How the Holistic Management testing questions can help align actions with your “true north.”
Julie Mettenburg. CLO, The Provenance Co
It’s hard to imagine an environment more complex than a farm, with its multitude of environmental, economic and social decisions on any given day, along with unfolding long-term consequences of those decisions.
Holistic Management is a decision- making framework we can use to accelerate the outcomes we desire. Because our vision for our life and farm is unique, Holistic Managers start by defining what is important
to us. We capture statements about the quality of life we desire and the future resource base needed to support it, into a document called the Holistic Context.
We can then set our priorities and test our decisions against our Holistic Context, ensuring our actions will support or accelerate our desired path.
Testing Questions
The following questions and testing process, attributable to Allan Savory, are utilized in holistic decision- making. Your Holistic Context should be in front of you or fresh in your mind. Then, consider your context as you ask the following questions,
which are best approached with the first question first and the last question last, and those in the middle in no particular order.
They are to be breezed through quickly, a process that gets easier as you gain practice.
• Cause and effect: Does this proposed action solve the root cause of my problem?
The brilliance of this question becomes apparent upon first consideration: Do I have a problem? Or is this action a solution in search of a problem? If the answer to this question is “no,” we are prompted to stop here and go back to the drawing board of our potential solutions, or perhaps rethink the “problem” altogether.
Furthermore, it helps us discover when we are treating only symptoms. If instead, we address the root
cause of problem, we can perhaps eliminate the problem altogether, or at least stop perpetuating it.
• Sustainability: Does this action move me toward the future resource base I’ve defined, or away from it?
If financial security is central to quality of life for you, does it make sense to make a purchase utilizing debt? Or to leave your day job? If
it is important to you to feel that you are making the world a better place through your work, does it make sense to continually choose a degrading path?
Choices like debt can seem inevitable, to get what we think we want. But if they are actually counter to the quality of life we would love, what are some other options we could consider?
Some of the most creative management scenarios and partnerships are born from this question. Sadly, some of the most painful losses could have been avoided by getting real about this question, as well.
• High Marginal Reaction: If I’m weighing two potential actions, which provides the biggest bang for my buck, of time and money spent?
This question often reveals which options provide the win-win-win outcomes, and which fall short. Or, does one action significantly shorten the path to your desired outcome? That’s getting big bang for your buck.
• Gross Profit Analysis: If I’m weighing two potential financial options, how do they compare when I pencil out the profit and loss for each?
In financial planning, holistic managers will determine only direct revenues and expenses for any given enterprise. So, if the expense of doing the thing, when subtracted from any revenue of the thing, provide you with profit, how does that profit compare? Which option contributes the most to covering the overhead costs of your life and business?
This question helps address but also contextualize the inevitable question, “How does it pencil out?” Weighing the financials against your bigger-picture context helps ensure your decisions and outcomes are more holistic than utilizing profit alone.
• Energy-money source and use: What am I putting into this — from what source — and am I investing it into the best use?
This question challenges us to evaluate whether what we are considering is a potential “addictive” choice. Am I utilizing debt, which may entrap me? Will I continue to have to make this input or action to keep the business running? Or is it a one-time investment that will leap the whole forward?
In addition, when it comes to energy, it’s asking us to think about whether we are converting sunlight into dollars, or utilizing less sustainable sources such as fossil fuels. And how about human energy — is this going to wear myself and my people down, or is it going to be additive to our overall energetic equation?
• Weak links: Have I considered the biological, social and financial weak links of this action?
As it sounds, the “weak link” is the link of your production chain that, when stressed, will break. Here’s how we would apply it:
• Biological: if we’re evaluating an intervention such as a pest control or a supplement, this question would prompt us to consider whether that intervention is timed at the right moment in the creature or system’s life cycle, to have the most impact.
• Social: This question asks us to consider the humans who might introduce challenge to our new solution.
While not often a reason to not do the thing, this provides a valuable prompt to think through potential obstacles that we can prepare to avoid or manage, before we embark on the action. Spouses, parents, neighbors, colleagues — where might my action spark friction, and how might I prevent or assuage that friction?
• Financial: We recognize that the work of farming is to convert solar energy into dollars in our pocket.
A process that causes energy to go through three links in the chain: resource conversion (maximizing healthy roots in living soil), product conversion (maximizing the product we capture to sell fromthat resource base), and marketing conversion (getting top dollar for that product). Am I addressing my weak link in this chain? Or am I applying a solution
to a link in the chain that’s already performing better than one of the others? For example, investments in direct marketing often fall short toadvance our business if we are not already maximizing green plants with living roots in healthy soil.
• Finally, the gut check: What is your gut telling you about this decision?
At the end of the day, many of us rely on our gut decisions. This last question empowers you to go with your gut. However, you will have considered the question from other angles as well, ensuring you emerge with a more holistic view and action path that advances your vision while minimizing risk of jeopardizing it in unforeseen ways.
The Holistic Context and context checks are just one small piece of
the Holistic Management framework, but one of the most powerful. More information is available in the Holistic Management texts by Allan Savory and from instruction and assistance of trained Holistic Management professionals and educators.
Julie Mettenburg is a Master Field Professional for the Savory Institute (savory.global) and Chief of Land Operations for The Provenance Co, a land regeneration management company (theprovenanceco. com). She is a prior Executive Director of the Kansas Rural Center.