Thus, some dynamic that was established when William Hewlett and David Packard began their work in a Palo Alto California garage is still operating in every unit of the Hewlett-Packard family of corporations, just as the nature of the exchange that occurs between a bank teller and a customer is replicated at all levels of the bank, an d the treatment plan offered every day to schizophrenic teenagers is replicated at all levels and in every subsystem of the agency that offers these mental health services. Each of these organizations operates like a set of fractals and resembles a pine tree with regard to the replication of specific, fundamental structures and relationships at all levels of the organization. These organizations are amenable, in turn, to nonhierarchical structures and to leadership strategies that emphasize influence rather than control precisely because there is this replication and duplication in the system- the organization is simultaneously very complex and unpredictable, and elegantly simple and redundant.
We can also look at the interplay between energy-use and the life span of organic systems (Brown & West, 2000). Apparently, systems use less energy if designed asself-replicating and branching networks (fractals) that enable both resources and information to be transmitted with minimal effort. Organizations that are structured as fractals rather than as hierarchies typically are more efficient and have a longer life span.
For the professional coach, these recent findings regarding self-replicating systems pose a whole host of new questions and challenges. On the one hand, if organizations are self-replicating, then any change in the style or strategies of a specific leader would be hard to either initiate or maintain -for many other subsystems would have to change in a similar manne1 given that these systems are all replicating one another. On the other hand, if a small change can be initiated and maintained by one leader in one specific setting, then this could set off a chain of changes that spread throughout the organization.
The role of the professional coach thus becomes one of helping her client identify the key leverage points (Gladwell’s tipping point, Buckminster Fuller’s trim tab). What about the redesign of organizations as self-replicating, highly efficient fractal networks? How might an organization be redesigned as an elegantly branching system? And what is the role of an organizational coach in advocating for and assisting with this redesign process? The coach must ultimately be in the business of supporting and reassuring her client through these challenging moments of leadership. The leverage points are not easily identified. Change will be resisted at all levels and in many different ways (both obvious and subtle) throughout all of the mirroring subsystems of the organization -just as those who benefit by or at least find security in hierarchy will resist the fractal shift.
There is a third major contribution made by these pioneers of chaos and complexity: this contribution concerns the measurement of complex phenomena. Complex systems are difficult to measure because they are inherently unpredictable and vulnerable to slight shifts in initial conditions (the so-called “butterfly” effect). However, this isn’t the whole story. Complex systems have many nooks and crannies that are not easily measured; furthermore, there are so many different ways in which measures can be taken and some many different ways to interpret the data that have been gathered. We can’t measure, let alone predict, the exact amount of ” real” money that is lost during a specific stock market downturn, nor can we determine whether or not global warning (or global climate instability) is a reality.
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