Stretching too far – staying adaptable in a world of change
Humans, animals, plants and insects are all highly adaptable.
We see this when we study Darwin’s theory of evolution, we see it when we watch birds waiting for the filling of their urban garden bird baths, we experience it when we realise our generation (I’m talking mine here – mid/late 40s) are the last that remember what it was like before emails, the internet and mobile phones.
That adaptability has served us all well to date, and humans take great pride in both their ability to invent and innovate the changes, and to incorporate new conditions, practices and experiences into their daily habits.
However, it can also give us a sense of complacency and arrogance, as in:
We’ve adapted before, we can adapt again.
Animals have gotten used to having humans living alongside them, they’ll get used to having less natural habitat.
We can grow heat resistant coral reefs so that we can still go snorkelling and tropical waters will stay lovely.
We never liked those insects anyway, so we won’t miss them.
But the uncomfortable truth is, like an elastic band, there is only so much stretch in the system. Animals, insects, birds – they can only cope with so much before they cease to survive. Humans can only adapt so much to adverse conditions before they revolt, flee, are paralysed or die.
And, our ability to adapt assumes all other parts of the system stay static – like foundations that we can rely on even while one thing collapses.
But that’s not true now either. Just as emails, the internet and mobile phones changed how we did our daily work (remember fax machines anyone?), they also massively amped up our need for energy to run servers, clouds, technology, and made obsolete jobs for people who typed and copied letters in triplicate or did research in libraries or with communities. The system within which we worked did not stay static, and we had to adapt to multiple changes at the same time, not all of which were easy or positive.
My focus on ecosystems comes from frustration with singular, non-strategic thinking, coupled with a pragmatic nature that focuses on the practical.
Natural ecosystems are characterised by a few common elements or characteristics:
The actors within an ecosystem don’t have the same vision or goal as each other, they have their own agendas and way of doing things.
Keystone species can both create and influence how ecosystems evolve, yet ecosystems cannot exist with keystone species alone.
Ecosystems evolve, they never stay static. This can be seasonal or due to new actors or conditions that the ecosystem components need to adapt to.
Actors have their own roles, and these roles coexist symbiotically. Some actors are predators who consume prey, some are recyclers who manage waste.
Some actors existing at the boundaries of multiple ecosystems – they don’t have a singular loyalty or place in just one.
Barney Tan, Professor of Information Systems and Technology Management at UNSW Business School speaks eloquently about this, particularly in relation to digital ecosystems.
When we consider humans and humanity, our majority view has become that we are the keystone species. We control ecosystems, we make them, we can break them. And that we don’t need the other actors in the system to thrive and survive.
Indigenous communities are among the loudest voices calling this out for being completely wrong. And others do to – scientists, doctors, children – they all know the reality, which is that we are only successful because of our ability to work together with other organisms to maintain conditions that we can all survive in.
This is the essence of the ‘transition’ movement. Transition is the steps from one reality to another, and is increasingly used to describe the process of moving from a way of living that causes planetary crisis to one that regenerates.
It need not be scary, it doesn’t have to make people defensive, we don’t have to have a them-and-us divide. It can be about innovation, excitement, efficiency, better and fairer standards of living, greater fun and nicer places to live in.
But what it has to be, is all-in (it has to be a future that we can all thrive and survive in), and it has to be faster (or else the elastic bands holding us all together will snap).
In my companies, we use the concepts of natural ecosystems to rethink and unlearn the default, majority view:
In JHA Consulting we use it to reimagine how organisations (groups of people coexisting) can work better, in fairer and more sustainable ways – and how they consider themselves in relation to other organisations and actors in the wider ecosystem.
In Humans At Work we use it to highlight, through podcast guests and blogs, that diversity of thinking, perspectives and ideas are all valuable – collectively they encourage a resilient global community to flourish and innovate.
In Jerica, we have designed a new business model based on natural ecosystems, which encapsulates for-profit and for-impact drivers holistically and sustainably – which shows how we can transition to inclusive, ethical and regenerative economies.
There are lots of people and organisations like ours who are working independently, collaboratively and co-operatively to support a transition to more naturally aligned and nature-protective ways of doing business or governing. It's not a question of whether the help is there, it’s a question of whether you want to make the first call to ask for it.