Complex Systems - June 11 2002

By Frank McLean and Meg Salter

Heard an interesting question lately? Try, "How does the behaviour of fractals reflect complex living systems?"

John, who championed this program, introduced Meg and then the evening's topic. His introductory table discussions used visual images and music composed by applying fractal equations. The images and music served as metaphors for complex evolving systems; a simple, underlying order, infinite variety, and self-similarity at different scales, where patterns re-appear at different levels of magnification. Like a snowflake, or a billowing summer cloud. Or patterns repeated throughout an organization such as style and values.

Meg provided a comprehensive overview of organizations as Complex Adaptive Systems - where a system's history is irreversible, the order is emergent and the future is unpredictable. The system will involve a Stable Space of reliable routine, and an Adaptive Space, "just on the edge of chaos," where major adaptations occur. Through trial and error, through one iteration after another; the place where new and innovative ideas are forever nibbling away on the edges of the status quo toward a future that is open and unpredictable - but nevertheless may involve identifiable patterns. Sound familiar?

Meg opened new and insightful windows on a wide range of organizational variables, including; why complicated is not complex; how threats and opportunities can move a system to the creative edge of chaos; how in this Adaptive Space the system will self-organize, holding a creative tension between stability and instability.

Most of us, as managers or change agents, know how to act in the stable space, where organizations reliably churn out products and services that work. How do we act in the Adaptive Space, where control is not possible, the answer is not known and paradox, diversity and conflict abound? Here, our work is to encourage self-organization by posing the courageous questions, setting the bounds of the adaptive challenge, creating opportunities for reflective learning, using our power with compassion, adjusting the mix of information and diversity, and encouraging transformative connections.

In this living, conscious world, equilibrium - where all systems are tightly in sync - is the precursor to death. Threats and opportunities galvanize us to find creative solutions. The edge of chaos is the crucible where an unpredictable future evolves. And there is hope, as well as useful approaches, for crafting the journey.

Meg Salter is the Principal of MegaSpace Consulting, an organizational effectiveness firm that assists organizations in