The birth and history of this work

The framing ‘ecological organisations’ was birthed by Anna-Marie Swan in 2023 with the release into creative commons of the Ecological Organisations Framework 1.1, now in its second iteration Ecological Organisations: A Design Lens 2.0.

In early 2023, Anna-Marie spent six months reflecting on seven years of working and training in organisational design, decentralised governance, and self-organisation as she had experienced it in many different fields and types of communities and organisations. Feeling that there was something important missing from the most innovative of organisational perspectives and intentions, she spent six months in enquiry about what was missing and then drew on her learnings and experience to map out the focuses she felt were important to ensuring that organisations were ecological in action (while highlighting that they all organisations are ecological in nature), intending this to act as a signpost to help her meet possible future clients and collaborators that were aligned with her ideas.

This became the first iteration of the design lens and it was her husband, W, who suggested that this lens could be of wider usefulness and prompted her to consider sharing it in a different way. It was after this prompting that the framing 'ecological organisations' arose in Anna-Marie, but she was so certain that there was likely to be a depthful area of work with the name and the ideas already researched and worked with that she spent months looking online for any articles, books, or other research or work in any languages and being very puzzled that she couldn't find anything.

Hesitatingly publishing the first iteration, Anna-Marie then spent months expecting a rightfully angry email pointing her towards previous work and being prepared to rightfully and excitedly unpublish this work and learn from them. This hasn't yet happened.

If you know of research or other work in any language with this particular framing and hosting these particular areas of focus and care, please let Anna-Marie know asap.

While Anna-Marie is entangled in some wonderfully supportive and collaborative networks and relationships that have directly influenced and helped hone this work, and this work has a strong lineage, she is currently the sole source and steward of this work.

The story of ecological organisations is born of systems thinking, self-organisation, animism, decentralised and participatory governance and decision-making, commons and stewardship, self- and shared-enquiry, animism, interbeing, and the more-than-human (and more).

Map the full lineage of this work - and Anna-Marie's challenges in mapping lineage as thoroughly and respectfully as she would like - in Mapping this work's lineage.

Below image is the first iternation of ecological organisations design lens, with eight main areas of focus and multiple questions to help explore each area.

The original: Ecological Organisations Framework

Below image is the second iternation of ecological organisations design lens, with eight main areas of focus and multiple questions to help explore each area.

The second, and current, iteration: Ecological Organisations: A Design Lens