Israeli Spring

On September 1, I arrived to see tent cities along every major boulevard in Tel Aviv. They arose spontaneously in response to an impulsive act of a single college student. She was struggling to make ends meet when her landlord raised the rent. Desperate, and expecting an eviction the following morning, she posted on Facebook: At 7:00 tomorrow morning, I will be evicted from my apartment because I cannot afford the rent. I will pitch a tent on Boulevard Rothschild, and there I will live. Within the hour, 60 others had responded to her note: Me, too. And they did, by the hundreds. Among them were middle-class professionals unable to buy homes, parents with young children to educate and care for, students hoping for meaningful work, elders worried about transportation and health care. Their concerns were diverse, their dialogue dissonant, but their desire for change was undeniable.

The French would call this a manifestation. Deep dissatisfaction and frustration of the Israeli people manifested itself as a widespread movement, literally, to the streets. At every street corner, bedraggled furniture was pulled into circles where the cool of the evening brought people to discuss their hopes, fears, and plans. The following Saturday, I joined 360,000 people marching to the center of Tel Aviv, demanding social justice. In cities all across Israel people marched. Reports told of 500,000 demonstrators, in a nation of only 7,000,000 inhabitants.

A week later, the day after I left Tel Aviv, 5,000 people met in round tables to dialogue about the challenges of life in Israel today. As a result of the demonstrations, nine councils of experts have been convened to explore concerns and recommend action to right the wrongs that had inspired the civil awakening. They focus on the wide variety of concerns expressed by demonstrators, including: health, economy, education, transportation, and land use.

It was difficult to get news of this emergent phenomenon outside of Israel. The nation’s foreign affairs filled the airwaves and preoccupied the formal power structures around the world. In the meantime, within the community, individuals and groups began to express their frustrated hopes and personal and financial disappointments with the internal affairs of the State.

I don’t know enough about the circumstances to comment on their messages, and I’m not a member of the community to earn my own say in the melee, but I do know that the demonstrations manifested some fundamental truths about the complex emergence of human systems dynamics.

The diversity of the movement gave it power. The press and members of the establishment said the group shouldn’t even call itself a movement because it had no single vision or purpose. On the contrary, the diversity of concerns made it quite difficult to counter the claims. The government had no choice but to explore a complex response to such a diverse and unpredictable message.

The coherence of the movement gave it power. Within a tradition of radically diverse views and habits of assertive interaction, this movement brought people together with hope and joy. Even in the press of masses streaming into the square on Saturday night, people were smiling and greeting each other warmly. It seemed a bit like a massive block party of neighbors who knew and cared about each other.

Clarity of action engaged swift and coherent response. Put up a tent. Move into it. March with others. Meet for dialogue. At every point, though the message was complex, the invitations were simple. Anyone who wanted to be involved knew exactly how to do it.

The butterfly effect was not about the butterfly. The small “cause” that prompted the enormous response succeeded because it ignited a smoldering pattern of dissatisfaction. The environment already held the potential for the pattern that emerged, and the young woman and her Facebook note simply released the pattern to inspire action across the system.

Emergent change demanded action from both the powerless and powerful. The individual passion that initiated the movement could not, by itself, have sustained change over time. On the other hand, the power of political and policy infrastructures, which will be required for sustained change, were incapable of igniting the fires of passion for change. Transformative change required the sustained commitment of both the individual and the State.

Difference without dialogue is dead. None of the concerns voiced by the movement were surprising. Everyone knew that costs are rising and services are declining. Nothing happened until the dialogue began, and nothing will be resolved unless the dialogue continues.

We can surprise ourselves. As we streamed toward the city center on Saturday night, I was thrilled and moved to tears. The inequity they fought was miniscule when compared to that in my own country, but I could not imagine the America of today taking such action in support of social justice. I said as much to my friend who marched beside me, and she responded, “Six weeks ago, I did not see this potential for powerful action among the Israelis, either.”

Glenda Eoyang, Ph.D.
Executive Director
HSD Institute

Beyond Capitalism: A New Game

A friend of mine defines economic depression as, “after the old rules stop working and before the new ones emerge.” He is an economic forecaster, and today he has a significant investment in the old rules and incredible curiosity about the new ones. Conditions of the 21st century have shaken the rules of the old economy, and the new rules aren’t obvious yet. I’m not an economist, but I am an observer of human systems. It is in that spirit that I share the following reflections.

Rules and Games

Traditional economic systems—both capitalist and communist—make some basic assumptions about value and its transmission. Some of those are implicit, others are explicit, but all of the assumptions are challenged by the complex dynamics emerging in the 21st century. A new game has come onto the economic playing field. The rulebook hasn’t been written; we don’t know who the referees, coaches, or players will be; and we certainly can’t predict who will win or lose. What we do know is that the game as we have known it since the industrial revolution is no more. Evidence of the radical change appears in newspapers, contracts, pocketbooks, legislative agendas, government policy, and faces of both the sometimes rich and the newly poor. I believe the foundations of the new economy emerge from complex, nonlinear dynamics.

The Long Tail

The first assumption of the old economy was based on a predictable relationship between supply and demand. We expect a change in supply to generate a dynamic adaptation of demand and vice versa. The tight coupling between supply and demand is assumed to be the primary determinant of prices and to inform decisions of those who produce and those who consume goods and services. This expectation only holds true when both supply and/or demand is limited. If either one is unlimited, the predictable relationship breaks down. Unbounded supply erases value as we knew it. Unlimited demand (if we could even imagine it in the old system) depletes supply and collapses the market. The 21st century game is entirely different because both supply and demand become functionally infinite in the world of virtual commerce.

In the virtual marketplace, there is no physical limit to the number and variety of goods available. There is no practical limit to the number of potential buyers. As a result, the simple relationship between supply and demand disappears. It is replaced by a more complex relationship described as the power law. Sometimes recognized as the “long tail,” a power law relationship is a statistical property that presents the non-intuitive fact that the space within the tail of a probability distribution is larger than the space under a 'normal' or Gaussian distribution. For practical purposes, it means that more wealth may be generated by selling a small number of many individual products than by selling a large number of a few high-valued products. This relationship is described in detail in The Long Tail (Anderson, 2006). He tells the story of a publishing industry gone crazy when the Internet lets anyone publish, and wealth is derived from relatively low numbers of sales for many, many products.

Can we make the connections required to exploit this new economic pattern?

Zero-Sum Game

The second assumption of the old economy was that the whole is always equal to the sum of the parts. If you have more of something of value, that means I have less of it. Often referred to as the “zero-sum game,” this assumption shapes economic decision making in many ways. Calculations of costs and benefits, return on investment, and profit margin all rely on the assumption that value can be divided into parts or added together without changing its absolute value over time. This assumption is the source of greed; it incites theft; it rewards saving; and it inspires current tax, intellectual property, and monetary policies.

This assumption, too, falls apart in today’s information economy. Unlike items of physical value, information is not a zero-sum game. If I know something and tell you, I don’t lose that knowledge. In fact, I may even have more if you can show me a new way to use it, or if we create something new together. Under this radical assumption, generosity increases my own wealth while contributing to others’. Hoarding information becomes its own punishment; and return on investment may be impossible to perceive, much less to predict or control.

What does it look like to increase gains by giving value away?

Conserved Quantity

In the old, material economy, we assumed that something of value should retain that value indefinitely. Speculative bubbles (whether in real estate or tulip bulbs) were seen as aberrations when perceived value disappeared over night. We assumed that, in general, a thing of value would remain a thing of value. As a result, we expected to be able to accumulate wealth, save, invest, and leave a legacy to our children. As a matter of practice, we assumed that if we held something of value longer and more tightly, it would retain its value, and we would win the economic game in the end.

Again, an information economy blows this assumption apart. The new economy recognizes a paradox in the value of information. On the one hand, when information is hoarded, it loses its value spontaneously over time. It may become less relevant, or it gets distributed too widely to bring any advantage to the knower. On the other hand, a piece of information shared may increase in value when it’s managed as a shared asset among network partners. Knowledge only has value when it is given away.

Will these habits of generosity and curiosity help us thrive in the emerging economy?

Near and Distant Neighbors

Another key assumption of the old economy was that natural resources were unlimited, while the market for products was finite. Not only did this set the supply and demand relationship in place, it also established what we considered to be reasonable production resources and distribution networks. Regional and national markets thrived as producers consumed available resources and built sophisticated delivery infrastructures.

Today, we see a very different world. Our earth is overburdened, and we face the challenge of sustaining ourselves on the finite resources of our planet. At the same time, ubiquitous information and transportation networks allow us to reach markets around the world quickly, easily, and cheaply. We know that our resources are limited while our potential consumers are without number. These new conditions restructure the marketplace radically. Rather than robust regional and national markets of the mid-20th century, we see two new markets emerging.

One of the new markets appears in community gardens and farmers’ markets around the country. This emerging marketplace focuses on local production and local consumption. It makes efficient use of micro-resources that are more reusable and sustainable. This market also builds the social capital we need for adaptive action in these turbulent times. The other emerging market focuses on the global level. It transcends political and geographical boundaries to consolidate resources from around the globe to meet demands of distant markets.

Can we leverage our sensitivities to appreciate value in our local economic landscapes?

Networks

Traditional economic systems have been driven by intermediaries. Farmer grows produce; processor prepares it; wholesaler stores; retailer sells; consumer consumes; and various other middle-people influence and benefit from this simple transaction. This process is supposed to add value at each step. It also generates wealth that is invested in a complex and diverse infrastructure that has in the past lent stability and predictability to market dynamics.

The Internet has “dis-intermediated” economic and social transactions. From EBay to on-line banking to heart.com, network interactions are replacing structured, mediated interactions. This new phenomenon puts many out of work, including travel agents, local bookstore owners, bank tellers, and marriage brokers. At the same time, it reduces transaction costs and democratizes access to resources and markets. As one effect of this shift, we are seeing a surge in freelance consultants and work-at-home opportunities.

What are we willing to invest in sustainable networks of relationship and information?

Looking to the Future

Whether we were conscious of them or not, our assumptions of the past established foundations for economic success. Year to year or economic cycle to cycle, the system experienced variations that turned winners into losers or losers into winners, but still the game was always the same. Those assumptions were based on the limitations of physical material and geographical space.

Today, in an Internet world of information and networks, those same limitations no longer apply. As we pass through the current economic depression and into an unknown future, a new game and its economic rules unfold. I suspect that success in this new world won’t look like success in the old, but failure won’t either. Those who step into their new positions of power and stand proudly in instincts for curiosity and caring may have the opportunity to experience a level of influence and freedom they never knew before.

How will we, individually and collectively, play and win this infinite game?

To find out more about human systems dynamics and how to see and influence patterns in complex systems, visit us at www.hsdinstitute.org.

Glenda Eoyang, Ph.D.
Executive Director
HSD Institute

References
Anderson, Chris. (2006) The Long Tail: Why the future of business is selling less of more. NY: Hyperion.
Eoyang, Glenda. (1996). Coping with chaos: Seven simple tools. Circle Pines, MN: Human Systems Dynamics Press.
Keynes, John Maynard. (1936). The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. New York: Classic Books America.
Marx, Karl. (1867). Capital: Criticism of the Political Economy. Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, Inc.
Olson, Ed & Glenda Eoyang. (2001). Facilitating organization change: lessons from complexity science. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer.
Smith, Adam. (1776) An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Building Networks

People build structures to bring order and predictability to their worlds. Agendas give structure to meetings; a calendar to tasks and time; folders to documents; and house numbers to neighborhoods. These are only a few of the simplest cases of a practice that defines identity, gives shape to culture, and simplifies the ordinary to release energy for the extraordinary.

Every structure brings both costs and benefits. The costs are real, but sometimes they’re invisible. Structures require investment of resources to construct and maintain. They lock in behaviors that may lose their usefulness over time. They require individuals and groups to agree and to commit to shared, systemic goals. They may lull us into thinking that change is not inevitable. On the other hand, the benefits of structure are overwhelming. They distribute goods across a group. They relieve individuals from constantly negotiating relationships. They concentrate resources that may take the form of art or innovation. They encourage discipline and reduce some kinds of waste.

At HSD Institute we try to build structures that generate the benefits of our internal and external interactions while limiting the costs.

• We look for a variety of structural options to select one that is most fit to purpose. For example, we use different information storage structures to track our finances, contact information for clients, and intellectual property.
• We review our structures often and change ones that no longer serve us well. For example, in our annual planning sessions, we review our operational infrastructure and plan for innovations that might be needed to adapt to an ever-changing environment.
• We don’t over structure. Some activities beg for structure because it makes them repeatable, reliable, and consistent. Others resist structure because they are unique, surprising, and diverse. We try to match the investment with the need. For example, the process we use to write proposals is very flexible, while our billing procedures are highly structured.
• We share infrastructure when possible. Many small businesses need similar supports and services. Sharing those resources conserves while optimizing learning. We contract with external services to support publishing and distribution, financial planning, computer support, and online learning. We choose to develop our own internal infrastructure for training and communications.
• We know when to let go. No structure is permanent in a human system. Even the ones that we hold most dear—family or faith community—are open to transformation over time. It is just as important to let go of a structure with grace, as it is to build it with courage and insight. For example, as our network has grown, we have adjusted our procedures and replaced some of the more intensive leadership activities with looser, more self-organizing structures.

Whether and how much to structure are important questions, but another critical question is about the kind of structure to build. We think of three structural architectures for human systems and try to choose the one that best fits a particular need and level of resources.

Blueprint. Architects use blueprints to communicate with their clients and their construction crews. Such a structure divides a whole into parts. It establishes categories and sorts things into those categories. Examples of such a structure in human systems are the school (grade levels), unions (management and labor or seniority), political parties (Democrat and Republican). While this structure makes things easy to identify, it constrains interaction and reduces innovation. It also contributes to various –isms when we overgeneralize or categorize unfairly or incorrectly. The benefit of a blueprint is that it facilitates the efficient distribution of people, functions, or objects.

Hierarchy. Many current management gurus dismiss hierarchy as antiquated and not agile, but I disagree. For some functions, a hierarchy is perfect. Such a structure sets clear levels of priority and relationship. Biologists use hierarchies to define the classification of plants and animals, the military uses it to manage material in times of peace, and programmers use hierarchies to create automated decision-making machines. The strength of a hierarchy is that it efficiently distributes resources and authority. Its weakness is that it depends on and reinforces a power structure that may be unfair or unresponsive to change.

Network. The network is the emerging structure for the 21st century. It consists of nodes (for example, individuals or organizations) who are connected to each other so that they receive, hold, and transport information, material, or energy. Social networks, like those supported by Facebook and LinkedIn, are great examples of how networks develop and function. Other examples include the internet, the energy grid, highway systems, and terrorist organizations. The strength of a network is that it gives both freedom and connection to participants, there is no natural boundary to its size, and it can recover quickly when disrupted. The drawbacks are ambiguity about who or what is “in charge,” autonomy and accountability of the parts, and a tendency to see from the point of view of the part rather than the whole. Networks efficiently distribute energy and information.

That is why networks are emerging as essential structures in our fast-paced, information-rich, massively entangled, and highly diverse world of the 21st century. That is why the science of networks is increasingly insightful as we build today for the human systems of the future.

This coming week, I will participate in a meeting that was designed to create a “Network of Networks.” Along with a design team and our federal clients, we are setting the conditions to encourage a national collaboration for Preventing Child Maltreatment and Promoting Well-being: Network for Action. Next month I will share with you the principles we used in the design, lessons we learned in the implementation, and our observations of an emerging future.

In the meantime, look around you. What kinds of structures influence your action? What structures do you create and/or encourage? Are those serving you well, or should you begin to recreate the structures that will fit the future you imagine? Share your insights with me by email. And find out more about human systems dynamics at www.hsdinstitute.org.

Glenda Eoyang, Ph.D.

Executive Director

HSD Institute

Co-evolution: Path to Innovation

Our culture idolizes inventors, creators, sources of innovation. We think of them as the brave souls who wander out into the unknown and return with ideas that transform our lives. We see magic in an imagination that inspires creativity. We marvel at the special thinking that draws something completely new out of the unknown. In this technology- and entertainment-driven society, our adoration of innovation is becoming a cult.

We are served in several ways by this perspective. The one thing it does not do is to make us more innovative. If the process of invention is magic, then we can admire it and be amazed by it, but we don’t expect to do it ourselves. We let ourselves and our teams think of innovation as something that happens among the young, in high tech industries, on the coasts, in the artist’s studio, in any place or time other than our own. Not here. We might try to come up with something new, but we’re not surprised when we don’t. It is magic, after all, and we can’t be blamed if we don’t have the magic. We convince ourselves that real innovation is rare. Breakthrough ideas are few and far between, so we cannot expect them from our everyday interactions.

What if we find another way? What if innovation is as common as avoiding a traffic jam, adapting a recipe, resolving an emerging conflict, or putting together a drop-dead outfit? Many ideas from nonlinear sciences focus on novelty, how it arises and how it is damped or amplified by complex interactions. What if we use these ideas to build new pathways into innovation? What if we find ways to think about innovation that empower each of us to wander into the unknown and return with ideas that transform?

The field of human systems dynamics draws its foundations from these nonlinear sciences. One HSD idea that might shine light on innovation is co-evolution. It gives us an innovative way to think about innovation.

Co-evolution is a metaphor drawn from biology and ecology. It posits that two entities can become entwined so that a change in one prompts a change in the other, and vice versa. Classic examples from biology include bumblebees and flowers, antibiotic resistant microbes, orchids and moths. Metaphoric applications in human systems can include obesity as a communicable disease, owners who grow to look like their dogs, and patterns of child maltreatment and other forms of domestic violence that spread from generation to generation in a family or from one household to another in a neighborhood.

What does this have to do with innovation? What if innovation is co-evolution? What if innovation comes from diving into the present and connecting in profound ways with the world rather than trying to step outside of it? If so, then one becomes more inventive by engaging with others and with the environment, by observing carefully, asking provocative questions, and converting observation into action. The process of innovation, then, becomes one of careful connection rather than lucky magic.

Consider some common examples of innovation, and see what happens if you think of them as ordinary co-evolution rather than extraordinary flight of fancy:

• Alexander Graham Bell knew about advances in electricity, the expanding commercial industry, increasingly geographically dispersed population, and a growing middle class. Those environmental changes spoke to him of an innovation that could improve long-distance communication.
• Art Fry of 3M put together failed glue, a church choir, a bunch of hymnals, and the now-ubiquitous post-it note evolved.
• The movie Social Network tells the whole co-evolutionary story of Mark Zuckerberg and his buddies developing and marketing Facebook. That idea didn’t come from nowhere, it grew from observation and exploitation of patterns in university experience of their “here and now.”

It is possible to think of all of these cases in terms that anyone can replicate. Maybe we won’t find an innovation to change the world as these did, but we can engage with our own worlds in ways that create surprising connections and uncover opportunity. It isn’t magic, but it does take a very special kind of work. Here are some of the capacities that feed into innovation as a co-evolutionary strategy:

• Observe. Don’t waste a good surprise. Pause and wonder when something unexpected arises. It may be the weak signal foreshadowing something important to come.
• Connect. Nothing co-evolves in isolation. The key is connecting in inquiry with the environment, with current and historical patterns, and with other thoughtful people.
• Question. Our assumptions blind us to the world around and lock us into our long-held problems and their failed solutions. A good question can break through the expected to discover the possible.
• Try it out. Of course expectations based on past experience will make us question anything we haven’t experienced. To see something new, we really have to see it. Try a new idea out, see what happens, adjust and try again. We call this adaptive action.
• Reward thoughtful risk taking. Not every surprise is full of potential. Not every experiment will end as expected. Not everything will move directly toward new insight. But something, sometime will. Patience with self and others makes it easier to test out co-evolutionary opportunities until the big one emerges.

I invite you to take one day to focus on your own environment in search of ordinary opportunities for extraordinary co-evolving innovation. What will you create? Send me a note and let me know how it goes. And find out more about human systems dynamics at www.hsdinstitute.org.

Glenda Eoyang
Executive Director and Founder
HSD Institute

Sabbaticals

Kristin came to see us yesterday. It was a real treat! She is an HSD Associate, and she and her family are on sabbatical. Kristin, her husband, and their 10 year-old daughter are traveling around the world this year. They plan to discover themselves and each other, connect with fascinating people and places, and come back refreshed and refocused. At this mid-point in the journey, they came home for a visit, which included an afternoon with Royce and me. Her stories made me smell the soil in Northern France, engage in dialogue in a London neighborhood, and wrestle with the culture shock of coming home to a world both same and different. She absolutely glowed. Rested and relaxed, she shared highlights of the past, questions of the present, and hopes for the future. When she left, I felt that I’d been on sabbatical, too. That’s what I’d like to share with you today—the hope that you’ll go on sabbatical with Kristin and me.

From Latin sabbaticus, from Greek sabbatikos, from Hebrew Shabbat, a sabbatical is literally a “ceasing” or a rest from work. In some cultures, young adults or those reaching middle or old age take time away from the world for reflection and transition. Academics include the expectation for sabbatical in their employment agreements—at least they used to. The arrangement reflects the belief that academics are scholars as well as teachers, and that they need time to focus on learning to enrich both their fields of study and their engagements with students.

For most of us, our culture does not allow for such an indulgent escape. Especially in these times of hyperchange and 24/7 connectivity, we are expected never to cease. I invite you to do the unexpected. I invite you into a sabbatical. In fact, if you’re reading these words, you are already taking a time out from your routine life. Congratulations!

One of the lessons we’ve learned is that time seems to contract as complex change increases. I think that is why time is such a precious commodity for my clients and me. Many things are happening around us. We are increasingly engaged in events that are distant. We have more information than we can digest about events both near and far. Our schedules are squeezing us. Time, as we know it, cannot hold so much for so long.

This connection between time and complex change opens a crack of opportunity for us, though. When nothing is happening, time seems to expand. We can use this discovery to our benefit by choosing to go on sabbatical—not for a year, but perhaps for moments at a time. We can use our in-betweens as sabbaticals. Rather than using moments of transition to worry about the past or prepare for the future, we can use them to cease. When the elevator doors close, take a deep breath and listen to the proverbial music. When you’re stuck in a traffic jam, turn off the radio and feel your heart beat. When you’re standing in line at the company cafeteria, look into the eyes of the one who picks your pickles.

As you drive to work, as you wake up or go to sleep, as you walk from one room to another, take a deep breath, cease what you’re doing and just be. It may only take seconds, but when you return, you will glow. Maybe not as much as Kristin, but more than you did before. Open time, and it will open for you.

Then get back to work!

A fascinating community of people will be gathering in Columbus, Ohio June 24 to July 1 to share a sabbatical experience http://www.aliainstitute.org/summer-institute-2011/. ALIA Summer Institute is the epitome of ceasing because it is based on two very powerful disciplines of being. One, creative process, teaches us to draw from experience and perception to generate something new in the moment. The other discipline, mindfulness, teaches us to clear our minds of clutter and breathe into what is. Together, in the context of the Summer Institute, professionals take time out to see how these powerful disciplines might inform leadership practice.

For the third year in a row, Wendy Morris and I will be leading a module entitled Adaptive Action, Artful Perception. It is always great fun for me—and a transforming learning experience for students—to braid Wendy’s wisdom of movement and spirit with my insights about complex dynamics of human systems. It is also immense fun to hang out with interesting and committed leaders from every sector and around the world.

Please consider taking this particular sabbatical with us.

For more lessons from human systems dynamics, visit us at www.hsdinstitute.org.

Resilience in Human Systems

I’ve been thinking about resilience lately. It seems there are many, far too many, occasions to marvel at the resilience of human beings:

• A trip to Burkina Faso in Western Africa, where heat and poverty don’t keep the locals from a pleasant demeanor and creative expression.
• Stories from Japan about individuals and families who wait with patience and move forward with courage.
• Conversations with committed and experienced public servants who are insulted and excluded from policy making, even when (perhaps because) they know the dire consequences of public greed and lack of empathy.
• Photos of crowds around the world rising up in the face of fascism and torture.

Each of these situations is challenging almost beyond my imagination, but these communities recover—sometimes even thrive—in response to overwhelming odds. In retrospect, you can describe such resilience as a personal or cultural pattern that is inborn or inbred. You can recognize it in hindsight, but it can only be developed with foresight. I’m thinking about how human systems dynamics, and our understanding of patterns of performance, can help us build resilience to prepare for the unpredictable challenges that lie in our future.

The key may be in a simple definition of “resilience” based on the patterns of the natural world. One way to think about resilience comes from physical science—stable and unstable equilibrium. An object or a system is in equilibrium when it is at rest. All the forces that would move it one way are balanced by forces that would move it another way. The coffee cup on my desk, the teams in a tug of war game, the ballerina en pointe—all of these are in equilibrium.

Not all equilibrium states are the same, however. Sometimes, equilibrium is “stable.” Stable equilibrium means that if the balance is disturbed, the system will bounce back to where it was before. A pendulum on a clock, a marble in a round-bottomed bowl, water in a pond—any one of these systems will recover from a disruption and return to its earlier, more stable state.

Sometimes a system will be in equilibrium, but it is “unstable.” It may look still and balanced, but when it is disturbed, it doesn’t go back to its initial state. Instead, it moves to a new equilibrium position. The ballerina, a pencil balanced on its point, a toddler, a learning bicyclist—all of these systems are balanced for a moment, but they are vulnerable because a small change can send them careening off into some new place. They are in a state of unstable equilibrium.

So, what does that have to do with Burkina Faso, the Japanese, Egypt, or your organization?

We can think of resilience for an individual or a group as stable equilibrium—the system is balanced and is able to return to its original state after it is disturbed. The lack of resilience is unstable equilibrium—the system doesn’t return after being disrupted. We can use this distinction to build our capacity for resilience in three ways.

1. Take the opportunity in quiet times to gauge the stability of your own equilibrium with the following questions:

• How quickly do I recover from little disturbances?
• How comfortable am I in my current state and how afraid of disruption?
• What was the last time I was really surprised (positively or negatively), and how did I respond?

2. Assess the factors that influence the stability of your equilibrium with the following questions:

• How many and what kinds of connections hold me in place?
• Who are the people that I interact with each day and how do they make me more comfortable or less comfortable?
• What resources (emotional, financial, relationships, etc.) do I have and how long and how well could they sustain me?

3. Test your own equilibrium to build your resilient capacity by:

• Challenging your own assumptions and values
• Playing “what-if” games with others and by yourself
• Noticing how you respond to the small, everyday disruptions of life and finding ways to react with more grace and good humor

None of us knows how we would respond in such extreme stress as the Japanese, Egyptians, civil servants, or Burkinabe. We also do not know what challenges await us in a future that will test our stability, but we do know that our equilibria will be tested in the months and years to come. Will we find a stable equilibrium? Will we respond with resilience?

And, like many HSD concepts, resilience has a flip side. It is possible to be too resilient. That happens when the stable place is not serving you, your organization, or your community well. Libya has a “resilient” leader; an obese person has a “resilient” relationship to food; a dogmatist has a “resilient” commitment to a single idea. In all of these cases, the resilience may be holding a dysfunctional pattern in place. The same questions that helped you build healthy resilience can help you avoid the wrong kind. You can ask: What is the nature of my stability around the issue? What factors reinforce my stable position? How can I shift my equilibrium toward less stability?

So, it looks like HSD can help us think about resilience, but even more than that, it can help shape choices and inform actions to strengthen useful resilience and weaken resilience that blocks life and growth. With the idea of stable and unstable equilibria in mind, we can learn many lessons from people who deal with overwhelming challenges every day.

To see how human systems dynamics can support you as you see, understand, and influence patterns in your life and work, visit us at www.hsdinstitute.org.

Glenda Eoyang, Ph.D.
Executive Director
Human Systems Dynamics Institute

Questions in Chaos

These are turbulent times. Cairo, Madison, and Christchurch all speak to us of stable systems destroyed by social, political, or natural forces. Each of these crises is unique, but they all share the patterns of unpredictability and turbulence. In spite of the personal tragedies they represent, they offer hope because they promise to transcend the problems of the old stability. They are full of fear because they promise to transcend the stability of the old problems. This pattern—of dissolving order and emerging chaos—is becoming rather commonplace these days in every scale of the human system. Individuals, families, neighborhoods, corporations, industries, economies, nations, and global regions are breaking old patterns and evolving toward new ones.

Other people write about the reasons for such massive disruption. Still others praise the one or rant against the other. Though my personal views are strong, human systems dynamics and its study of systemic patterns are without opinion. As Royce Holladay says, “There ain’t no naughty or nice” that we can know. One situation might seem better for system sustainability and health, but we cannot know for sure. In a trivial but familiar example, it might be a stroke of bad luck to be sick, but if the sickness keeps me from some fate even more dire, then it seems like a pretty good thing.

Even if I could collect all the data in the world, I cannot know whether a particular pattern will be positive or negative because the character of a pattern may depend on events in the past that I cannot know. Fitness might be determined by a shift in some invisible variable at another place in the system. Success might be completely redefined by new patterns and opportunities that emerge in the distant future. We cannot know in a given moment which disruption will result in new, more productive patterns; which ones will remain locked in chaos; or which ones will settle into a stability that is worse than the one that preceded it.

Even if no one can know, some of us still have the responsibility to act. In the most turbulent situations, parents care for their children; leaders speak and act on behalf of others; clerics defend and protect beliefs; professionals contribute their skills and knowledge. Everyone takes action without full knowledge of the present and without any certainty about the future.

How do we bridge between our confusion and our action? With good questions. Here are three sets of questions, drawn from HSD theory and practice, that we can ask ourselves in the midst of chaos to help inform action.

• What patterns are beginning to emerge?
• So what would the world be like if those patterns were amplified?
• Now what actions can I take to amplify (or damp) the patterns as they emerge?

Based on news stories in the West, as the demonstrations in Cairo slowed down, two distinct patterns emerged. People formed work groups to clean up the litter that had been left in the square. Men brutally attacked women who had stood beside them in protest. Both of these patterns emerged from the chaos, and individuals have a choice about which of those patterns they choose to reinforce and which to denounce.

• What of these many changes are likely to affect me (us)?
• So what difference will those changes make to me and those I care about?
• Now what can I do to respond in ways that may use the change in positive ways?

As strange as it might appear to political activists in the West, the Egyptian military was seen as the strongest force for justice in a time of turbulence. In their public statements, military leadership echoed these three questions as they searched for ways to support the new world without losing all the benefits of the old.

• What are my options for action?
• So what are the possible implications of each of those options?
• Now what will I do, and how will I know whether it worked?

Facebook fueled the dissent with information about who, what, when and where. When the internet was shut down, people found new ways to collect and share intelligence. At each point, individual people were exploring what was possible and taking action to use the resources and opportunities that were open to them. They chose to take action and to adapt when another option looked better.

These sets of questions are based on what we call Adaptive Action—What? So what? Now what? This cycle of questions can inform action, even in the most difficult and turbulent times. Repeated moment to moment or crisis to crisis, these questions support adaptive decision making and responsible action. Whether conscious or not, many brave and gifted people all over the world have taken adaptive action in the past few weeks, and the emergent patterns show great promise. But we cannot know. We can only ask:

• What sense can we make of the news that we hear?
• So what can the emerging patterns tell us about what it means to be human in the 21st century?
• Now what can I do to build my own adaptive capacity to prepare for the future unknown?

For more information about HSD and adaptive action, visit our website at www.hsdinstitute.org or visit our social network site at www.hsdcommunity.ning.com.

Glenda Eoyang, Ph.D.
Executive Director
Human Systems Dynamics Institute