Bio update: Since I left Borgerlyst in June, I’ve been working on a new community organising initiative, focusing on building a local broad-based citizens’ alliance in Copenhagen. After some months in stealth mode with the working title “Civilsamfundsalliancen”, we’ve now made ourselves known to the …
Read MoreOrganisational permaculture design
I’ve just received my copy of the latest issue of the Danish permaculture magazine Tidsskriftet Permakultur. And it’s a little special because it includes an essay I’ve written on what I call organisational permaculture: The essay included in the magazine is an abbreviated version of …
Read MoreNotes to self
I’ve been involved with the Copenhagen Food Co-op for almost 5 years now. And along the way, I’ve learned a lot about organizing volunteers, building local community and getting people involved. I’ve learned mostly by making a lot of mistakes along the way. But in …
Read MoreObtain a yield
This is my attempt at rewriting permaculture principle no 3 — “Obtain a yield” in terms of Organisational Permaculture. It is part of a project initiated by Dan Mezick to map all 12 permaculture principles to cultivating groups and teams. The idea is that the …
Read MoreSmall, open, local and connected
Ezio Manzini, a Italian design professor and expert on social innvoation (whatever that is) argues that we are moving towards a new model of organizing society, production and consumption. He uses the words small, open, local and connected to describe this new model. He says: …
Read MoreOn political leadership
I think our great failure to find good political leaders today is a deeper issue. I just read a quote by Laurens Van Der Post in which he said: the reason we don’t have leaders is because we don’t want them, that we’ve entered the …
Read MoreAnything but ‘business as usual’
Talking about something so vaguely defined as “organisational permaculture” can easily become fluffy and buzz-wordy. So I thought it would help to give a very concrete example of an organisation that embodies some of the principles that I think are at the core of organisational …
Read MoreInspiration for an organisational permaculture
Permaculture sprung from a diverse set of influences such as ecology, systems thinking, local horticultural practices and ethnobotany (as permaculturist Elaine Solowey puts it, “Permaculture is a modern, codified system of traditional knowledge”). So when we begin talking about what organisational permaculture might be, there …
Read MoreOrganisational permaculture
I recently joined a new group on Facebook called Organizational Permaculture. Dan Mezick, who started the group, defines organisational permaculture as … a permaculture approach to elevating levels of team and group learning in organisations. It’s taking advantage of what is already there, and using …
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