Collective Resilience

Mention the term "swarm theory" and people typically think of robots that work together or accident-avoiding cars, but conversations I've been having recently are all about bringing swarm theory to work for human behavior. In a nutshell: how can we set up structures within our businesses, organizations, and communities that incentivize individuals to work together toward a common goal? 

I've written about swarm theory in relation to communication issues in a previous entry, and building on that, how can we leverage the mechanisms behind this innate behavior to create strategic alignment for our businesses and communities? The mechanisms in swarm theory are simple: individual organisms working together to create a whole that is greater than the sum of their parts. Through information transparency, multiple sensors, and simple rules, flocks and swarms are able to leverage the self-interest of the individual to work together and mitigate disturbances, such as predation. The biological mechanisms are simple, but translating them to a human context is anything but elementary.

Perhaps you are asking yourself:

How can I grow my business while keeping my culture intact? How can my organization cut through the noise to spread the word on an important initiative? How can I organize my community to collectively tackle initiatives that mitigate the effects of urban flooding, crime, and climate change? 

Let's start learning from billions of years of nature's R&D and work together to bring natural solutions to work for our businesses, organizations, and communities. Contact us to learn more!

Resources to learn more!

• The B-Collaborative's Naturally Resilient Workshop. 
• National Geographic's interesting introduction to swarm theory (bit of a long read);
• For a shorter experience, NatGeo created a picture essay on the subject;
• HBR article for a Capital One case study that applies swarm theory to human behavior;
• And for an example of it applied to energy management, the REGEN case study.

Stories from the Prairie: Applying the “Genius of our Place” to Unlock Nature’s Strategies for Resilient, Restorative Design

Nature is inherently resilient and restorative while our human systems are...not. But what could we learn about the nature of design by studying the science of nature? By exploring our native organisms and ecosystems with a biomimicry lens, we can unlock nature’s locally-attuned design strategies and begin to apply them to our context: creating buildings, businesses and communities that are inherently sustainable, naturally.

Lurie Gardens. Photo by @amycoffman

In the other articles in this series, I wrote about the importance of connecting with nature and ways to do so. In this last (for a time, at least) article in this series, I share some stories of what I've learned in my exploration of the tallgrass prairie as well as a vision for a more sustainable and resilient world: one where our choices are based on working with and leveraging local context and energy flows rather than fighting against them.

It’s time to start thinking differently.

Like Wes Jackson who was inspired by the prairie to rethink industrial agriculture to Allan Savory who emulates grazing for holistic land management and Gerould Wilhelm who emulates the prairie in landscape design, each of these innovators look to the prairie ecosystem as inspiration for alternatives to standard practice. Doing so, they were able to (re)think standard practices, creating more low-maintenance, cost-effective, and biodiverse alternatives. And you can do this too.

If there ever was a case for community resilience...

...it would be the movie The Purge with Ethan Hawk. Have you seen it? My husband and I rented it last night and it got me thinking about this idea of personal resilience and how it falls short when you need it most.

The premise of this film is a dystopic America where crime and poverty are minimal because everyone is given a free pass one night a year to commit any crime they want, including murder, to purge themselves of pent up aggression and hostility they feel during the rest of the year. 

There are two types of people in this society - those that commit the acts of aggression and murder and those that hole themselves up indoors waiting for the night to be over. Most of us would put ourselves firmly in the second camp - we'd stockpile food and water, build the best security systems to protect ourselves and our property, and hold our families close as we ride out the night and hope to survive. This is the premise that interested me about this arguably flawed movie (at the end of the film, my husband and I were laughing at it's implausibility that fundamentally misunderstands humanity, but this is a spoiler free zone so I will save that discussion for those of you who have seen it). 

To me, this movie illustrates that the focus on survivalism and personal resilience at the cost of everyone else deprives us of our humanity and is fundamentally impossible to achieve.