Welcome | Living Organisation | Living Organiser | Life Quotient

Is the organisation you work in 'alive' or is it destined for extinction? This site can help you build a better business - one that can enjoy sustainable, balanced growth, and inspire all your employees, stakeholders and shareholders to give of their best. These ideas and best practice insights can help your business take its place on the global stage, making a contribution to the profitability of everyone it touches.

Welcome to perhaps the most unusual of our three sites. Those of you who know us will be aware that our learning and development site ( www.learnfast.co.uk ) is dedicated to bringing our associates and partners the best techniques in accelerated learning and personal development. Our media production site ( www.lexstudios.com ) is for companies and individuals who have an important message to bring to the market, and would like to do this professionally and creatively. This site is completely different. It represents something new in the world of business thinking.

What's the idea? The idea is that the world of work should be as invigorating as the world of leisure. I believe that since many of us spend a third of our lives at work, any initiative that would make that time more enjoyable and more productive should be seen as an important contribution to society. So here is my vision and contribution.

My background includes a mixture of business psychology, biology, ecology and theology! This has led to some interestingly blended-thinking. The most important development has been to apply the following biological model to business...

In biology we learn that there are seven characteristics of a living organism. You may have memorised these at school through the phrase: Many Naughty Rabbits Eat Green Raddish Shoots. This represents: Movement, Nutrition, Reproduction, Excretion, Growth, Respiration, and Sensitivity. My big question was, "What would it be like to work in an organisation that was 'alive' like an organism?"

If this was to be true for an organisation as it is for an organism, the organisation would have to exhibit, metaphorically, all seven characteristics. This site is one result of my musings.

So, how can we tell whether the organisations we work in are truly 'alive' with vibrant potential, or just going through the motions, destined for extinction?

Living Organisations® are.

•  Moving toward their vision, mission and goals

•  Nourished by open communication and empowerment

•  Reproducing their best practice by being naturally creative, with processes for preserving and actioning their ideas

•  Committed to life-long-learning, and resourceful when it comes to learning from setbacks

•  Growing in multiple dimensions

•  Engaged in an ongoing win-win exchange with all participants in their working environment: customers, staff, suppliers, shareholders, stakeholders and the community

•  Sensitive the total environment through well maintained and expanding networks.

This site suggest several possible ways to begin exploring these opportunities. May I suggest that you begin by taking our self-assessment 'Life Quotient'?

This will give you a good overview of the business model and will get you asking yourself the key questions to move you forward.

The rest of this site is arranged with the following links:

•  Mercury will bring you to an exploration of 'Movement' forward in business

•  Venus will take you to the important metaphor of 'Nutrition' - what we feed on

•  Earth will discuss Reproduction in business, how we reproduce excellence

•  Moon is the link to my biography for those who'd like to know more

•  Mars deals with Excretion - how we can cope with wastage in business

•  Jupiter handles sustainable Growth in business

•  Saturn explores Respiration - how we benefit from give-and-take in business

•  Uranus looks at the last characteristic - Sensitivity, how we stay connected

•  Neptune has some suggestions to make about the power of collaboration in business

•  Pluto shows you some ways to take this further through learning resources

•  Stars open the way to a galaxy of other links you may find beneficial.

I trust you enjoy exploring this Solar System of ideas, concepts and techniques. Let me know what you discover. Together, we can expand the concept and improve the quality of life for millions of workers world-wide. May I also say that I am looking for partner organisations who would like to become case studies.

Lex McKee

Organisational Ecologist

Email Lex@livingorganisations.com

Author's Note:

This site has been created with white text on a black background to be in-keeping with the 'planetary' theme. I realise this may not be the easiest format for reading. For this reason, all key pages are printable without a black background for your convenience.