whose first episodes I’m in the process of editing). At the end of each episode, I’ve been asking guests to reflect on the conversation we’ve just had, and, in light of it, share a blessing they’d like our listeners to receive. It’s become a beautiful way to close the conversation. Now that I’m faced with the task, I’m feeling some shyness and self-consciousness!

That said, in light of this conversation, I hope that all beings that imagine, activate, and steward reimagined organisational stories - stories rich in diversity of place, ancestry, culture, myth, perspective, voice, and need - are firmly entangled within the constellations of care needed to root these stories in organisational new growth.

You can download the framework as a PDF by visiting my website. Viewing it as a PDF will enable you to zoom in and out, so making it more readable.