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Insights
from leading-edge science
Perception
shapes reality.
This
is more than a New Age catch phrase or self-help platitude. It's
confirmed by quantum mechanics – the study of the atomic
world. It's also verified through everyday experience ranging
from the regular labeling of children in school to research on
the placebo effect including sugar pills, fake surgery and the
power of words and beliefs to affect our health, attitude and
life expectancy.
Small things
DO matter.
For centuries, scientists ignored the small stuff, figuring
that little puffs of wind in weather (for example) canceled each
other out. Not true. Chaos theory has proven that, under the right
initial conditions, small actions can have huge consequences,
such as the fluttering of a butterfly's wings over a field in
Peru causing a typhoon in Japan. By the same principle, significant
impact can be made by anyone at any level in an organization –
just as each individual can impact the world. Anyone can choose
to create and lead change at any moment.
How do
we find order in chaos?
Chaos and complexity theories show how we can make sense of
and better navigate
the fast-paced, often confusing world in which we live. Three
methods involve pattern identification:
1. At different
levels of scale (as in an organization.)
2. Over multiple iterations (as in the accumulated experience
of a person's lifetime.)
3. Across different disciplines.
A fourth way
– documented by research into how complex systems adapt and
evolve –
is through metaphor and meaning. What's new here is that science
is showing the importance of the meanings and interpretations
we assign to events that touch our lives and shape our world.
The value
of cooperation, diversity and bottoms-up leadership.
Research from the merging science of complexity shows that
cooperation, diversity and bottoms-up leadership often result
in far better decisions, faster adaptation and more robust (healthy,
resilient) solutions. As a result, these approaches often are
more effective in today's complex world than competition, conformity,
top-down command/control and traditional management goals of optimization
and equilibrium.
The Emerging
Metapattern: Relationship of the Seen and Unseen.
We can measure things as small as 1 billionth of a meter.
Still, scientists know there's lively soup of activity going on
even smaller than that. They just haven't figured out how to observe
it yet. At the largest scale, astronomers have realized that 90%
of all matter is invisible. These relatively new discoveries
echo leading-edge thinking in physics, biology and chemistry over
the past 30 years which says: There is an invisible realm that
gives rise to the visible world we see around us.
This "metapattern"
provides a new framework in which to talk about the "invisible"
aspects of organizational life – such as corporate culture,
vision, values, credibility, integrity, trust and commitment –
that give rise to visible results organizations need in order
to survive and prosper: Loyal clients, customers, employees and
investors; healthy sales, profits and return on assets, equity
and investment. This perspective also has application to interpersonal
relationships and to the quest for inner peace, balance, wisdom
and compassion that is the core of most of the world's spiritual
traditions.
The Emerging
Universal Metaphor: Resonance, Harmony
String theory offers an explanation for what's going on at
the subatomic level that we can't see yet – the scale smaller
than 1 billionth of a meter. Based on what they've observed so
far, string theorists are guessing that the fundamental building
blocks of all matter and energy are tiny strings that are constantly
vibrating and interacting at different levels of harmony and resonance.
String theory is also a leading candidate to resolve the inconsistencies
between quantum theory and Einstein's theory of relativity, which
don't match up. The irreconcilable differences between these two
theories form one of the
biggest clues that we humans don't have everything figured out
yet.
The metaphor
of resonance and harmony has powerful applications to group behavior.
It gives a meaningful context in which to talk about harmony (cooperation,
commitment and enthusiasm) and dissonance (negativity, conflict
and resistance.) It shows how ideas can be an organizing force;
how communications can sustain resonance by putting energy into
a system faster than it is taken out; and how themes, harmonies
and rhythms can be adapted and transposed for different cultures,
functions, and purposes, yet continue to be harmonious parts of
the whole.
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