You're here because you're bringing something into the world. A vision. A venture. A body of work. A team. A community. A place. A new chapter of life. Or perhaps you simply know something is missing. We can't know the future. But fortunately, life has never depended on prediction. For nearly four billion years, living systems have continually found their way— by creating the conditions from which new possibilities emerge. That's what we do here. Through evolutionary biology, beautiful stories, practical frameworks, and a toolkit called Living Design, you'll learn to see, cultivate, and renew the hidden conditions from which possibility grows. Everything in this community is built around one question: How does life create conditions conducive to its own flourishing—and how can we?

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.

My obsession started when I was very small: trying to figure out the leverage points that could flip humanity into living more like other animals do. Why did we put them in circuses and scrape their homes bare for freeways and parking lots? I didn't see the coyotes or rabbits ruining other animals' futures. And yet they were clearly our relatives, as Jane Goodall showed. We were animals like any other. I spent many sleepless nights over it. Where did we go off track? How could we find our way again? What could I do? For that matter, what could anyone do? Nothing I thought of would work. Everything was connected to everything else. It would just make matters worse. But my father was an architect. He pointed out the geodesic domes sprouting along the 1970s California coastline. A set of simple rules of connection adding up to a strong, flexible structure. Like Tinkertoy. He also told me how the same kinds of simple rules, if properly aligned with human nature, could guide people to do what the architect intended. That idea stayed with me, and I set out to find the simple rules by which other organisms live—how they “create conditions conducive to life” without thinking so hard. In retrospect, possibly an overly ambitious career goal! But someone had to do something. Well I've broadened my passions over time, but my interest in life's deep patterns stuck around. They've been honed by four billion years of challenge, after all. From Hawaiian island plant biogeography to whale distributions in the Bering Sea to baboon hybridization and speciation in Ethiopia. How does life grow itself? How does it organize intelligence? How does it create conditions conducive to life for its descendants? At every scale, the same patterns: the simple rules of growing possibility despite uncertainty, change, and challenge. The same patterns organize our own lives—the many ways we live and think, design, and lead– as I've noticed in groups from Indigenous communities, to teams in companies,, nonprofits, and other institutions.

Pretty excited about this—I am just finishing up the recording of Wayfinders, my Living Design intensive! Each day is a different evolutionary pattern, followed by a framework from my “universal system for growth with intention”—a series of powerful systematic frameworks for bringing your vision to life, at any scale. You, your team or organization, your community or bioregion. It’s available in the classroom right now and I’m dying to take your challenges through it. Check it out! https://www.skool.com/teemingtogether/classroom/b8598359

🌿 Read I'm publishing Teeming with Life chapter by chapter as I prepare it for publication. You can start with Part 1: Life Mind right away --it's in the Classroom. 🌿 Practice Join Wayfinders—our 10-Day Living Design Intensive. Wayfinders is where you put these ideas to work. Each day you'll receive a short video and a beautifully designed workbook activity that helps you explore a different aspect of the living system that is your vision: • Your nature • Your purpose • Your niche • Your role • Your constraints • The nutrients your vision needs to flourish By the end, you'll see your work through a completely different lens—and have a practical, capacity-driven path to bringing it to life. It's $147, asynchronous, and designed to fit into your life. We move through it as a community, but you're free to work at your own pace. If you're nurturing a vision, I think you'll find Wayfinders the perfect place to begin. Clarity is your first essential capacity for Living Design. From there, you can continue into deeper Living Design work. Wayfinders is the doorway. It's the best way for us to get to know one another and to discover what your vision is asking of you next. 👉 Ready to cultivate the conditions where new possibilities grow? Join the August 10 Wayfinders Cohort, in the Classroom now