Michelle Holliday is a living systems pioneer, strategist, facilitator, speaker, researcher, and author whose work has centered around thrivability — a set of beliefs, intentions and practices based on a view of organizations as living systems. Her book, “The Age of Thrivability: Vital Perspectives and Practices for a Better World,” is a comprehensive guide to the transition that humanity is undergoing. More importantly, it outlines a straightforward framework for enabling life to thrive along the way. Michelle has dedicated the past two decades to helping steward change for people and organizations; helping them understand what it takes for life to thrive and why that matters. Michelle also serves as a host to many communities of practice, public conversations, and workshops where she brings people together to help them navigate complexity, discover ways they can feel more alive, connect more meaningfully with each other, and serve life more powerfully through their work.
In this episode, Michelle explains how her early quest to explore what was missing from today’s mechanistic organizations, leadership, and cultures led to her discovery that the missing ingredient was life itself! This began her lifelong journey to understand what it takes for life to thrive, to understand the dominant stories and paradigms that have shaped the way humans think, act and organize, and to cultivate wisdom that would help organizations become living systems once again. In her research, Michelle found that there are four conditions or patterns which she calls “life’s universal design principles” that are required to support all living systems and, by default, all of humanity: 1) diverse parts, 2) relationships, 3) integrated whole, and, 4) self-integrating, self-organizing, self-generating, self-regenerating, self-healing = LIFE!
Michelle tells us how major eras of humanity followed these same design principles and patterns; starting with hunter gatherers who were rooted in wholeness and in-tune with all of life, to the agricultural era that shifted the paradigm to relationships between parts, to the scientific and industrial age which focused on reductionist separation and divergent parts, to today’s era where life is beckoning a convergence of all of its universal principles into our organizations, our leadership, our societies, our cultures, and into our own beings. Our organizations can be excellent practice grounds to intentionally manifest what is needed. The time for deeper conversations that bring healing and wisdom, shift how we see ourselves and the world, cultivate deep presence, and allow stewardship to flourish in alignment with life…the time for thrivability…is now. Watch or listen to this episode and others on our website, Youtube, Facebook, Spotify, and other channels (link in the comments).
FOR MORE INFO ABOUT MICHELLE, please visit: www.michelleholliday.com. For more information about her book and thrivability, please visit: https://ageofthrivability.com/
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