An Evolutionary Lens for your Challenge

Dr. Tamsin Woolley-Barker

4d • General discussion

My love of nature, like most of you, began with curiosity and attention. Deepened into respect—and then love.

Because once you start paying attention to living things, you see something extraordinary.

The stories of all living things unfolding—tangled and exquisitely generative.

Differentiating in their search for nutrients, integrating through their exchange.

Life creates conditions conducive to life in this way.

So why do we struggle?

What possesses us to blindly destroy possibilities our own descendants would depend on?

It kept me awake at night.

What could I do?

Whatever the solution, I knew it would have to be something people chose, because it worked better.

It would have to help people make a living and do the things they wanted to do.

It would have to be available within existing systems, and work so much better that eventually, the old systems just fell away.

It seemed to me that other living things evolved just like us, so our ancestors must have had the answers. How could we find the way again?

So I set out to find the deep patterns and simple rules of living systems. The Tinkertoys of life.

I started with plants, because they didn't run away. Island biogeography in Hawaiʻi. Then social evolution with Professor Robert Trivers—and work as a marine mammal observer in the Bering Sea.

And then, I was ready for the two-leggeds. I joined the Awash Baboon Project in Ethiopia, one of the best models we have for understanding human evolution.

How do everyday individuals’ choices result in the patterns of their evolution—their adaptability and cooperativeness?

Years later I discovered biomimicry—innovation inspired by life’s exquisite solutions to the same challenges we face in our own lives, and began consulting for an enterprise clientele. But it wasn’t enough. Organizations aren't really designed to think that far out of the box.

So I wrote Teeming, using what I knew about adaptive, resilient, collaborative structures––and worked with innovative companies like Cisco, Google, and IDEO. But it wasn’t enough. Organizations can still use adaptive structures to deplete possibility. So I kept going.

I needed more than a collection of principles or metaphors. I needed an instrument people could use to cultivate conditions conducive to life the way other species do without thinking so hard.

So that's what I created. A way of seeing complex challenges through four billion years of evolutionary intelligence. What I call the Living Design Lens.

It won't give you the answers. But it does help you find the questions. What capacities would you need? What relationships might open possibility? What resources have been overlooked?

What would have to shift for this to happen, like water flowing downhill?

Now I've finished the work I started so long ago. It’s time to invite folks to use it, and I'm excited. I finally get to ask: What are YOU trying to bring to life? How can life's deep patterns help YOU find a way?

I'd love to hear about it!

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An Evolutionary Lens for your Challenge