The manifesto is a milestone in a long development. It attempts to condense the results of our many years of work and development into a few sentences and make them publicly accessible.

We can no longer fully remember when we began to feel disturbed that the logical, tight and target-oriented mindset we grew up and were trained with often did not fit properly. In any case, it became increasingly clear to us as lawyers and managers at the latest that it was not the conclusive matters that were important, but other, more diffuse matters.

With the beginning of our work as consultants in 2004/5, a tool was very soon created that allows us to deal with this other matters, despite all its complexity and fuzziness, in a methodically sovereign way: the action navigator, with which all relevant forces and their interactions in a field of action become more easily perceptible and tangible. After several years of practical work and experience with it in a wide variety of contexts, it was once again an intensive process to clearly crystallize the principles behind it - harmony and orientation by concern.

But even though the mindset we found was clear, important and enormously helpful in practice, it remained difficult to communicate it confidently and to grasp it without quickly falling back into old patterns. This gave rise to the idea of describing the principles of thought and action of the mindset in general terms - and as concisely as possible in the form of a manifesto.

If we look around us, we discover many approaches that, at least in parts and certain currents, are moving in a similar direction, for example from systems engineering, cognition research and physics, integral and agile approaches, open space. With the Manifesto, we have tried to make harmonious self-organisation visible and tangible for practical application as the central image behind all these approaches.

Our hope is that the many attempts in similar directions will lead to a greater flow. And become conscious, recognized and relevant for our actions in the 21st century as a valuable alternative to the prevailing logical and conclusive mindset. That this will lead to the development of individual actions and solutions for powerful social systems. And that by many small and large steps a constructive development towards a healthy, common, free and peaceful coexistence will be initiated and maintained.

But why a Manifesto? Because we want to invite you to participate and collaborate in this perspective. Not only because we alone would not be able to carry out this development. But also because it requires the commitment and experience of many to find and invent new solutions and variations in all colours and facets for the infinite number of areas of life. So that a small stream then becomes a broad stream that really brings change to the world.

We initiators of the HARMONIA Manifesto, Martin and Elke Böckstiegel, have developed the HARMONIA methodology, which makes harmony as a principle of action usable for many contexts. We run Harmonia Logic AG, a consulting company with an academy. So we do not only offer solutions for concrete problems and accompany clients on their way to better tackle their problems themselves. We also offer courses in which everyone can acquire a thorough understanding of our methodology, whether for leadership or conflict issues, or for their own development as a whole.

After our legal training and work experience in large commercial law firms or commercial enterprises as well as our training as systemic consultants/coaches and business mediators, we now work as consultants and lecturers on leadership, management, innovation, conflict resolution, law and organisational development. We work for a wide range of clients, from business, science and health to administration and politics. We have learned that a different mindset and different methods become more urgent the more open and complex the issues to be dealt with.

We are therefore convinced that the current development away from standardised industrial mass production towards an individualised global knowledge economy, perhaps also away from a manipulable consumer and electoral population towards a self-confident civil society, needs exactly what the Manifesto wants to give: the rediscovery and elaboration of a helpful mindset for our actions in the 21st century.