What can an organic farm teach those who run a a large corporation? A lot, according to Alan Heeks who has published The Natural Advantage, a book which maps out the principles of organic farming and then demonstrates how each of those principles bears directly on running a successful organisation. Heeks, aged 30, is shortly to take his philosophy to the US, where the book will be published next year. His corporate career started in brand management with Procter and Gamble, took him to a Harvard MBA and on to running international firms through the 1980s. He is a founder-trustee of the Wessex Foundation, an educational charity which, in 1989, established Magdalen Farm in Dorset, a residential centre and 132-acre organic farm. Heeks' model may be agricultural, but its application is universal. When he came to convert Magdalen Farm to organic production, he immediately saw the process in management terms. What he learned then he later distilled into seven core principles, which his farm centre now teaches to executives from blue chip companies. For example, his first principal is on ground condition: where organic farmers work to cultivate the natural fertility of their soil to increase its productivity. The application to business is not difficult to understand. Heeks says: "The economic pressure for increased results is unlikely to reduce. Compare the demands your work puts on your capacity now, against 10 years ago. "Imagine this rate of change doubling in the next 10 years. "It's already obvious that the natural environment won't support continued economic growth without radical change in our use of it, and the same is true for human resources," Heeks says. His book, he says, offers a new approach to work, where human sustainability and raising human energy productivity must be the key. "My interest in how people can fulfill themselves in an economic system began on the first day of my career at Procter and Gamble in 1969." The Natural Advantage is published in the UK by Nicholas Brealey, price £12.99. {{PEOPLE MOVES }}

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