My husband and I are in a study group at church where we’re learning about Emergence Theory. I often say, “Physics is everything” and if I go around muttering that, you’d think I would have dived into Emergence Theory some time ago, especially since the concept has been around at least since Aristotle taught that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Emergence Theory is a part of the natural sciences which describes the non-hierarchical ways in which living creatures and their groups organize themselves. The theory involves describing differences between beehives and anthills as well as differences between business organizations where control is top down and those that have a mix of bottom up and top down control – or even those that attempt to assign all control to the bottom of the organization. (The last approach hasn’t worked well so far, according to most of the studies I read.)
Though I’m barely conversant in this theory, it took only a few minutes of Googling to discover a ton of literature about Emergence in business organizations and about Emergent leadership.
When Emergence appears, whether in nature or a study of corporate teams, it always involves a shift toward increased complexity. I think we all agree that we’ve been living through that trend for some time.
Some scholars look at Emergence as part of Complexity Science. I can’t tell the difference between the two, at least not yet. Still, I found a clear and informative article by E.W. “Buck” Lawrimore, titled “Introduction to the Basic concepts of Complexity Science.” Mr. Lawrimore’s work is helping me understand Emergence and to recognize that business organizations applying Emergence principles are finding measurable positive results.
Lawrimore writes that organizations are using Complexity Science to “transform the way they work into new patterns of structure, relationships and activities, which they find extremely beneficial.” He describes this as a real revolution, and a whole new way of working and thinking based on the natural world as opposed to the mechanical-industrial world.
Many people believe this transformation will become increasingly widespread in the 21st Century. Lawrimore believes that humans’ natural way of working together is really much better than the unnatural ways of working practiced in many organizations today.
His article describes all groups of living creatures, including people working in organizations, as complex adaptive systems. These people – or agents, as the science calls us – are interconnected and interdependent and parts of a system as well as subsystems all nested within larger and larger systems. It is complicated.
Then there is the environment in which we work. That includes everything external to an organization which affects the organization in some way. Environments are complex and interconnected in complex ways. The environment affects the organization and the organization affects the environment. Feedback from the environment provides information to the organization. Feedback within the organization enables us to adapt to each other.
Emergence describes how complex systems take on a “personality” and a “corporate culture” that emerge from individual behaviors, but are different from those behaviors. That culture persists as individuals come and go. As we all know and as Lawrimore points out, “People shape the organization and the organization shapes the people in a continuous feedback loop. Emergence is the source of creativity and innovation – it is unpredictable and sometimes amazing.”
Lawrimore encourages us to operate our organizations with a few simple rules. “The fewer the rules, the higher the creativity,” he says. Lawrimore suggests that these rules work well in organizations: Share information. Trust each other. Meet customers’ needs. Always seek better ways to do things. A simple list – but not so simple to establish in an organization.
I encourage you to read this entire article as well as anything else about Emergence that piques your interest. We’re all caught up in it whether we know it or not, and might as well be aware of the water in which we swim.
Jo Gorissen is a certified transition coach and a former Milwaukee area resident. Her web site is www.coachingconbrio.com and she can be reached at (414) 305-3459.
