Subject: Northsheep HRM article (fwd)

From: Victor Guest <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 09 Dec 1997 14:34:29 WST

To: Recipients of CHRM-GENERAL <[email-masked]>

Greetings,
I have found the postings on this subject very informative and pertinent.
 We have been attempting to practice holistic management on our own farm 
for four years or so. I am currently involved with a SARE grant in our 
southern region for developing small scale dairy processing facilities. 
This grant was one of the very few awarded to farmer generated projects. 
There was some hesitation on the part of SARE as we didn't have any 
institutional structure in place. The group agreed to try using holistic 
management to administer the grant. We had a training session this fall 
taught by Ed Marstoff.  Prior to this training session, Rick and I were 
the only participants with any exposure to holistic management.

The problems we are having implementing holistic management have been 
suprising to me, but mirror what is being discussed on this conference. 
As farmers, we have resisted the academic approach and the wordsmithing. 
As primary communicators(by default) in this group we have learned how 
important our choice of words can be.

The word "goal" has given us a great deal of trouble and misunderstanding. 
We have settled on using the word "goal" only in reference to our holistic 
three part goal. We use "objective" to describe the conventional problem 
solving meaning of "goal". As individual practitioners we had no problem 
with using the same word for two completely distinct meanings. However, in 
working with our group, we've found it extremely important to make this 
distinction.

By far our most intimidating and frustrating problem has been lack of 
committment to the holistic process.
We are dealing with people that have never even heard of Holistic 

Management or worse yet have only read about it in terms of "a rigid cult" 
like Karl mentions. I can certainly see the value of trying to make the 
process less intimidating and difficult. From our experience, the use of 
acroynms like HRM or HM add to the confusion. I agree with Tina Pilone 
that the use of the phrase "Holistic Management" might be more effective 
in building committment to the process. Perhaps the continued repetition 
of the words "holistic" and "management" is in itself a useful teaching 
aide.

I think Karl's proposal of introducing Holistic Management to farmers with 
the support of SARE is an excellent idea. Working from the ground up seems 
to be the most effective means of implementing change. If our participants 
had already been exposed to Holistic Management through a source as 
eloquent as Karl's article, administration of this grant would be much 
easier.

Helen Feete
Crooked Furrow Farm
Galax, VA
[email-masked]

---

From: Victor Guest <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Dec 1997 16:33:36 WST

One of the things that seems to happen when holistic decision 
making is introduced as a possibility is that there is resistance.
It becomes an emotional issue, a power issue, and typically
people's understanding of Holistic Management itself, or lack
of it, plays very little part. Many people feel that
Holistic Management accuses them of doing EVERYTHING wrong. It
becomes an Opposition party.

This is why consensus building is so important. 

Peter

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