I’m obsessed with mushrooms. Their texture and history and growth patterns are so fascinating to me, and the way that they spring out of what seems like nothing when just the right conditions are met feels like nothing short of magic. In the same way, seeing how the individual factors that make up a system come together and impact each other feels like another sort of magic. While we have a much better idea of how business and creative systems work and can be impacted than we do about the mysteries of fungal life, every time I learn more about mushrooms I can’t help but see how many parallels there are between nature and the work that we do here at Rain or Shine. Just like how mushrooms are all connected, every individual part of your systems is connected in ways that you can’t always see until you start digging.
As Merlin Sheldrake says in his book Entangled Life, “Many fungi can live within the roots of a single plant, and many plants can connect with a single fungal network. In this way a variety of substances, from nutrients to signaling compounds, can pass between plants via fungal connections.” In the same way, your actions, environment, and other outside factors can also support and impact your systems and should be equally considered when you want to make any changes.
“How a given plant or fungus behaves depends on… where they happen to be.” Even if you’re not actively seeking change, just showing up and considering how your environment and your actions contribute to your success can help you more accurately meet your needs in a variety of other settings.
“Some people think about symbiosis as being like a package from IKEA,” Toby Spribille explains, “with clearly identified parts, and functions, and order in which it’s assembled.” His findings suggest instead that … lichens are dynamic systems. They are a product less of their parts than of the exchanges between those parts. Lichens are stabilized networks of relationships; they never stop lichenizing; they are verbs as well as nouns.”
Dynamic systems are characterized by constant change, activity, or progress. We talk a lot about living systems, how we’re not here to help you write something down once and never look at it again. I love this analogy of IKEA packages because I think a lot of people have an idea of systems that is very similar. And perhaps we as systems experts feed into this idea, because it’s often easiest to visualize how all the parts come together by providing diagrams and flowcharts that make it look as deceptively simple as IKEA instructions. But just as putting together IKEA furniture is never as easy as it seems, systems require an understanding of your needs that goes deeper than the flowchart or step-by-step process. And of course, because we are living beings with complex relationships, those needs and the ways in which we support them are going to change as well. After all, “A mycelial network is a map of a fungus’s recent history and is a helpful reminder that all life-forms are in fact processes not things. The “you” of five years ago was made from different stuff than the “you” of today. Nature is an event that never stops.”
Systems, whether they’re made up of mycelium, nerves, or processes within a business, can be incredibly complex. You don’t have to know what you’re doing or what needs to change to get started exploring what’s around you and the impacts those external factors have on the actions that you’re taking. Systems Recess was designed to help complete beginners and seasoned systems thinkers alike find connections between what’s already worked and things you’d like to change.
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Systems Recess is genuinely one of my favorite things that we do here at Rain or Shine, and it’s a process that I personally come back to over and over again because even when everything is going well, taking the time to ask myself why and explore those connections gives me space to explore new ideas and grow in unexpected ways.
“Our perceptions work in a large part by expectation. It takes less cognitive effort to make sense of the world using preconceived images updated with a small amount of new sensory information than to constantly form entirely new perceptions from scratch… Tricked out of our expectations, we fall back on our senses. What’s astonishing is the gulf between what we expect to find and what we find when we actually look.”
The process of Systems Recess gives us the chance to actually look at our systems and the connections around us. Self-compassion and curiosity are values that require constant practice, and this process of seeking out connections helps me come back to the idea that myself, my life, and my business are constantly shifting, growing, and learning in ways that I can’t wait to continue exploring. I hope you’ll consider joining us, whether on your own time or during our weekly live sessions.
P.S. If you’ve attended Systems Recess or done the process on your own, I’d love to hear what you think! Fill out this quick survey & you’ll get a fun little gift as a thank you <3
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