{"id":369,"date":"2010-07-16T00:11:05","date_gmt":"2010-07-16T00:11:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.renando.com\/blog\/?p=369"},"modified":"2021-01-15T21:52:04","modified_gmt":"2021-01-15T21:52:04","slug":"reality-of-chaos-theory-ignore-control-embrace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sidewaysthoughts.com\/blog\/2010\/07\/reality-of-chaos-theory-ignore-control-embrace\/","title":{"rendered":"The reality of chaos theory \u2013 will you ignore, control or embrace?"},"content":{"rendered":"

They say 70% of strategic initiatives fail, and of those that succeed are only 60% effective<\/a>. In an environment of uncertaintly, chaos theory presents a likely explanation.\u00a0 My question to you is: will you 1)<\/strong> pretend it does not exist; 2)<\/strong> attempt to conform it to your will; or 3)<\/strong> accept and embrace it with open arms?<\/p>\n

\"Chaos<\/p>\n

Three approaches to change: strategic, systems and chaos<\/h2>\n

\"Change<\/p>\n

Change is a constant.\u00a0 Ten years ago I pondered what to do with my life, without considering concepts we deal with now such as a global financial crisis, climate change, worship of the reality TV celebrity, the rise of social media, and the progression of technology towards a more mobile market.\u00a0\u00a0 Within this changing environment, we are meant to plot career paths and organisations are supposed to plan strategic roadmaps.\u00a0 I wonder if we are meant to be clairvoyant, genius, or simply insane!<\/p>\n

The approach to the change dilemma that seems the easiest to grasp is a strategic approach to change.\u00a0 One of the first contemporary approaches was Kurt Lewin\u2019s unfreeze, move, freeze model<\/a>, released in 1947.\u00a0 This approach seems very attractive to the uninitiated manager, as they declare \u201cI will just shake things up, move things around a bit, and make mandates after the fact.\u00a0 It (and I) will be great and successful!<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

The challenge with this approach is that it can assume a \u201cbest way\u201d; that we know everything about the situation before starting our inevitable path towards change.\u00a0 The systems approach attempts to address this discrepancy.\u00a0 Around 1951, biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy used the environment as a metaphor <\/a>to identify the myriad of interactions individuals and organisations have with their environment. Finally, we had a framework to holistically map all of the inputs and outputs for our particular situation.<\/p>\n

Except there are a lot of inputs and outputs, and an infinite combination of variations to those inputs and outputs.\u00a0 So many that anyone less than Super-Manager throws their hands in the air at situation that could only be identified as chaos.\u00a0 As such, chaos theory gained ground in the 1960s with Edward Norton Lorenz <\/a>and his analogies to weather patterns, coining the term \u201cthe butterfly effect\u201d to describe how seemingly insignificant influences can have unforseen changes of a disproportionate magnitude.<\/p>\n

Supporting Chaos with process and controls<\/h2>\n

\"Chaos<\/p>\n

The truth behind chaos theory\u2019s premise can be found in topical headlines such as \u201cTen brands that may disappear in 2011<\/a>\u201d\u00a0 or \u201cCompanies affected by the Deepwater Oil Spill<\/a>\u201d. Ask any of the organisations mentioned in these articles if they felt approaches such as a planned strategic approach <\/strong>or a holistic system approach <\/strong>prepared them for what they are facing. I suspect they will say \u201cNo\u201d.<\/p>\n

Chaos theory <\/strong>is not an easy out for managers to justify a lack of planning or controls in their organisations, however.\u00a0 On the contrary, acceptance of uncertainty mandates a solid foundation of normalcy to support an environment of constant change.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This foundation is in the form of policies, processes, procedures and systems, in that order.\u00a0 Volumes could be written on practical frameworks that are available for implementing the solid foundation (ISO 9000 and the Project management Body of Knowledge being two I rely on).<\/p>\n

For now, I am focusing on a shift in our perspectives.<\/p>\n

Choose your response to chaos<\/h2>\n

As I recently mentioned in my birthday post<\/a>, being a production manager in a leading digital studio has many challenges.\u00a0 In addition to the expected changes of new clients and projects, the studio faces impacts such as global financial fluctuations, dynamic technology directions, and changing employment cultures.\u00a0 Over the past three years, I have felt my perspective shift through the three phases of strategic change<\/strong>, systems approach<\/strong>, and chaos acceptance<\/strong> that took academic change management literature\u00a0 three decades to acknowledge.<\/p>\n

I will share three options I have identified from that process, choices we all have in the reality of today\u2019s commercial mandate:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Avoid and deny<\/strong>
    \nPretend the approach of strategically planning out change is sufficient.\u00a0 If you are really good, you can keep up the facade long after your company goes under or you are transitioned out of your role.<\/li>\n
  2. Control and contain
    \n<\/strong>Try to contain the chaos.\u00a0 Large companies trying to control communication channels in today\u2019s social-media rich environment is a good analogy.\u00a0 So are managers who burn out from trying to control the uncontrollable (Chad raises his hand here).<\/li>\n
  3. Support and embrace
    \n<\/strong>Change steals your most valuable resource, your time.\u00a0 If you spend all your time in operational activities, you will be simply taken along for the ride.\u00a0 Invest in the foundational processes to make the daily grind as efficient and flexible as possible.\u00a0 When unplanned change does happen, you will be free to embrace and take advantage of the change.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    They say 70% of strategic initiatives fail, and of those that succeed are only 60% effective. In an environment of uncertaintly, chaos theory presents a… Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5655,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[184,186],"tags":[29,30,41,82,85,99,128],"ecosystem_role":[],"class_list":["post-369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-about-organisations","category-about-society","tag-change-management","tag-chaos-theory","tag-edward-norton-lorenz","tag-kurt-lewin","tag-ludwig-von-bertalanffy","tag-personal-development","tag-systems-theory","bwp-masonry-item","bwp-col-3"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sidewaysthoughts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sidewaysthoughts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sidewaysthoughts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sidewaysthoughts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sidewaysthoughts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=369"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sidewaysthoughts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7621,"href":"https:\/\/sidewaysthoughts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369\/revisions\/7621"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sidewaysthoughts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sidewaysthoughts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sidewaysthoughts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sidewaysthoughts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369"},{"taxonomy":"ecosystem_role","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sidewaysthoughts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ecosystem_role?post=369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}