This interview will show you what working on a holistic context looks like and how you could do this for yourself, your family, or your permaculture project or enterprise. Scott Gallant and Sam Kenworthy from Porvenir Design in Central America have recently created a holistic context for their business. In this episode I review it with them and support them to evolve it further. Here you'll get a better feel for applying what we learned from Allan Savory in the previous episode on Permaculture and Holistic Management. The whole Holistic Context idea comes from Allan.

If you are interested in this topic you might want to listen to my introduction to Holistic Decision Making in episode 40. You can also catch up on my prior conversation with Scott on the practical and professional realities of a more living design process in episode 41 and episode 42.

In conjunction with this episode, I have also created an online course on Holistic Decision Making starting September 4th, 2020. This course will educate and resource participants to develop their own holistic contexts and start making decisions aligned with that context.

Scott Gallant and Sam Kenworthy

Setting a Focus for the conversation: The Task Cycle Framework

After hearing a little something of Sam's backstory, I started by introducing the Task Cycle Framework to clarify our focus for the episode. I learned about this framework from Carol Sanford and the Regenesis folk. Among other things, this framework invites you think through:

The taskThe purpose of the taskThe products that need to be produced to pursue that purposeThe processes that will generate those products

In this case, the task was reviewing Porvenir Design's Holistic Context as a podcast episode. As for the task's purpose, what came up for me (and resonated for Scott and Sam) was:

We are recording this interview to review your holistic context and potentially help you increase its depth, clarity and decision making power...…in a way that supports Porvenir design’s vitality, viability, and capacity to evolve…..so that you and your business are becoming an increasing potent agent of regeneration in Costa Rica and beyond.

The main product was a tight, focused podcast episode that adds value to Porvenir design and to our listeners in terms of resourcing them to do this kind of work for themselves. Then the process we used was, after some scene setting, slowly working our way through the Porvenir context, reflecting on each bit for as long as we need.

In addition to going through the task cycle, Dan brought a personal aim to the conversation of evoking reflection and sharing experience more than providing answers.

Porvenir Design's Holistic Context

Thanks to Scott and Sam for letting me reproduce the version of their context they have shared publicly in this blog post. A Holistic Context for an entity (such as a business) created for a specific reason comprises:

a statement of purposequality of life statementswhat Savory calls forms of production and Dan calls enabling actionsa future resource base

Porvenir Design's Statement of Purpose: Why was this entity created?

Porvenir Design exists to help clients achieve their goals within the context of tropical land planning and management and to provide meaningful livelihood for its employees.

Some snippets from our conversation about Porvenir Design's Statement of Purpose

On a meaningful livelihood..."One of the things I sometimes struggle with, with the holistic context, in the (purpose) statement and everything that flows from it, is when are we making decisions to regenerate landscapes and all these things that get us super excited and that we love doing everyday. We also formed it to buy a little piece of land ourselves and have the highest quality of life that we can live, and so I always see those two things and wonder how the rest of our statements flow from there and if there is any tension.