Permaculture Principles for a Sustainable Business

Permaculture Principles for a
Sustainable Business by Dan Halsey
Adapting Holmgren's Principles to Business

Observe and Interact

• Assess the Markets
• Observe the Competition
• Look for Opportunity
• Become Part of the Community
• Build Relationships
• Build Resources

Catch and Store Energy

• Identify Sink and Sources
• Where does your energy come from?
• Where is your energy lost?
• What builds your capacity?
• What reduces your capacity?
• Do you have a system to Store Energy?

Obtain a Yield

• Make a profit?
• Sustain your business
• Sustain yourself
• Sustain your family
• Sustain your future
• Build a buffer for change

Apply Self-Regulation and Accept Feedback

• The Power of Limits
• Reduced cost is instant profit.
• Delayed gratification builds appreciation
• Share the wealth with your community
• Make comparisons of quality
• Feedback is all good
• Toxic feedback is not feedback
• No feedback is negative

Use and Value Renewable Resources
and Services

• Use Durable Goods
• Buy proven equipment (New or Used)
• Buy outside of ego
• Internalize your costs
• Use local resources and talent
• Recycle within your business
• 
  

Produce No Waste

• Waste = Food
• Everything has a life cycle
• Look for a second life to all purchases
• Buy for permanence and capacity

Design from Patterns to Details

• Make broad decisions of scope
• Refine the decision based on detailed information
• Look for patterns, flags, cycles and system adjustments that will increase capacity with existing resources.
• People Patterns

Integrate Rather Than Segregate

• Don’t live in professional isolation
• Integrate skills, look for smarter people in areas of weakness
• Be the smart person in a few areas
• Keep equipment and resources doing multiple tasks.
• Accept unrelated options as possibilities

Use Small and Slow Solutions

• Build systems slowly
• Make small purchases that have huge effect
• Build momentum with consistent vision
• Try many small steps to find the way
• Experiment with little failures to avoid big one.

• Use and Value Diversity

“If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea”
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

• People will come who are like minded.
• Avoid intellectual incest
• Look for many sources of information
• In work, play food, and people
• Challenge yourself to accept diverse perceptions

Use Edges and Value the Marginal

• Resources are at the edges
• Opportunity is at the edges
• The forgotten and dismissed have energy
• The Marginalized are clear thinkers
• Look for the Jazz in the weeds

Creatively Use and Respond to Change

• Paradigm Shifts mean more opportunity
• When the rules change, artists increase
• Change is good and continuous
• There is no normal, only the ever shifting now

Care for your self and your talent

• Make decisions based on long term effects and capacity
• Resist long term liabilities for short term gain
• Drink plenty of water, Get plenty of sleep.