The Age of Thrivability: activating the good life
I don’t often write book reviews but Michelle Holliday’s The Age of Thrivability ticks so many boxes for a must-read book that I feel compelled to share with you. I had been meaning to read this inspiring book for months and I’m so glad a heavy cold found me under the duvet cover for a weekend so that I could open to pages and enjoy the surprises unfolding.
It’s always exciting when any book opens your mind to new perspectives and learning. It’s even more true when it’s a subject you know well, and yet you find your eyebrows rising with a new way of thinking that delights you. A great insight is one which has you shouting “yes! — that’s what I’ve been feeling and sensing but haven’t been able to articulate!”
I have been deeply immersed in the principle themes that can be found in this book for a long time. The power and significance of living systems principles applied to support the transformational shifts that we need to make in society, business and amost any other system you can think of, have absorbed me since I first picked up Janine Benyus’ Biomimicry.
Biomimicry put in place everything I instinctively knew about nature but hadn’t articulated. Margaret Wheatley’s Who Do You Choose To Be answered the nagging question in my head -‘what is going on — we’re like Rome under Caligula?’ in her neat precce of the breakdown of civilisations. Fred Laloux gave voice to the attributes of different levels of conscious development, and helped put clear imagery to the varying dominant behaviours of different eras.
Michelle’s exploration of how we have learned to better use our brains throughout evolution, unicamerally, and today beginning to explore another new boundary of integrated thinking allowed the biological penny to drop into place alongside my cultural, psychological and organisational explorations.
“Nature holds vital lessons for today’s organisational leaders. Nowhere else do we find such high levels of innovation, adaptability and resilience. In our bodies and in other living systems, this creative process happens naturally. But not so in organisations. There, we need new perspectives and techniques to respond creatively and collaboratively to unexpected circumstances.Her clear models of the patterns that underpin our possibility to thrive into an uncertain future combined with her stories of transformational journeys of the organisations she has worked with, make the often complex theory of living systems accessible to everyone.” Michelle Holliday
We are called to be stewards of the one precious planet we know we have; but we are equally called to be stewards of what is bright and beautiful about human nature and culture.
With the growing existential threats faced by humankind, books like The Age of Thrivability paint a picture of what’s possible — if we commit to making the effort and most importantly, putting practice before perfection and performance.
Thriveability might not be the most accessible word, but it’s difficult to find a phrase that truly describes what we mean when we talk about humanity living in a way which is in harmony with nature, whilst humans achieve that level of spiritual and psychological fulfilment we are capable of. Sustainability certainly doesn’t cut it any more. Regenerative, renaissance and renewal all work for me but thriveability does have an air of energy about it that others are missing.
Read it because it will open your mind to the way in which self-management and self-organisation helps business and people to thrive. Read it because if we are to thrive into the next century, we’ll need to change and Michelle gives plenty of practical insights and tips into how to do that.
And if all that were not enough to whet your appetite, I have to confess to sheer delight that this is another great cultural and business book written by a woman. That may sound sexist but I don’t care. There are so few great business books written by women that get the attention they deserve. Just as with start-up funding, women have to be three times as good for a third of the focus. The Age of Thriveability sits comfortably alongside other heroes like Kate Raworth, Margaret Wheatley, Janine Benyus and Joanna Macy.
