I offer a fourth example of enablement that concerns the human body rather than a human organization. My physician colleague, Jerome Fish, has spoken about the “Four Horses of the Apocalypse” in health care – borrowing from a best-selling book called Outlive written by Peter Allia (2023). At the start of a health care forum that Jerome and I recently lead (Fish, 2024), Jerome noted that there are four major ways in which the lives of people are cut short. These “horsemen of the apocalypse” are heart disease, cancer, neurodegenerative diseases and type 2 diabetes. In each case, a key factor concerns the management of Insulin. Metabolic dysfunction association with insulin enables the four horses to operate. Insulin levels serve as an enabling node in the human physiological network. Dr. Fish and Dr. Allia would suggest that insulin regulation is an Essential element in medical treatment plans precisely because it is enabling. A focus on this enabling regulation could revolutionized the way in which people seek to extend their life.
Rogue Events and Leveraging
Enablement shows up in many ways. It is found, as I have mentioned, in the way someone gains considerable influence in an organization and in the way that lives are extended. Enablement is also found in the precipitation of quite dramatic events. For instance, it often can be manifest in a rogue event that generates change in many areas of a system. Rogue events are likely to occur in particular when a system is complex with many connecting parts. The interconnectivity not only enables enablement, it also can set up conditions for surprise. A dramatic shift in one area of the system can rapidly lead to adjustments and even major changes in other parts of the system.
Peter Senge identifies several conditions that underlie a rogue event. Senge (1990, p. 63) first notes that cause and effect are not closely related in time and space in many complex human systems:
“When we play as children, problems are never far away from their solutions—as long, at least, as we confine our play to one group of toys. Years later, as managers, we tend to believe that the world works the same way. If there is a problem on the manufacturing line, we look for a cause in manufacturing. If salespeople can’t meet targets, we think we need new sales incentives or promotions.”
However, in some instances, a highly influential action or situation can influence something that seems far away in time or space. The resulting event can be identified as a rogue event. We use a term like rogue because we have been unable or unwilling to look beyond immediate cause and effect relationships to identify the real causes of the rogue event.
We don’t acknowledge enablement. We fail to recognize the enabling power of one part of the system as this part reaches out to other parts of the system. A change in accounting practices resolves our manufacturing problem and we are surprised. It is a rogue event because we had failed to connect accounting to manufacturing. We are surprised by the impact that a slight change in a specific product line has on the effectiveness of a sales campaign because we previously ignored the intimate relationship between product design and sales. A leader becomes unexpectedly ineffective in motivating her employees because the relationship between lower employee motivational levels and the company’s new compensation package is not recognized.
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