You may have seen the famous mobile by the artist Calder that hangs in the National Gallery of Art. Play with this mobile. Find a spot where you can move one part without moving any other part. What does this tell you about a system?
John Bradford is a family therapist whose programs (The Homecoming, etc.) have been on PBS. He uses a mobile to represent the family unit. "If Dad's an alcoholic (and he pulls on the dad doll), does it affect the rest of the family? If Muffy's on drugs (and pulls the Muffy figure), is it just Muffy's problem? Is there any individual dysfunction that is not a family problem?" Think about the family mobile below. Could you move one figure without moving the others?
Systems thinking applies to corporations and their subsystems: departments, teams, projects, products, clients, vendors. And systems thinking applies to the individual and to the units within which an individual is a sub-system: families, partnerships, relationships, communities, schools, towns, religions, cultures, nations.
First, it's important to have a feel for what a system is. A system is a combination of things that form a whole that operates in a more complex way than the separate things themselves, like an electrical system or a highway system. It is a coordinated body of objects or processes that have an orderly manner of relating, like the solar system, or a system of government. In a living system, those objects are alive: flexible, growing, changing. The magic of quantum is about the dynamic forces at work in those living systems.
The key characteristics of healthy living systems are:
The ability to hold paradox is one of the virtues of the 21st Century Mind, according to Marsha Sinetar in her book Developing a 21st Century Mind. Balance far from equilibrium is one of those paradoxes. In nature, a system that is close to equilibrium is closest to stagnation (entropy), which is closest to death. So the balance of a thriving system is a flowing balance. Any single direction of activity within the system, seen in isolation, may seem unreliable, unstable or counter-productive. Seen in the perspective of what is happening in the larger system, that activity can be understood as a direction that brings balance to the whole. Jazz or sitar music are examples of balance far from equilibrium.
"Confusion is uncomfortable,
but certainty is ridiculous."
~ Voltaire
A living system is self-referent. It gives itself information on what works and what doesn't work. This information flows through networks of random connections in the system. The system chooses and uses what is beneficial. The information rich feedback of multiple loops is what supports new forms of organization to emerge. They are better adapted to the changing/changed environment. Since nature doesn't have negative judgments which filter or block incoming information, its feedback loops transmit all information.
"How you see the problem
is the problem."
~ Genevie
Spontaneous emergence of order and new forms of behavior happen. As parts come together to form a system, properties emerge that belong only to the whole. These are properties that are not found in the parts. For example: carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen come together and "sweetness" emerges. Sweetness is an emergent property of sugar that cannot be found in any of the smaller components. "The sweetness resides in the relationship," as Fritjof Capra has delightfully elucidated in his book The Web of Life.
Emergence actually has two different forms. There are emergent properties that reside only at higher systems levels, such as the property of sweetness. There are also the mysterious, unpredictable emerging processes that happen in systems far from equilibrium. The observer/participant stands at the edge of chaos remaking itself, waiting to see what will come forth from the turmoil of the old.
"Problems can become opportunities
when the right people come together."
~ Robert Redford
Systems are self-making, or 'autopoetic'. All changes take place in circular patterns where each change
- produces other changes
- maintains the existing pattern, and
- transforms the existing pattern
"The real winners in life are those who look at every situation
with an expectation that they can make it work or make it better."
~ Barbara Pletcher
A system learns through constant interaction with its environment that continuously brings new information to the system. Every living system is a learning community. Therefore, a system that is not constantly learning is dying. Learning happens through contact of the system with new information from outside the system. As long as a system is alive and healthy, it will connect to and link with input from the environment.
"Where all think alike,
no one thinks very much."
~ Walter Lippmann
- the ability to generate information
- the capacity to receive feedback
- the power to self-regulate
A living system is cognizant, knowing. It is aware of its environment. A living system has the ability to deal with information in a way that generates order and self-organization. Such a system knows what its purpose is. It makes itself based on the memory of its pattern even as various internal segments die, change or regenerate. The memories of the organism remain and are the known pattern around which the new segments form.
"I want to know what sustains you from the inside
when all else falls away."
~ Oriah Mountain Dreamer
The system is closed in that a specific process happens and specific patterns are maintained inside the boundaries of the system. The system exists for a specific purpose, to perform a function. The boundaries themselves, however, are leaky, spongy, open. The system draws information and energy from the environment surrounding it through its porous boundaries.
In a healthy self-organizing system, boundaries are not fixed or permanent. They are a fluid net that allows the organism to define what is inside and what is outside. There is a constant flow through these boundaries. They are not walls of exclusion, but webs that facilitate the movement of information in and out.
When a fluorescent dye is dropped into a single cell in a cluster of healthy cells, where the healthy cells share a boundary with a cluster of cancer cells, the dye (information) will travel quickly through all the healthy cells. Little, if any, dye will cross into the cancer cells. When the dye is dropped into the middle of the cancer cells, it does not spread. The walls of a healthy cell are a means of transporting information. But the walls of cancer cells are boundaries that block it.
"The best leaders are very often the best listeners.
They have an open mind. They are not interested in having their own way,
but in finding the best way."
~Wilfred Peterson
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All of these characteristics create living, self organizing systems. It was from my next systems teachers that I learned about self organizing. Those teachers were Dr. Margaret (Meg) Wheatley and Dr. Fritjof Capra.
Frank and I met Meg Wheatley and Fritjof Capra at her conference "Self Organizing Systems: A Simpler Way" in Sundance, Utah. Meg was the first person to apply quantum thinking to the corporate world. I believe that time will prove Meg's first book Leadership and the New Science to be a pivotal contribution in unifying the centuries old split between science and spirit as well as unifying the worlds of science, spirit and business. An easier read is her sequel A Simper Way , written with Myron Kellner-Rogers.
Fritjof Capra is an Austrian-born theoretical physicist turned writer. (The Tao of Physics, Turning Point, Belonging to the Universe, and the just released The Science of Life: Integrating the Hidden Connections Among the Biological, Cognitive and Social Dimensions of Life.) His Web of Life is a brilliant explanation of the significance of interrelated self organizing systems in nature. Fritjof also wrote the screenplay for Mindwalk. For those couch potatoes who don't want to read, go to Amazon.com and order the video Mindwalk. It's filmed at the island-abbey Mont St. Michel, and stars Liv Ullmann, Sam Waterston, and John Heard. It's the Cliff Notes for Quantum Physics 101 in story form, an enjoyable video set in the breath taking beauty of coastal France. It will help you understand what Fritjof means when he says that 'understanding the pattern of self organization is the key to understanding the essential nature of life.'
It was at Meg's workshop in Sundance, Utah that my soul caught fire. In the company of Meg and Fritjof and learning about Dr. Prigogine's work, I felt a passion ignite in me for the quantum world. I saw its possibilities for we ordinary non-scientists. It was a peak experience where the pieces fell into place. The following week, I designed what I humbly called the Kirk Model of Chaos. Frank liked it, and we put it into a new workshop on self-organizing systems called Quantum Leadership. I was delighted and awed to see how quickly people got the model and how profound their resulting insights were. I eventually had the opportunity to show the Kirk Model to Dr. Prigogine personally, and get his blessing and encouragement - another peak life experience.
All this time I was learning more about living systems. All living systems are self organizing. Self organizing means exactly what it says: a system has the ability to organize itself.
Self organizing happens in both the world of corporations and the private lives of individuals. Said another way, it happens at both the macro and micro level of systems. The macro is the bird's eye view of the organization. It starts with a large system and refines inward to the sub-systems. The micro, or individual view, is the reverse. It starts from the view of an individual human and expands outward through all the larger systems in which that human participates. Here are two fictional models for these concepts under the assumed names of ORB, Inc., for the organization and Rose Oliver as the personal system. Orb will be used to show how systems look in organizations, and Rose's life will show how systems work with individuals.
Rose Oliver is a total system that has many sub-systems.* She is an employee, supervisor, mother, daughter, spouse, sister, homemaker, citizen, church member, singer, and friend. She can't separate out "employee" and not have it affected by "mother" as every working parent knows. Every sub-system acts on and reacts to every other sub-system that makes up her total system.
In turn, Rose Oliver is a sub-system in ORB, Inc. where she works.
* I struggle with the word 'sub-system', especially when talking about human beings. It seems antiseptic, cold, scientific. One quantum physicist (Gregory Bateson, I believe) coined the word 'whole-ons' for us as humans in the larger Earth system. Whole-on seems robotic and little better that sub-system. Until someone finds a better word, I'll use sub-system. If you aren't a purist and want a simpler word for sub-system, you can say 'part.' Just don't say it in front of Meg Wheatley!
In the same way as Rose, ORB as a system cannot separate its sub-systems and have an effective whole. What happens if R & D doesn't communicate with Production; if Finance doesn't talk to Marketing; if HR isn't working with Finance? The success of ORB relies on healthy relationships between departments. Remember the dye and the healthy cells? Lots of communication. What was the symptom of the cancer cells? Little transfer of information; no interactive relationship with the units around it. As Meg Wheatley says, "Information is the lifeblood of an organization."
Quantum and chaos and the Kirk Model (which you will see in Chapter 3) operate in big systems and little systems. Look back at the diagrams of ORB, Inc. and Rose Oliver. Which roles can you eliminate without affecting the whole? When a variety of functions or pieces come together and become a system, they are no longer 'parts', according to Meg Wheatley. 'Parts' means you can disassemble the unit and have the original separate pieces. You can't do this with a system because a system is a synergistic whole. The accepted definition of synergistic is 'the whole is greater than its parts'. However, Bucky Fuller, who coined the word 'synergy', says, "Synergy means the behavior of the whole cannot be predicted from the behavior of the parts".
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You are now going to experience yourself as a system.
The name of my system is Phyllis Ruth Kirk. What is the name of your system?
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What is the purpose of your system? (If you want the easy answer, here's a hint: My system's purpose is to be Phyllis-ing.)
Describe what your system looks like to others.
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What are the sub-systems within your system? (Your muscles are your muscular system, your blood is your circulatory system, your bones are your skeletal system, etc.)?
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Which system(s) can you leave out?
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What parts of any system can you leave out? (Appendix? Gall bladder?)
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What happens to the system when a part is taken out?
_______________________________________________________________
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Now think of yourself as a sub-system in a larger system. This one is fun. Think of all the larger systems that you are a sub-system in: (I am a sister in the system of my birth family; I am a mother in the system of my marital family; I am friend in the system of my life relationships; I am a contributor in the www.villagebanking.org system, in the www.narf.org system, etc.)
____________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________
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By definition, all living systems are self-organizing systems. A system knows its purpose and continues to do its purpose if left uninterrupted. This is a form of consciousness. The system knows why it exists.
This knowing is a key ingredient in self-organizing living systems. As such, it is also a critical element in chaos as will be explained later. For now, it's important to understand how consciousness creates the field of the system.
The central purpose of a system is its core vibration. It's like the DNA of a system. It's what the system is coded to do, to be. ORB's consciousness comes from it mission statement, its goals, it values, its unique product. There literally is an energy field, a non-physical energetic vibration, that is ORB. You can feel that field when you walk through the doors of any organization: Is this organization vibrant, healthy? Do the people who work here like working here? Is there a sense of pride in what this company produces? Do the employees like coming to work on Monday mornings? Is the company's central purpose clear to every person who works there? Do they know why they are there?
Rose Oliver's central purpose is to be the best Rose Oliver she can be. Her goal is to discover what is unique about herself, why she is here, what it is that she can do/be/contribute that only Rose can do. Her purpose is to be "Rose-ing". That means growing, choosing, taking actions in alignment with her unique purpose.
Knowing our purpose is critical. It is critical to our happiness. And it is critical to every system we are in. Every one of us benefits deeply by knowing what our uniqueness is. Martin Sage head of Sage Productions (www.sageproductions.com) is especially gifted at helping people do this. He asks, "What are you the Picasso of? What is your passion? What lights your fire?" Joseph Campbell, anthropologist and author of The Masks of God, says, "Find your bliss. Find where it is and don't be afraid to follow it."
In Boulder, Colorado, New Vista is a public magnet high school. Its two goals for each and every student are:
#1: Help that person discover their uniqueness;
#2: Help them develop and enhance it in a productive, responsible direction.
At a New Vista graduation, master teacher John Zola quoted Sidney Simon. "By the time a person reaches 16, they should be able to stand with their peers, their family, and those they love, and talk for fifteen minutes about 'What the world would be missing if I were not here.' " Think how beautiful the world would be if every person knew what their special gifts are and knew how to contribute to the health of the whole by using those talents.
Your uniqueness is important to all the systems you are a part of. A system is strengthened by diversity. The more diverse a system is, the more options it has. The more homogenous it is, the weaker it is. It has a narrower range of responses, fewer choices when challenged, and less material to create with. 'Strength in diversity' isn't just a corporate HR ploy. It is a truth in nature. That's why biodiversity strengthens a system. When you contribute your uniqueness to a system, you strengthen that system.
A system, whether it's ORB, Inc. or Rose Oliver, is stronger during chaos if it know who it is . . . and isn't. When a system becomes unsettled or disturbed, one of the first things it does is to look for handholds-things to hold onto while the boat rocks. To the degree that the system is clear about its purpose, it will connect with handholds that serve it in the long run. To the degree that a systems does not know its purpose, it will reach for and take hold of the closest, easiest thing to grasp. Those things can be a disservice to it in the long run, when chaos really shakes things up.
That consciousness of purpose is a field of energy. Every living system has a field. It is a non-physical zone of vibrations that emanate from the system. As a human being or a corporation, the strength of clarity and commitment you have to your purpose determines the strength of your system's field. When it's strong in a person, it's called charisma. It's magnetic. It attracts to you others who have similar interests, literally, similar vibrations.
One of the first classes in Chaos 101 is 'Who Am I?' As a system, an individual human or corporation you need to know: Who are you? How are you unique? What are your goals? What is your purpose in life? Do your actions prove it?
The clearer you are about who you are as a system, the stronger will be your ability to self-organize during times of instability. You will attract to you the support you need to maintain your functions. Clarity of purpose is like your body's immune system. When your immune system is strong, you do not succumb to the germs that are in the air all the time. When you are stressed, worried, not eating right, overworked, lacking balance and play in your life, your body gets weak. When your immune system is weak is when germs and viruses can take hold and make you sick.
Louis Pasteur discovered the microbe, or 'germ' as we have nicknamed it. On his deathbed, he said, "I have been greatly misunderstood. The germ is nothing. The environment is everything." The environment of the germ is the body's condition. Pasteur knew that it is not germs that make us sick, but a weak immune system.
Just so, when your larger system's clarity of purpose is strong, you have a better chance of staying on track during chaos and disorder.
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All living systems have cycles. As the Bible says, "For everything there is a season. A time to sow, a time reap . . ."
Life is meant to ebb and flow, to grow larger, then smaller. A balanced human being goes out actively into the world and then returns home for rest, nurturing and recharging. Ideally, organizations should allow, nay, promote, the same thing for the organization: production and growth followed by a period of rest and renewal.
During my years in Moscow, my Soviet friends were always eager to point out the superiority of their socialist vacations. Every worker got 6 to 8 weeks annual vacation. They would say, "Your capitalistic treadmill is killing your people. Look at the high level of stress-related diseases you have." Indeed, it is ludicrous to think that two weeks of rest can neutralize fifty weeks of work stress. We are deceiving ourselves to believe that setting aside 14 days of relaxation will renew, balance and recharge us for the remaining 351 days. This balance of work and rest may be rejected by Wall Street's growth mentality, but it is the natural pattern of living systems.
Order and chaos are another cycle in the natural pattern. A living self-organizing system in chaos, left alone, will move to a state of order. Order is when there's a place for everything, and everything is in its place. It is 'a condition in which each thing is properly disposed with reference to other things and to its purpose.' For ORB, it means the organizational chart, the goals and the short, medium, and long term strategies are in place (Who we are; What we do; How we get there). For Rose Oliver, order means she has a job description and a workspace, the competence and equipment to do her job, access to and support from the personnel and processes she needs, free flow of information, and a clear understanding why her job is important to ORB's success.
A healthy living system, left alone to follow its own natural rhythm, will grow into a state of disorder and chaos. Chaos (as if it needs any description!) is a state of utter confusion, turmoil, uncertainty. Even the words can make our stomach knot, our breath shallow, our fists clench. Chaos at ORB means in-fighting between departments, power struggles blocking the flow of information, a flood of new employees overwhelming HR, new competitors grabbing your share of the market, a new CEO changing goals in mid-project, computer systems breaking down . . . and no end product being made. For Rose, chaos is all of the above because she's a sub-system in the ORB mess. And for her own sub-system, it also means her baby getting sick, her husband being laid off, an aging parent, having a car accident, a fire in the house, her pet dying.
Chaos is when all the handholds are gone and the earth is rolling under our feet. Whatever our former security was, it isn't there now. We feel alone, abandoned, terrified. It is the time and place that St. John of the Cross called 'the dark night of the soul'.
You cannot avoid chaos if you are a healthy living system. You can only go through it. For ORB, no amount of strategic planning, inventories or 401(K)'s will eliminate chaos. For Rose, no amount of wealth, degrees or insurance policies will prevent it. It is part of life and it will happen.
Nature doesn't mind chaos. Humans do. Chaos is uncomfortable because we aren't in charge. We can't control chaos, by definition, so we don't like it. But nature doesn't worry about control. It doesn't try to squelch a hurricane, or stop an earthquake. The reason (and one of my favorite Frank Clement quotes) is:
"Molecules don't have an attitude."
It is we mere humans who try to interfere with natural cycles. Our deeply engrained socialization has convinced us that order is good and disorder is bad. But nature experiences that a hurricane shakes the deadwood out of the trees and the forest grows back stronger because of it. A forest fire replenishes the soil and earthquakes spew mineral rich stuff all over the ground. But for humans in the midst of the destruction, it's hard to remember that nature uses chaos to create.
So the question then becomes, if we can't control chaos or avoid it, what do we do during chaos? Give up and be swept into the cyclone of change, desperately hoping the results might be beneficial to us? Surrender and let our lives bob around aimlessly on the 'natural' tumultuous seas?
The human being is both an element of nature and a force within nature. We cannot eliminate or manage chaos. Our challenge is to learn to trust the process and our own power to create. Our responsibility is to participate and, through chaos, to create. Learning how to do that is what the magic of quantum is about.
"Understanding this makes us want to participate in creation."
~ Dr. Ilya Prigogine
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Every living system has an electromagnetic (ELM) field of energy around it. It is non-physical (invisible), but measurable in many cases. That field is both magnetic and projective. In science, we learned one of Newton's laws, "that every living thing attracts every other living thing". The field acts as an attractor to draw information and energy to it that the system needs from the surrounding environment. That's the 'charisma' of the system, so to speak. At the same time it puts information about itself out into the surroundings. That's the broadcast capacity of the system. That energetic projection/magnetism is what Yoda was teaching Luke Skywalker in his first lesson about the Force.
When you walk into a home, an office, a shop, a party, you get an intuitive hit about the environment. It may be as basic as, "This feels great. I like this place", or "OOOOOOOOO this feels bad! Get me outta here!" (Remember the pop song 'Momma Told Me Not to Come'?) You are tuning into the field, the overall effect of the combined energies of that place, and how they affect your field.
As you learn to read the field and your intuition better, the same thing works with individuals. You can walk into a group of strangers and know immediately. You are drawn to some of them, interested in getting to know them. Others you are neutral about, disinterested. Some you may want to actively avoid. This information may come partly from body language or outward appearances. But a blind person gets all this information without the benefit of sight. The sighted have simply not developed the ability to read the non-physical information of the field, nor the trust to rely on it. One challenge of living the quantum life is to learn to read the non-physical as clearly as the non-sighted read it.
I. What are Systems
A. Definition of system: A combination of things that form a whole that operates in
a more complex way than the separate things themselves.
B. Everything is systems of energy
II. Systems Thinkers/Systems Thinking
A. Frank Clement
B. Meg Wheatley, Fritjof Capra
C. Dr. Ilya Prigogine
III. Systems and Sub-systems
A. Human as a system made up of sub-systems (Rose Oliver)
B. Human as a sub-system within larger systems
C. Corporation as a systems with sub-systems (ORB, Inc.)
IV. Living Systems
A. Characteristics
1.Balance far from equilibrium
2. Multiple feedback loops
3. Self-making
4. Constant learning
5. Knowing (cognizant)
6. Closed for functions; Open for information
B. All living systems are self-organizing systems
C. Consciousness of purpose is the critical organizing force in systems
V. Living System have Natural Cycles
A. Growth and rest cycle
B. Chaos. . . order. . . chaos. . . order cycle
C. Definition of chaos; of order
D. All living systems experience chaos
1. Nature : "Molecules don't have an attitude."
2. Humans: resist chaos because we believe it will hurt us
E. Human responsibility is to create through participation during chaos
VI. Consciousness
A. Living systems in nature know their purpose
B. Central purpose is core vibration similar to the system's DNA
C. Knowing our purpose is vital when chaos comes (for both humans and corporations)
D. When each sub-system knows its purpose, that helps keep the larger system healthy
VII. The Field
A. ELM energy surrounding every system
B. Yoda calls it the Force
C. Purpose of the field during chaos is to draw to the system the things it needs to survive,
reform itself
D. Relied on by the non-sighted
E. Learn to read the Field
