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“It turns out that an eerie type of chaos can lurk just behind a facade of order - and yet, deep inside the chaos lurks an even eerier type of order.” The Butterfly Effect is one signature of a system in chaos. This chaos isn’t your garden variety chaos, and you won’t find this butterfly in your garden, either. I feel some urgency to clarify these distinctions when I watch the chaos that lies behind the façade of order, and the order in the chaos, of this election season in the US. I think it might help us to see the patterns of our “civil” society, to understand those patterns for what they are, and to take action to create the ones we want to create and to leave to our children.
Manage Strategic Change
August 4, 2016
Change is changing. Change initiatives with pre-determined goals and predictable processes seldom get off the ground or crash soon after takeoff. We will offer an alternative that creates a path for change as you and your organization walk it. The disciplines of Adaptive Action and Pattern Logic help leverage the assets of the system and generate change that is flexible and sustainable. Build your adaptive capacity and create a unique and emerging path toward the change you envision.
Have you ever sat in a meeting that you knew was going nowhere? The conversation continued to swirl around questions no one in the room could answer. You all bemoaned the uncertainty of it all. Or you were convinced that this time, one more conversation would get the answers you knew were out there. Or you were just stuck and didn’t know what to do, other than explore the question again. At best those conversations are frustrating. Often the unanswered questions just suck your energy and leave you tired and defeated. At worst, they are dangerous. They can trigger desperation that leaves you open to magical thinking.
Are you faced with rapid change, unexpected consequences, and unpleasant surprises? You are not alone. In these times of massive interdependence, economic disruption, technological transformation, and globalization, traditional tools and
techniques often magnify or mask problems rather than solving them.
Some people have a gift for seeing patterns in chaos. They make great artists and politicians and parents of two-year-olds. Pattern spotting does not come naturally to others, they look at a mess, and see only the mess. In HSD, we depend on being able to see deep simplicity that hides under the surface of chaos, so seeing patterns is a core competency for HSD practitioners. This guide will show you how.
Dealing with a performance issue is a bit like dealing with a hip injury: it can feel like a real pain in the gluteus maximus. It can also change your perspective on managing people, particularly when you ask the question, “Am I dealing with a problem or a pattern?” One of my clients—let’s call him Bob—met with me to talk about a performance problem he faced. He called it a “problem employee.” This employee was behind on work assignments, increasingly absent, and causing frustration within the team.
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