LO & the New Sciences LO5025

umerry@shani.net
Sun, 21 Jan 96 09:13:37 PST

Responding to Doug Seeley LO4961

Doug,

I want to check if I understood all you wrote. It appeared most meaningful
and valuable.

I will say what I understood you have written, but give it in
organizational terms.

Are you saying that:

1) The emergence of teams, departments, informal groups and the
organization as a whole can be understood in terms of the relative
"richness" of the relationships (sufficient direct connections) between
their members.

2) These "structures" (formal & informal) breakup when the connections
within them break down or decrease markedly.

3) For an organization to function at the edge of chaos (that is highly
adaptively) it must have such self-organizing networks that are able to
rapidly create themselves in response to environmental needs and disband
themselves when other changes demand different structures.

4) An adaptive organization is rich in direct relationships of all sorts,
beyond those presctibed by the formal organizational structure ("a broth
of networks") allowing it to easily self-organize into different formats
as demanded by the changing circumstances.

5) Such a broth of networks is hindered by an organizational structure
based on hierarchial control and is encouraged in a culture in which
"both.wisdom and innovation are nurtured as bottom-up (emergent network)
processes".

6) An adaptive learning organization should develop a culture which
supports different forms of connectivity between its members beyond the
formal structures necessary to accomplish work.

7) An adaptive organization should have a culture that encourages and
supports individuals responding to environmental changes by rapidly
creating groupings beyond the formal structure to deal with the change.

Doug, see if I have interpreted you "correctly" in organization terms and
if necessary correct my understanding, add or elaborate where you see fit.

The picture you give of functioning at the edge of chaos is very close to
what is called paralel processing as in the functioning of the brain,
without hierarchial serial control and with many components working at the
same time on their local information.

I would like your and others reactions to this.

Uri

--
Dr. Uri Merry
umerry@shani.net