Using Dan Palmer’s interpretation of Allan Savory’s Holistic Context (within the greater umbrella of Holistic Management), you will develop your own Holistic Context, which - if used and referred to on a regular basis - will streamline and strengthen your org's/team's/family's/personal decision-making process.

Example Holistic Contexts

• Very Edible Gardens (VEG)
• Shine Bootcamp

<aside> 💡 Definition A Holistic Context is a framework for empowering decision making that is socially, environmentally, and economically sound in the short, medium and long term.

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<aside> 🔗 Quick links + resources

Holistic Context - FINAL

📃 Holistic Management Pt II: Articulating an Holistic Context

📃 Holistic Management Pt III: Putting Your Holistic Context to Work

🎧 Articulating and Evolving a Holistic Context

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Tips + guidelines

As you go through the exercise, keep in mind the following:

• Get it down, then get it good. Try not to spend time worrying about perfect phrasing but rather get all your thoughts and sentiments down. Once you do that, you can combine, condense, and group all your notes into a working Holistic Context.
• Don't try to be objective. Remember, you cannot fully separate yourself, your needs, or your constraints from your organization/team, so don't try to. Instead, acknowledge there will be overlap between the personal and professional and that's okay. The important thing here is to identify those things which are deeply important to each person as individuals and as co-contributors to the organization.
• Consent over unanimous agreement. Once you have a working Holistic Context, each person should go through and ask themselves: Is there anything on here I vehemently disagree with? Did we forget anything important? And finally, Do I consent to the Holistic Context in its current form? Consider using consent-based decision making (also referred to ask consensus decision making) for this process, because the point is not for all members to 100% resonate with every single point, but rather to agree to respect each other's needs.
• Fuck "shoulds." Try not to spend too much energy thinking about what you believe you 'should' include in your Holistic Context, and instead focus on the things which are deeply important to you.

1. Statement of Purpose (SOP) - 15 mins

Your statement of purpose should succinctly capture what the whole was formed to do and thus why it exists. Reading it should resonate with you and remind you why you bother putting time and energy into the whole.

• Examples (click toggle to expand)

<aside> 🔥 TIP You can write your draft SOPs in collaboration with one another, or each person can create + drop their own version, which can later be worked into a final SOP.

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[DROP YOUR ORGANIZATION'S DRAFT SOPs + NOTES HERE]

2. Quality of Life Statements (QOLS) - 15 mins

“The quality of life portion of your holistic context expresses the reasons you’re doing what you’re doing, what you are about, and what you want to become. It is a reflection of what motivates you. It should excite you. It speaks of needs you want to satisfy now, but also of the mission you seek to accomplish in the long run. It is your collective sense of what is important and why."

QOLSs extend to relationships, challenge and growth, purpose and contribution, and economic wellbeing, though this list is not extensive.

• Examples (click toggle to expand)

[DROP YOUR ORGANIZATION'S DRAFT QOLS + NOTES HERE]

3. Modes of Production (MOP) - 15 mins

The Modes of Production describe how you need to behave or even what you need to be doing in order to create the quality of life that has been defined.

Remember you only want to list how you need to behave or what we need to do, not how to do it, because "how something is to be produced is a decision that needs testing.”

• Examples (click toggle to expand)

<aside> 🔥 TIP Modes of Production are nested under Quality of Life Statement. Each QOLS may have anywhere from 3-8 MOP nested under (see the examples to the left for inspiration).

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[DROP YOUR ORGANIZATION'S DRAFT MOP + NOTES HERE]