sharedvalue

Photo: Joseph Kellerer

We usually talk about extraction in terms of economies: oil, gas, data, attention. But extraction doesn’t always look like drilling holes in the ground or strip-mining the planet. Sometimes it’s quieter. Sometimes, it’s cultural. And sometimes, it’s habit.

Extractive habits are the small ways people and organizations take without giving back – the endless requests for unpaid labour or spec work dressed up as ‘opportunity.’ The silence that creeps in when accountability would cost too much. They feel minor in the moment – just a shortcut here, a shrug there – but together they hollow out trust until there’s nothing worthwhile left to build on.

I’ve seen it up close: projects launched on the backs of contributions that were never acknowledged, visions sold on values that never made it past the pitch deck. Teams burning through goodwill faster than they could replenish it. It dazzles from the outside, until you start catching the cracks just beneath the surface.

Because here’s the thing: habits scale. A leader who extracts ideas instead of crediting them creates a culture that extracts labour instead of valuing it. A company that treats care as expendable will eventually treat its people (and the planet) the same. And once that pattern sets in? It doesn’t matter how good the branding is – the rot spreads.

The good news is the alternative isn’t complicated. Regenerative habits (crediting, reciprocating and replenishing) aren’t just ‘nice-to-have’s. They’re structural integrity, and investments in designing a culture and system that actually holds. Without them, even the loudest claims of ‘purpose’, ‘ethical’, or ‘values-driven’ are just a hollow pitch.

Cultures don’t transform through slogans or branding, they change through habits.

So if extractive habits hollow systems out, here are some generative alternatives that make them hold:

Generative habits for people

• Credit the source of ideas, not just the output.
• Match every ask with an offer.
• Practice accountability, even when it’s inconvenient.
• Replenish what you take – time, energy, and attention.

Generative habits for platforms

• Design for reciprocity, not extraction.
• Center stewardship over speed.
• Share value with the people who create it.
• Be transparent about costs – ecological, social, and human.

Generative habits for systems

• Build feedback loops that actually change decisions.
• Invest in care and repair, not just growth.
• Normalize boundaries as much as ambition.
• Treat resilience as the real KPI.

Extraction scales, but so does care. The real question is which habits you’re multiplying.