How many times have you felt stymied in helping yourself and your colleagues to advance toward a common goal, and do so in a sustainable way, whether because of commitment, communication patterns or other reasons?

In looking at systems that function effectively -- whether businesses, communities, nations, or ecosystems -- what leaps out at me are several common principles.

These include:

Autonomy/Self-Sufficiency: The ability to make decisions for oneself, rely on oneself, and have the confidence to direct one's future. An example is decentralization of decision-making that empowers people to act, yet is coordinated to inform the whole.

Security: Managing against the risk of dependence on external systems and others.

Cooperation: Managing for the power of dependence on external systems and others.

Diversity: Having a host of perspectives and sources to draw upon for ideas and resources.

Resilience: Having back-up and support systems, as shown by the apparent contradiction between self-sufficiency and cooperation. It's not that you need to do one or the other -- it's that you have the capacity to do both.

Feedback: Receiving information on your effects on other system elements, no matter how you interact with them and what action(s) you choose.

An ongoing question for many of us is how to promote, enhance and create these principles, no matter what type of organization we're working in.

As a partial answer, there is a field known as permaculture that offers a powerful system of sustainable design. Permaculture is typically applied to gardens or small-scale farms rather then businesses or organizational structure. However, I think it also holds some real lessons for business.

Permaculture is basically the process of figuring out how to survive in a place -- using the powers of observation, ambient energy and water, and provision of as many resources as possible from local sources. Which starts to look a lot like the goals of many leading companies.

Permaculture is inspired by the science of indigenous peoples, observing patterns of sun, wind, water and wildlife through the landscape. So, you may also think of it as thousands of years of place-based R&D.

David Holmgren, one of the original coiners of the "permaculture" term as it is now used, has articulated 12 permaculture principles (somewhat, but not completely, separate from the principles listed earlier) to help put permaculture into practice (Holmgren, 1999). These principles are shown below in bold, with additional text (mine) to provoke further thought:

1. Observe & Interact. Very simply, observe the culture and social dynamics of an office. How do decisions get made? How do people interact with each other?

2.Catch & Store Energy. Energy includes the solar energy which can be stored in batteries via PV panels or wind turbines, in the growth of plants, and in the thermal mass of rocks and well-designed buildings. It also includes the potential energy of water captured and stored at a relatively high elevation.

You can also apply this principle to your personal energy. Where is it leading you in this moment, and how can you harness your personal energy and inclination in this moment to best achieve your goals.