Some of where this came from
Out beyond ideas of right and wrong, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
Rumi
The same practice at different resolutions
elegant.work is the consulting arm of elegant.earth. They're the same practice at different resolutions: elegant.work goes into a company through one concrete problem, and elegant.earth holds the wider field around it, from regenerative infrastructure and bioregional development to capital structures, tools and research.
one specific, concrete problem
the wider field
This came out of the bleeding edge of impact work, where the money is uncertain, the hierarchy is thin, everyone is independent and the work still has to become real, week after week, in front of people whose lives depend on it.
Before the practice had a name
théra in France, the first bioregional hub, is the clearest example of how this practice works when it works. Maria-Elena Daynes called with a live possibility and brought her own money. We went there, talked to people and moved one step at a time, listening to what was alive in the place and building only what the work could hold. A year later the doors opened.
théra is the practice in its native form, before the practice had a name.
Is it alive?
The standard is older than consulting. Aquinas wrote that beauty has three conditions, integritas, consonantia and claritas, which is wholeness, harmony and radiance. We use them as working questions: is the whole thing there, are the parts in right proportion, and is it alive?
When all three are there, the work moves with joy, the team gets lighter, the system holds itself and we can leave. When one is missing, the work gets heavy in a way nobody can quite put into words, and we've learned to hear that heaviness early.
Work is one of the few places where most adults still meet themselves daily. Bad systems make good people behave badly, then teach them that the behaviour is who they are. The repair of those systems is also a return of those people to themselves.
Excess profit goes back to elegant.earth and to the regenerative work the company-level engagements sit inside. Clients pay a fixed price for a defined result, and part of what they pay feeds the field underneath.
Bring one real situation, and we will tell you what we see.