Last summer, I was at a potluck with friends when one of them said to me: “I drive by a lot of houses with flower beds. Some are pretty, and some are just okay. But when I drive by your house, I think to myself ‘those flower beds are just nicer. They are pleasant to the eye’.”
“Thanks,” I replied.
“So, why are your beds different?”, he asked.
“My flower beds are built by design,” I shared. “It is easy to buy plants and to plant them. And often this results in some pretty flower beds. But the difference at our house is that I have designed the flower beds in a thoughtful manner. I also have gotten to know the plants, and created a pattern within the bed that unifies it and highlights different plants over the course of the growing season.”
He nodded thoughtfully, and said, “Oh, I get it now.”
Starting in mid-August and running through to the end of September, I routinely will go through the various flower beds around our house and check on the original design to see if it is still the right design. For example, the sun bed in the back with the purple cone flowers no longer works, because the nearby maple tree has grown and created significant shade. So, the flowers are moved out, and this coming spring the shade loving hostas will be moved in.
In another example, I had to do a complete restoration of four different iris beds last fall. During the previous spring, the iris had stopped blooming. What is interesting about iris plants is that they spread by growing their rhizomes outward. While they do not spread aggressively, they do form clumps that can become over crowded, choking off the flowering part of the iris. And this is what I suspected had happened over time.
So last fall, I lifted all the iris plants with my garden fork. What I discovered was a dense mat of rhizomes, wildly intertwined with each other. I then understood that they could not flower because there was no room for further growth. So, with my clippers, I had to break up these mats of rhizomes, let go of the old dysfunctional parts of the plants, and find the original healthy part of the plants. By removing the older and no longer viable rhizomes, I was rejuvenating the plants, and ultimately restoring the original design to the whole flower bed.
In short, during each growing season, I need to weed here and there in order to restore the original design. Sometimes, I also need to completely restore a flower bed, because the natural environment in that flower bed has evolved. The overall goal is to maintain, and as needed, to evolve the core design.
Richard Pascale, Mark Millemann, and Linda Gioja in their book, Surfing The Edge of Chaos: The Laws of Nature and the New Laws of Business (Three Rivers Press, 2000), write that “business … can learn a lot from nature.” As they explain, nature, e.g. a rain forest, is a complex adaptive system. So is the human immune system, a termite colony, or a business. The challenge is that “complexity and chaos are frequently used interchangeably, even though they have nothing in common. The world is not chaotic; it is complex,” and humans “tend to regard chaotic that which they can not control.” They note that chaos is “an unlikely occurrence in which patterns cannot be found nor interrelationships understood. On the other hand, complexity “may feel chaotic but really it just is a complex adaptive system or event.”
Therefore, these authors recommend that we “design, don’t engineer” when dealing with complexity. To understand this recommendation, we need to understand the difference between designing something and engineering something. First, designing is the creative process of conceptualizing and planning, focusing on the form, purpose and meaning in order to create a workable solution. On the other hand, engineering is the application of scientific principles to analyze, develop, and build that solution, ensuring it is functional, scalable, safe, and practical for long-term use. The former focuses on inspiration, vision, and clear direction and/or intent, while the later focuses on feasibility and functionality. In short, design focuses on what we want, and engineering usually happens when there is a clear idea about what needs to be built. In short, the authors recommend we “design with the outcome/purpose in mind,” and then “discover what is working and build on that.”
When I reflect on these insights, I think about the world of training. Anybody can stand up, and talk for an hour or even six hours. Anybody can also offer a workshop or a training on various subjects. But the subtle and important difference between a good workshop and an excellent one is that the best trainings have been designed. It is the instructional design process that happens before the teaching that makes the teaching so powerful.
Building on this perspective, the same goes with life and living. A life based on clarity of purpose and intent is a life created by design, not by default or by control. Instead, it is a life created by understanding what matters the most, and then building a life based on this inner clarity. It all boils down to first the design, and then the engineering.
As we move through these winter months, all of us need to take stock, and think deeply about the design and intent of our life. Then, when we have figured out what matters most, we need to create this life, at home and at work. We need to design and then build a life based on purpose and clear intention. The outcome of this choice may requires us to restore some parts of our life, weed out other parts of our life, and actively design and create new parts so that what matters most is not lost in the change of the seasons.
For me, winter is the perfect time to step back and look for the design in the midst of complexity, and on some days, we need to do this even when life feels chaotic. But with the right amount of reflection, dialogue, and discovery, we can find, and create a life so that ourselves and those we love and cherish can have the right amount of space to grow and flourish.
Spring is coming sooner than we think, and now is the time to prepare for the miracle of the land awakening to new sounds, shapes and colors. This week, I encourage you to create a life based on design, rather than by default or by control.
© Geery Howe 2026
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