7 Parallels Between Life and a Healthy Business

Have you ever noticed how often principles in nature apply in design, innovation and organizations? Many a great innovation and breakthrough came from inspiration in nature. And what is more inspiring in nature than life itself? 

Few industries are as cognizant about the characteristics of life as agriculture. Interestingly, what nature expresses in organic life, healthy organizations boldly exhibit in business.  

The seven characteristics of life are excellent markers of a healthy organization. Take a measure of how your team is doing in these seven areas, and prioritize the top few with the most room for improvement. Enhancing your team’s expression of any one of these areas can have a powerful impact on the business. 

1. Responsiveness to the Environment
In the same way some species must and can adapt to changes in their environment, great businesses and their strategies must be sentient. They must adapt to the ever-changing tides of the market’s needs and tastes as well as changes in the economy. In 2020, hardly any strategy that was formed during the first quarter was relevant by the third quarter. 

Are members of your strategy and leadership team meeting at least quarterly to assess strategy and discuss recent and impending environmental changes, so they may adapt accordingly? 

2. Growth and Change

Have you been part of a group that wasn’t growing or had leadership unable to facilitate change? Stagnation and inflexibility are ingredients for decline and death. 

Take a moment to evaluate your organization’s leadership and values statements. Do they clearly embrace continuous improvement and change within the company? Do you adequately provide educational opportunities to your team members to challenge them and facilitate their professional growth? 

3. Ability to Reproduce

Like a species, a great organization can grow or spawn new offshoots. At the very least, it should be capable of preparing good managers through training, coaching and mentoring activities. 

Is your team reproducing good leadership for tomorrow, or are you relying on others to recruit the talent your business needs to survive? 

4. Have a Metabolism, and Breathe

To breathe is to take in oxygen and expel carbon dioxide. Fresh air to an organization can be a combination of new ideas and people from the outside. Just as important is the ability to expel poisons from a team. Abusive communication, disrespect and negativity should be ushered out of the group—similar to how the body releases CO2. 

How could your organization better learn from the outside and exhale the outdated or negative?  

5. Maintain Homeostasis

Just as the body must overcome challenges to keep a stable temperature or pH—conditions necessary to function well—a team needs protection from stresses. One of a leader’s top priorities is protecting people. 
How aware are you of your team’s biggest distractions, fears or worries? How well have you insulated the team from fear and worry about the economy or competition? 

6. Made of Cells

All larger teams are bound to have clusters of relationships—both for establishing a workflow and developing trusting friendships. 

How well does your management process continuously improve workflow? Is it evident in how you tweak employees’ workplace location or improve norms of communication, such as hosting productive meetings and informal relationship-building opportunities?  

7. Passing Traits to Offspring
Some of the greatest companies have fallen hard when good leadership left a vacuum after exiting. Also, many of the best cultures fall after only a few years. Why? 

An organization’s DNA is codified in its values—both governing values and values related to the social contract. Employees learn the culture from observing behaviors of teammates and leadership. Ideally, they should also be regularly reminded about what the organization uniquely values and rewards through the recognition and evaluation of their own behaviors. 

Prioritize and Act
Of these seven areas, where’s the potential to breathe new life into your growing organization?