Permaculture principle 1: Observe and interact

Permaculture principle one is observe and interact — here’s how to use it as a practical thinking tool to guide more ethical marketing and business decision-making.

This is Part 2 of a 13-part series: How to Use the 12 Permaculture Principles in Business and Marketing. If you’re new to the principles, start here. Or, you can view the full series here.

What ‘observe and interact’ means

While the permaculture principles were originally developed to guide the design of farms and gardens, they’re actually universally applicable. Let’s look at the traditional definition, then reimagine what ‘observe and interact’ means for ethical business and marketing.

Land-based definition

Take time to observe natural patterns, relationships and needs before intervening, then use this knowledge to design small, informed solutions.

Marketing definition

Before making marketing decisions, listen carefully to your community, data, industry and even your own internal self to understand real needs and challenges.

Proverb

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder — reminding us that we place our own values on what we observe, yet in nature, there is no right or wrong, only different.

Translating this principle to marketing

Observation is crucial to understanding, so permaculture always begins with this as the first step.

The aim is “protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless action,” as co-originator Bill Mollison pithily wrote in Permaculture: A Designer’s Manual.

And yet, in our haste to start creating offers, writing content and selling products, business owners often rush through or skip this phase altogether.

‘Observe and interact’ encourages us to pause, look within ourselves and around our business system from a quiet and centred place, and simply notice what is happening. This is often referred to as ‘reading the landscape’.

A key goal is to look for the smallest actions you could take to create positive change, then make incremental adjustments and closely observe the results, helping avoid big, costly mistakes.

A common slogan associated with this principle — “the problem is the solution” — encourages us to observe obstacles as resources or opportunities.

For example, the observed “problem” of a limited marketing budget can be reframed as motivation to get creative with low-cost strategies such as mutually beneficial referral partnerships with other like-minded businesses.

How to apply ‘observe and interact’ in marketing

You can use ‘observe and interact’ as a practical thinking tool to consider multiple angles, impacts and possibilities in your business and marketing. For example:

Internal observation

What’s happening within you as a business owner or across your team, including desires, energy levels and capacity. This might include:

• What marketing activities feel energising vs draining
• Your natural communication strengths (writing, speaking, teaching, etc.)
• Your changing capacity across different seasons of life or business
• Boundaries you need to restate again and again 
• Intuitive nudges or recurring ideas
• How your values show up (or don’t) in your marketing
• What success actually feels like in your body

External observation

What’s happening with your community and clients, and broadly across your market and industry. This might include:

• Market research and customer interviews
• Reviewing sales conversations, email replies, DMs, comments and testimonials
• Language your community uses to describe their problems and desires
• Questions people ask before buying, as well as common objections or hesitations
• Analytics patterns (traffic, engagement, conversions)
• Search terms people use to find you
• Where people get confused or drop off on your website
• Industry conversations, trends, market gaps and emerging needs

What permaculture thinkers say about this principle

“Great design begins with detailed observation.” — Aranya, Permaculture Design

“How can you know what you must change until you’ve tended to what is already there? … This principle asks us to look at the broader view of our life with curiosity and acute attention. Observing and interacting isn’t the same as passively looking.” — Maya Blackwell, Permaculture

“If we don’t take time to observe, we are in danger of heading off in the wrong direction, trying to fix something that isn’t broken or neglecting what needs attention.” — Looby MacNamara, People and Permaculture

“Once you learn to observe accurately, you will experience the world with a sense of wonder. You will start to see patterns where before you only saw discrete elements.” — Rosemary Morrow, Earth Restorer’s Guide to Permaculture

“[Permaculture] is a philosophy of working with, rather than against nature, of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless action.” — Bill Mollison, Permaculture: A Designer’s Manual.

Other closely connected principles

The 12 permaculture principles work best as a set of interconnected design prompts.

Each offers a different lens, and the combination creates depth, balance and a tempering effect — the holistic approach at the heart of systems thinking.

For example, ‘observe and interact’ is closely related to:

• Principle 4, ‘apply self-regulation and accept feedback’, as much of the feedback you gather — from clients, analytics, profit and loss statements, and even your own body — can be used during this observation stage.
• Principle 7, ‘design from patterns to details’, which relies on pattern recognition, a crucial skill you develop and hone during observation.
• Principle 9, ‘use small and slow solutions’, which encourages a strategy of gradual implementation and growth, offering space and time to closely observe the impact of any changes.

Ready for the next principle? Explore the full series here.

And a quick side note: this series is adapted from a lesson from inside my Permaculture Marketing course, in case you’d like to go deeper.