Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Holistic Mnagement - What is it You Really Want

Holistic Management, A New Framework for Decision Making, by Alan Savory

A Book Summary

In this summary of Holistic Management I quote freely from Alan Savory's book but summarize the main points. Kind of a Cliff Notes version. Don't be put off by the focus on grazing and agriculture. This is great stuff for managing your family or business.

Forming a Holistic Goal: What is it You Really Want?

Start with a statement of purpose that reflects in a very few words what you were formed to do.

A quality of life statement expresses how you want your life to be in the whole you have defined based on what you value the most. It expresses the reason you are doing what you are doing, what you are about, and what you want to become. It includes your short term needs and long term mission. Things like economic well being, relationships, challenge, growth, purpose and contribution.

Forms of production are the things you will have to produce some of which will be products derived from your resource base, others will be derived solely from the creativity and skills of the decision makers. Each of the needs in the quality of life statement will have to be met by some form of production. You must ensure that what is produced meets your stated purpose.


Future resource base must describe how it must be many years from now to sustain what you have to produce to create the quality of life you want. This 100 to 500 years from now. Consider the people, how we must be far into the future. The land, arising from almost every transaction there is an effect on the land that is experienced months or years later that is far removed fro the original transaction. Create a statement you can test decisions against. Typically this includes how fundamental processes work in any environment such as, water cycle, mineral cycle, community dynamics, and energy flow. You may also want to describe the community you want to live in or work in and the services available to your community.

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