In last month’s newsletter I began to explore how our emerging understanding of the universe and its innumerable, complex natural systems – Chaos Theory – can provide us with a different perspective on human systems and the ways in which they are managed, particularly in a business environment. One writer concluded that “the great manager of the future will plan for and expect constant change in the environment… keep on learning and experimenting.”

However, there is another principle in chaos theory which deserves our attention in relation to our management practices: that all systems, when left to their own devices, find the best way to organise themselves to achieve the optimum results. I’m not suggesting for a moment that organisations immediately sack all their managers (!), however, it does challenge much of the accepted thinking of the 20th century that a successful organisation is one in which its managers are trained first and foremost to impose control.

So, what is this principle of self-organisation and where did it come from?

Back to the maths for a moment. In 1982, an IBM mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot in his book ‘The Fractal Geometry of Nature’, proved that even in a system of apparent chaotic disorder, patterns and predictability emerge and are the same whether they are at a macro or micro level.

Fractals from the natural world include the shapes of mountains, coastlines, plant structures, blood vessels, lungs and the clustering of galaxies. But fractals are also found in human systems. Mandelbrot’s theory actually had its origin in an analysis of stock market fluctuations: he fed cotton-price data covering 60 years into the computers at IBM and found that although each particular price change was ‘random and unpredictable’, the curves for daily and monthly price changes matched perfectly.

Mandelbrot believed that fractals, far from being unnatural, were in many ways more intuitive and natural than the artificially smooth objects of traditional Euclidean geometry: “Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a straight line.”

His theories accurately describe the development and resulting shape of many growth processes evident in nature, both organic and inorganic. They have changed the way we perceive the phenomenon of ‘natural growth’.

Richard Tiplady, in his paper “Letting Go: Chaos theory & the management of organisations”, describes the paradox of ‘order in disorder’ well:

He goes on to question where this self-generated order/stability comes from, without any kind of control or guiding hand from outside. This is where it all gets a bit weird. Tiplady says that disorder turns into chaos because of so-called strange attractors.

Tiplady believes that strange attractors in organisations include the values, goals and leadership styles adopted. Sometimes other attractors, such as informal leadership provided by someone who does not have any such formal role, can override and out-influence the formal attractors, both in positive and negative ways. His conclusion is that the role of managers should not be to direct, but to function as the team attractor, setting the ‘rules’ or conditions that allow the appropriate behaviours and outcomes to emerge. This would offer a real world example of self-organisation, providing the opportunity for an open and adaptable form of teamwork, where people manage themselves within clear boundaries or according to clear terms (or ‘attractors’).

In our work supporting leading UK organisations in developing the skills and behaviours of their managers, we have in recent years, seen a real sea-change in the requirements for management training programmes. More than ever, we are being asked to help managers be more effective ‘catalysts’ for the execution of their organisation’s strategy; positive role models and leaders who enable outstanding performance of others, encouraging continuous evolution and change. Although no client has ever told that the reasons behind this change in emphasis was ‘Chaos Theory’ (odd that!), it’s somehow reassuring to know that we have naturally ‘evolved’ in this direction, working with, rather than against the natural laws of the universe.

Postscript: we’ll be continuing to research how ‘Chaos Theory’ can help us develop better organisations and managers. If you have any comments or insights to offer, or would just like to join the debate, please let us know. We’d be delighted to talk to you. Alternatively, you can read more about the practical application of this article with our new management development programme.

References:
Frank Barrett, Living on the Appreciative Edge
Richard Tiplady, Letting Go: Chaos theory and the management of organisations, 2003