The Vital Role of Death

[This is an excerpted chapter from Michelle Holliday's book, The Age of Thrivability: Vital Perspectives and Practices for a Better World.]

The common misconception is that thrivability is all about peak experience – vibrant health and joy, all the time. Rainbows and unicorns all the way. 

For some, this can be very appealing. In all of today’s stress and distress, many are drawn to the idea of feeling constantly happy and connected within their organization, of non-stop smooth collaboration, of feeling clarity and progress without end. They are then disappointed and disillusioned the first moment they realize this is not a reality that can be supported for long. 

For others, the misconception can have the opposite effect, turning them away at the very outset with the assumption that such Pollyanna promises can’t possibly be true. And, of course, they are right, in part. 

Full, vibrant health and joy clearly can’t be our sustained state for all time. We know that life also includes death. And conflict. It includes confusion, challenges and difficult emotions. In nature, there are seasons. There are ebbs and flows. There is day and also night. These are not unwanted, yet unavoidable aspects of life; they are necessary and useful. Within the practice of thrivability, they offer particularly fertile grounds. And they must be embraced as a vital part of stewarding any system’s thrivability. 

To illustrate this, I’ll share a simple – if slightly embarrassing – story of how I learned this lesson in my recent adventures as an amateur gardener. 

It all started with one innocent-looking packet of basil seeds, an investment of under $3. For the first time, I had decided to try my hand at growing something from seeds. The experiment took place on the sunny little second-story balcony outside my home office. As I scattered the impossibly tiny black dots into several seedling trays in late spring, I noticed that it seemed like a lot of seeds. But I didn’t give it much further thought; I was focused instead on imagining the taste of fresh pesto.  

Two weeks later, each of the nine little pods in about as many seedling trays was suddenly crammed with tiny light green leaves. Clearly, they already needed more space. So whenever I could steal away from work and family, I would transfer one pod’s worth - 8 or 10 delicate little sprouts - into separate small pots, giving each tiny plant its own space. But there were so many of them! And I only had so many pots and so much soil, and it was a time-consuming process. So I went out and bought more pots and more soil. And evening after evening, I would leave my children to fend for themselves temporarily as I squatted on the dirt-covered floor of the balcony, transferring tiny sprouts into their own little pots. Within days, I noticed that the transferred sprouts had quickly grown too big for their new pots! It turns out that they grew in proportion to the space available (as life seems to do). And so again, I had to go buy more, larger pots and more soil. 

In what I knew was a ridiculous situation, by mid-July, my little balcony was close to overflowing with over 100 pots of varying sizes, each with its own still-diminutive sprout or seedling. This was far more than I had bargained for. And I couldn’t imagine how any of them would ever grow to the size of the big bushy plants at the grocery store. Jealously, I tried to console myself – those plants cost $3 each, and I had over 100 plants for that price! But I knew I was fooling myself. What was worse, I still had an overwhelming number of trays of crowded tiny sprouts I hadn’t yet gotten to – and that hadn’t grown any bigger in all these weeks. My kids were starting to complain that I loved the basil more than I loved them. And truly, I do love pesto. But this whole basil experiment was really not working. 

For help and advice, I turned to my landscape architect friend, Adam. Gently, he told me it was better not to transplant all the seedlings from each pod – only the tallest and strongest one. That I had to make choices. That none of them would thrive if I didn’t. It’s a question of resources, he said. Of creating “space for life.” I shared with Adam that this was difficult emotionally – those little plants looked so eager and full of potential. “I appreciate your empathy,” he wrote, “but nature is really quite explicit about this sort of thing.” 

For some things to thrive, some others may have to die. For the system overall to thrive, there may have to be multiple experiments, from which only some are chosen. And there may be things that have come to their natural end and must be turned back to compost, in turn nourishing the rest of the system.

In each of those circumstances, death is a generative act. Paradoxically, it is a vital part of thrivability. 

My friend and Non-Violent Communication trainer, Valérie Lanctôt-Bédard, talks about giving birth to some things and also “giving death” to others, in a generous spirit. The Berkana Institute’s Deborah Frieze has pioneered a “two-loop model” that recognizes the need at once to hospice the old and to give birth to the new. Another friend, Vanessa Reid, writes eloquently about hospicing the magazine she edited, engaging in a collective practice of “conscious closure” after ten years of publication: 

"This experience taught us how important it is to make conscious the need to foresee and steward endings in organizations. Endings are the compost for new beginnings, new visions and paradigms – and certainly the compost for new life. We cannot pour more water in an already full cup, so clearing the space to bring in the new is essential. 

We learned the importance of, and created a personal and an organizational practice around, cultivating the patience and ability to hold the paradoxes of celebration and grieving, of doing good work together and doing our final work together. We were simultaneously letting something go AND in the creative process of producing a legacy (in the form of the 10th Anniversary issue of ascent magazine). Holding these paradoxes and these seemingly divergent emotions was a core capacity we cultivated – and if our organizations are truly "organismes" [the French word for organization], then we need to FEEL them, rather than simply strategize around them."

We see this spirit of embracing the role of death in the rising popularity of “rapid prototyping” and in calls to “fail fast.” There is even a growing trend to issue annual Failure Reports, pioneered by Engineers Without Borders in 2009. The Stanford Social Innovation Review even wrote an article about it called “Thriving on Failure.” In an organizational world that until recently viewed endings and death as cause for deep shame, these practices signal important progress. 

Such forays into “stewarding death” open the door for a compelling question from Vanessa: What skills and structures are needed to hold the space for creative destruction and renewal? 

Another friend, author Will Walker, cautions on “the subtlety of what we load [thrivability] with.” 

"[We] all have preferences of what we perceive could be "thriving" or not. Some of us are very comfortable in the alive movements of life and less comfortable in the dying away of life. Some less comfortable in the movement and more comfortable in the surrendering. Both are important." 

Tolu Ilesanmi, CEO of Zenith Cleaning, has shared with me how this is a challenge for his staff. There have been times when they want to move forward and do innovative things, whereas he feels the organization needs to come back to the company’s ground of practice: embodying cleaning. To lose this ground would be to lose the depth of the message. Stewardship, in that case, means letting those new initiatives die – or pruning them back - to leave space for the more foundational work of cleaning as practice. 

What seems to be needed most at these times is recognition that "giving death" is a vital part of stewarding an organization’s ongoing evolution. What is needed is the care and courage to make a compassion-filled space for that process. Not only will this create a more human organization, it stands to enable renewal and innovation, to enhance learning, and to deepen relationships and relational capacity - positive outcomes by any standard. The ultimate benefit, however, is that every organization may become a practice ground for grace. 

At the time of writing (late July), I’m down to 30 or so basil plants. They’re getting nice and big, thanks to the soil and space freed up by the seedlings and sprouts I didn’t carry forward (and whose tiny leaves seasoned several meals). 

The experience gave me an easy, tangible lesson about the practice of stewardship and the vital role of death. 

And happily, fresh pesto is now clearly in my future. 

Photo by Elly Endeavours on Unsplash