In alignment with Rock, Page and Wheatley, I would propose that self-referencing and a reliance on self-correcting baselines is critical to the enduring life of any human system. As Rock and Page (Rock and Page, 2009, p. 85) propose:
“A well-developed organizational identity includes a strong sense of purpose. When they have a purpose to refer to, staff members are able to work more independently and effectively.”
Collective and personal baseline elements
Embedded in this proposal is an assumption that self-referencing at the broad organizational level enables those working within the system to engage in their own self-directed, polystatic adjustment to the changing environment in which they are operating. Having incorporated the organization’s own baseline within their personal baselines, those helping to move an organization forward will be guided by goals and purposes that are shared by all (or at least most) members of the organization.
As a professional coach, we can be particularly effective if we help our clients discern the various levels of their polystatic baseline. Which elements of this baseline come from the sharing of purpose and goals with other members of the organization and which elements are held at a more personal (or team) level. Having discerned these different elements, our clients will become more discerning of the different sources of environmental feedback that will (and should) influence their baseline. Some of the environmental changes impact the collective elements of the baseline—elements such as bottom line, productivity and organization-wide morale. Other changes in the environment produce an impact that hits at more personal elements—elements such as level of personal performance, relationships with co-workers, and personal motivation.
We are likely to find that distal shifts in collective baseline elements are infrequent given the complex, often turbulent (and even contradictory) way an environment operates at contemporary organizational levels (Bergquist, 2025). Forces in one direction are muting forces operating in a different direction—leading to a standoff. Much more frequent shifts are likely to take place at the proximal, personal level as our emotional reactions to ongoing organizational events require adjustments in our polystatic baseline.
Thus, in many complex organizational settings we are likely to retain a “hybrid” baseline that is always both changing and remaining surprisingly stable. As a thoughtful and effective coach, it is often of great value for us to help our client identify and learn how to ‘live with” hybrid baselines that may lead us to contradictory anticipations: “everything is changing and nothing has really changed!”
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