Edge of Chaos...

... is the sweetspot for Creative, Adaptive Change.

Attended a half-day workshop on "Complexity, Change & Adaptation". Drew, the facilitator, was pretty good. No 'wordy' slides, just pictures that capture your attention and get you thinking.

The pictures: Burgeoning population; Aging population; Convergence of technology; Open source; Rise of India & China; Limited Resources; etc.
Uh-oh... all these trends of increasing conectivity and interdependence point towards the inevitable future: Faster Pace of Life! *shudderz*
People are already finding excuses not to take the Blackberry offer... coz once you are on Blackberry, it means 24/7 contactable!!

One of the discussion sessions, Drew got each group to discuss what are Systems Thinking, Complexity Theory, & Chaos Theory. What all these mean to us. Each group then presents what Qns we have and our Conclusion.

One group has a v. interesting conclusion:
We, the humans, have this constant need to know, to analyze things... we think too much. We have so much information on our fingertips, that we lost that natural instinct to pick up hints/ messages from nature. Eg: The devastating Tsunami in Dec'04. How come all the animals know how to escape to higher grounds for safety, and only the humans who went out with the uncharacteristic low tide to find out what's happening.
Hehe... this group is probably getting the 'Change Fatigue' syndrome from the constant changes they are experiencing in their time with the organization. :Pp

Another vivd illustration by Drew on "Adaptive Change". On a species level, there are 2 key reasons for adaptive change: (1) Fear of Death and (2) Promise of Sex. Knowing that his audience was leaning towards an "ambiguous interpretation" of his 'suggestive' statement, he explained to us the survival strategies of the Coyote vs the Gorillas. How the coyotes triumphed in the face of being exterminated by the American govt.

There was also mention of the Laws of The Fifth Discipline. Probably coz this is not the 1st time i'm attending such workshop, so all these discussions are not alien to me. It's nice to have such refresher course once in a while. My takeaways:

• Cannot ctrl a living system. Can only lead it in the approximate direction of where we want it to be
• Need to understand the dynamic complexity
• Growth & Balance
• Dangers of Quick Fix (symptomatic solution makes it more difficult to tackle the fundamental problem)
• Spend less ctrl and more time in reinforcing values and purpose would be more effective