Bill Hendry asks:
>In reading Wheatley's Leadership and the New Science I am left wondering:
>
>How can organizations maximize chaos and use it as an opportunity for
>growth and change?
>
>What is needed to make this shift?
I believe the answer lies in losing control. Let's stop pretending our
actions cause specific outcomes. Let's start accepting the fact that our
actions lead to outcomes we may not have imagined yet. Remember what Dr.
Wheatley reports happens to particles under observation in the double-slit
experiment? They behave in a way to give us something to observe. Read
again "The Participative Nature of the Universe." In particular, the
paragraph:
"Consider how different it is, in quantum terms, when the wave
of information spreads out broadly everywhere in the organization...At
each of those intersections between observer and the data, an
interpretation will appear, one that is specific to that act of
observation. Instead of losing so many of the potentialities contained
within the data wave, the multiplicity of interactions can elicit many of
those potentials, giving a genuine richness to the data that is lost when
we restrict information access to only a few people....The outcome of such
a process has to be a much more diverse and richer sense of what is going
on and what needs to be done."
The words that come to mind have a melody. "Let it be, let it be, let it
be, oh let it be. Whisper words of wisdom, let it be, let it be."
--Ginger Shafer The Leadership Dimension "Bringing Leadership to Life" vshafer@azstarnet.com
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>