My love of nature, like most of you, began with curiosity and attention. Deepened into respect—and then love. Because once you start paying attention to living things, you see something extraordinary. The stories of all living things unfolding—tangled and exquisitely generative. Differentiating in their search for nutrients, integrating through their exchange. Life creates conditions conducive to life in this way. So why do we struggle? What possesses us to blindly destroy possibilities our own descendants would depend on? It kept me awake at night. What could I do? Whatever the solution, I knew it would have to be something people chose, because it worked better. It would have to help people make a living and do the things they wanted to do. It would have to be available within existing systems, and work so much better that eventually, the old systems just fell away. It seemed to me that other living things evolved just like us, so our ancestors must have had the answers. How could we find the way again? So I set out to find the deep patterns and simple rules of living systems. The Tinkertoys of life. I started with plants, because they didn't run away. Island biogeography in Hawaiʻi. Then social evolution with Professor Robert Trivers—and work as a marine mammal observer in the Bering Sea. And then, I was ready for the two-leggeds. I joined the Awash Baboon Project in Ethiopia, one of the best models we have for understanding human evolution. How do everyday individuals’ choices result in the patterns of their evolution—their adaptability and cooperativeness? Years later I discovered biomimicry—innovation inspired by life’s exquisite solutions to the same challenges we face in our own lives, and began consulting for an enterprise clientele. But it wasn’t enough. Organizations aren't really designed to think that far out of the box. So I wrote Teeming, using what I knew about adaptive, resilient, collaborative structures––and worked with innovative companies like Cisco, Google, and IDEO. But it wasn’t enough. Organizations can still use adaptive structures to deplete possibility. So I kept going.

My obsession started when I was very small: trying to figure out the leverage points that could flip humanity into living more like other animals do. Why did we put them in circuses and scrape their homes bare for freeways and parking lots? I didn't see the coyotes or rabbits ruining other animals' futures. And yet they were clearly our relatives, as Jane Goodall showed. We were animals like any other. I spent many sleepless nights over it. Where did we go off track? How could we find our way again? What could I do? For that matter, what could anyone do? Nothing I thought of would work. Everything was connected to everything else. It would just make matters worse. But my father was an architect. He pointed out the geodesic domes sprouting along the 1970s California coastline. A set of simple rules of connection adding up to a strong, flexible structure. Like Tinkertoy. He also told me how the same kinds of simple rules, if properly aligned with human nature, could guide people to do what the architect intended. That idea stayed with me, and I set out to find the simple rules by which other organisms live—how they “create conditions conducive to life” without thinking so hard. In retrospect, possibly an overly ambitious career goal! But someone had to do something. Well I've broadened my passions over time, but my interest in life's deep patterns stuck around. They've been honed by four billion years of challenge, after all. From Hawaiian island plant biogeography to whale distributions in the Bering Sea to baboon hybridization and speciation in Ethiopia. How does life grow itself? How does it organize intelligence? How does it create conditions conducive to life for its descendants? At every scale, the same patterns: the simple rules of growing possibility despite uncertainty, change, and challenge. The same patterns organize our own lives—the many ways we live and think, design, and lead– as I've noticed in groups from Indigenous communities, to teams in companies,, nonprofits, and other institutions.