Organizational Theory, or What's REALLY Going On Out in the Cube Farm

I always like talking organizational theory, especially when it’s being looked at through the lens of complexity. I have numerous references – both concrete and specific to organizations, and general background reading on complexity science – that you might find interesting.

I’m not sure how much reading you may have done in this area, but a good practical place to start is Meg Wheatley’s stuff ("Leadership and the New Sciences," etc.). If you’re looking for the scientific basis, I HIGHLY recommend "Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos" by M. Mitchell Waldrop.

You may also want to look at Stephan Wolfram’s work to better understand the distinctions between order, complexity, and chaos. I think many people confuse complexity and chaos and it’s important to understand the difference. For instance, the video on Driving in India I posted last week is an excellent example of complexity, rather than chaos. If it were chaos, there would be crashes all over the place, and repeated random - possibly negative - outcomes of the close encounters. You see none of that in the video.

Two fun things to look up on the internet via Google are ‘Boids’ and John Conway’s ‘Game of Life’ (not to be confused with the Milton-Bradley kids’ board game). These are both excellent examples of rich complex behavior arising – emerging – out of systems governed by a relatively few simple rules (an ideal for organizations to strive for, wouldn’t you say?).

In fact, Waldrop’s "Complexity..." contains a fascinating anecdote about a researcher in a lab late one night having a (literally) hair-raising experience with the Game of Life he had running on one of the lab computers. All of a sudden he had the eerie feeling that something was in the room with him, some sort of living entity. It turned out to be the Game of Life that was running.

This is all really about systems and systems thinking, of course. The best business book on systems thinking to ever come down the pike (in my opinion) is "The Fifth Discipline" by Peter M. Senge. Again, I HIGHLY recommend it, along with Meg Wheatley’s stuff.

All fun stuff! Good luck in your explorations!