Organization As a Living System Or How To Thrive In The Age Of Uncertainty
posted at: 2009-10-20
by: Almir Flisar
We know today that uncertainty is fundamental and not simply the result of lack of information. Sooner we accept the truth about uncertainty, the better for us. Moreover, instead of trying to eliminate uncertainty we have to explore and understand it. This is the main precondition for longevity. The other one is that we have to forget Newtonian viewpoint about the world surrounding us, and to welcome the idea that self-organizing systems, are much more capable to survive and thrive in the age of uncertainty.
In Understanding Uncertainty, Dennis Lindley said: “There are some things that you know to be true and others that you know to be false; yet, despite this extensive knowledge that you have, there remain many things whose truth or falsity is not known to you. We say that you are uncertain about them. You are uncertain, to varying degrees, about everything in the future; much of the past is hidden from you; and there is a lot of the present about which you do not have full information. Uncertainty is everywhere and you cannot escape from it.”
We know today that uncertainty is fundamental and not simply the result of lack of information. Sooner we accept the truth about uncertainty, the better for us. Moreover, instead of trying to eliminate uncertainty we have to explore and understand it. This is the main precondition for longevity. The other one is that we have to forget Newtonian viewpoint about the world surrounding us, and to welcome the idea that self-organizing systems, are much more capable to survive and thrive in the age of uncertainty.
Today, the whole army of experts is unique that shifting paradigm from Newtonian clockwork model to living system recipe is the essential thing for shaping the organizations suitable for journey into sustainable future.
Why is it so important for organizations, to change the thinking behind their thinking?
Machine-like organizations are unintelligent, rigid units, made on blueprints, with replaceable parts, depending on command and control principles, relying on stability and predictability, “changeproofed”, well-oiled and unable to do anything else except producing money. And, when they are broken they can’t be repaired by themselves. Actually, there is one discipline where such machine-like organizations show constant efficacy during the whole Industrial Age – the take-make-waste discipline. In other words destruction and self-destruction are the fields where they reach their peak performance.
After so many years of defending ourselves against life and searching for better controls, we sit exhausted in the unyielding structures of organization we've created, wondering what happened. What happened to effectiveness, to creativity, to meaning? What happened to us? Trying to get these structures to change becomes the challenge of our lives. We draw their futures and design them into clearly better forms. We push them, we prod them. We try fear, we try enticement. We collect tools, we study techniques. We use everything we know and end up nowhere. What happened?
From A Simpler Way, Wheatley and Kellner-Rogers
It seems that the situation has changed these days. The uncertainty mentioned above brings new conditions and “changeproofed” actors by pure logic find themselves in deep troubles together with both their engineers and, unfortunately, their working forces. Therefore, in short, that’s how we find ourselves at the tipping point. The need for new, sustainable recipe is colossal. And the truth is that solution we desperately need has been available for a long time. Chaos theory and complexity science have offered us that recipe for decades now, but until recently we could not see it, simply because, as Gary Zukav said, we were too busy with tree to see the forest.
But let’s stop complicating things (there is a big difference between complicated and complex). Let’s go back to the metaphor describing organizationa as living systems. Their characteristics – emergence, self-organising, self-renewing and flexibility gives them possibility to act intelligently in the age of uncertainty and to adapt continuously to a changing environment by the ability to learn from their own experience and to change themselves due to new, unexpected conditions.
Based on the fact that simple rules could enable complex behaviour (Zimmerman at al. 1998) and in order to create DreamEthic organization, ergo organization with the characteristics of a living system, capable of co-piloting sustained life on planet Earth, I found it very useful to merge the essence extracted by Margaret Wheatley and Peter Senge. Wheathley’s three domains of Self-organization (identity, information & relationship) which operate in a dynamic cycle and Senge’s core learning capabilities (seeing systems, collaborating across boundaries & creating desired futures) as source for creating regenerative organizations provide a great foundation for begeting complex entity which is meaningful, innovative, flexible, interconnected, collaborative, creative on both problem finding and problem solving, engaged in profound dialogue with all stakeholders, trusting, playful, responsible and comfortable with uncertainty.
With regard to uncertainty Erich Fromm said: “The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers.” For the same reason I believe that uncertainty could help organizations to unfold their potentials for reaching deep sustainability.
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