"The processes of life have nothing to do with machine efficiencies. They are fuzzy, redundant, and messy. Many solutions are sought in parallel, many individuals are involved in experimentation about the same dilemma."
"But the messy processes and fuzzy logic lead to orderly solutions because it is the nature of life to evolve towards more complex and effective systems." |
Living
systems learn constantly - They change when necessary. But they adapt
by tinkering. The world is not as harsh as we have made it out to be.
Living systems tinker in their environments, exploring new possibilities,
new forms of creative self-expression. In tinkering, they make do with
what is at hand - a solution doesn't have to be right, it just has to
work. When it stops working, they tinker their way into another solution.
Their ability to learn, adapt, and create is fed by information. They
maintain acute awareness of what is occurring around them. They are webbed
with information from all directions. Such information and acuity allows
them to be responsive and creative when the situation requires a change
Living systems are self-organizing — They have the innate capacity to create structures and processes that respond to the needs of the moment. Their organizing tendency shows up as temporary patterns and structures. These emerge without plans or supervision or directive leadership. Everywhere in the universe, we observe this self-organizing capacity. The complex structures of life emerge from many local self-organizing efforts, not from a master plan or blueprint. Life is systems seeking — Life seeks to affiliate with other life. Such affiliation makes more life possible. Systems of relationships develop because systems make life more sustainable for their individual members. From these networks of support, a global system emerges that is more stable and less affected by changes. Such a stable system provides the conditions for more diversity. More varieties of life can maintain themselves because they have aligned with differing partners Life is attracted to order, but it uses messes to get there - The processes of life have nothing to do with machine efficiencies. They are fuzzy, redundant, and messy. Many solutions are sought in parallel, many individuals are involved in experimentation about the same dilemma. There is no straight line of logic or process that leads to a perfect solution. Instead, there is a great deal of tinkering till someone |
discovers something that works for now. But the messy processes and fuzzy logic lead to orderly solutions because it is the nature of life to evolve towards more complex and effective systems. Organizations are living systems - As living systems, organizations possess all of the creative, self-organizing capacities of other forms of life. The people within all organizations are capable of change, growth, and adaptation - they do not require outside engineering or detailed design. People are capable of creating structures and responses that work, and then moving into new ones when required. We possess natural capacities to work with change in a creative and effective way. Because we are living systems, most people are intelligent, creative, adaptive, and self-organizing - We want to organize, to learn, to do quality work, to contribute, to find meaning. We do not need to impose these attributes on one another. We merely need to learn how to evoke them. Our emerging beliefs
about organizations So many efforts in the past have been focused on how to create learning, or create motivation, or create structures, i.e. how to get the machine to work. We are finding that as our own world view shifts, we are asking a different set of questions. If organizations are living systems, then they have many innate capacities, perhaps some we never expected. In looking for these innate abilities, we've become curious about asking:
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