Complexity LO7792

Valdis E. Krebs (InFlow@cris.com)
Sun, 9 Jun 96 00:26:36 -0400

If Price wrote in LO7786

>If there is a fifth condition for companies it may well the one alluded to
>by John Constantine
>
>> I would add to the discussion
>>the notion that there is in a complex system the need for a "critical
>>mass" or adequate number of "operators" without which useful work cannot
>>commence and which is then merely random. The utility of this sort of
>>thinking is that it may apply to business and economic units which might
>>be considered complex systems and who can and do often operate short of
>>chaos.

Yes, John makes an excellent point. When we examine the emergent networks
in an organization one of the things we look at is network density. When
the overall density is very low, no patterns or clusters(emergent groups)
usually appear -- there is an insufficient mass of connections.
Connections 'appear' to be randomly distributed.

This was very apparent when I started tracking the network of alliances
between the firms building the 'Infobahn' back in early 1994. As the
industry/market heated up, with more and more alliances announced
[increasing the density of the alliance network almost daily], clusters
started to appear. Once they appeared, they usually stayed around awhile.
Which is exactly what If was aluding to below...

> Organic systems - if the evidence of the geological record is to be trusted
> - spend long periods of time not evolving [or not evolving fast] because
> the complex network of genes interacting in a system survive by reasching a
> quasi-stability. So do organisational ones. They like to freeze up around a
> certain pattern. They then stop learning. Actually even threads on this
> list may display the same behaviour but I need to think about that one.

I guess the $64 question for us change agents is... how does an
organization move from its current state of quasi-stability to a new one
that is more appropriate for a changed environment?

Valdis Krebs
Krebs & Associates
Cleveland, OH
Los Angeles, CA

inflow@concentric.net

-- 

"Valdis E. Krebs" <InFlow@cris.com>

Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>