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What's different about Managing Wholes?


Why holism?

Even the best techniques, tools, and knowledge eventually fail when used in isolation. Real success includes economic, ecological, and emotional health that last. This requires a holistic approach. Success cannot come from experts. People must build it themselves, in their own lives.

The key to success is less what decisions we make than how we make them. An effective decision-making process guides us away from unintended consequences and helps us find alternatives that work for both short and long term.

Holistic decision-making doesn't require throwing out everything you've learned. Mostly, it builds on what you already know. However, it is different than the kind of decision-making most of us learned by absorption, by education, or on the job. This in-depth article compares the two. Our other articles (left menu) describe plenty of specific examples.

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What's different about the reporting on this site?


Most news ManagingWholes.com
Experts broadcast to passive audience. Peer-to-peer sharing among practitioners.
Divisive reporting based on issues, needs, symptoms, and controversies. Reporting about practical solutions that build communities, economies, and land stewardship.
Information you can't use, except to raise your blood pressure. An excuse not to participate. Real-life tools and strategies for designing your own future and taking responsibility for it.
Focuses on problems. Focuses on achieving what people want.
Recommends "best management practices", whether they work or not. Recommends what works.
Top-down advocacy for expensive programs that treat symptoms. Bottom-up; enables and supports fundamental, inside-out change that addresses causes.
Peer-reviewed, advertiser-driven, or aimed at a specific audience. Shared learning applies across natural, social, and economic systems.
By seeking "balance,"resists fundamental change and can prevent resolution of conflicts. Tendency toward win/lose. Helps people design and create positive change that is uniquely adapted to their situation. Win/win.

This site's firsthand, in-depth reporting shows people in specific situations:

  • Struggling with stressful, life-wrecking problems
  • Understanding where they are, and where they want and need to be
  • Identifying their default settings, changing their behaviors, and lessening resistance to change
  • Monitoring progress, and recognizing their own changing beliefs.

We hope this site can help you become more effective in your own life. If you have suggestions or ideas for what you'd like to see here, please contact us.

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Learning from each other

Life didn't conquer the globe by combat, but by networking.

—biologist Lynn Margulis

Traditional media are one-way. Professionals and experts control the printing presses and broadcast stations. The biggest advantage of the Internet is that it gives everyone a chance to speak. We hope you'll add to the richness of this site by contributing your insights, wisdom, and first-hand experiences. Whether you are beginner or expert, whether your projects fail or succeed, your experience is valuable to someone. We invite you to participate in this work.

Please post photos of situations where you or others were at least halfway successful in managing wholes. Submit an article, an interesting link, or a book review.

And if we can do something that will help you manage wholes more effectively, please let us know. That's what we're here for.


Updated 8 November 2003
URL: managingwholes.com/about/reporting.htm

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