The Supersymmetry of Distributed Being
January 14th, 2010 | Published in Articles
Excerpt from The Superpeforming CEO
From Chapter 14: Distributed Being
If you look into nature, into these places of community, you will find an amazing degree of alignment; there is a beautiful, symmetrical pattern. No friction, no member out of alignment—the flow is seamless. These organisms all behave intelligently, even though their members are unaware of the big picture and there is no “central controller” to guide them. According to futurist and complexity author Kevin Kelly, they are out of control—a state he describes as “distributed being.” Since this is the preferred operating mode of complex biological forms that have thrived for millions of years, Kelly suggests that our own increasingly complex organizations will inevitably follow the same pattern. In the simplest terms, they solve problems by drawing on masses of relatively simple and locally autonomous agents, rather than a single, super-intelligent executive branch. They are bottom-up, self-organizing systems. In the language of complexity science, they are complex adaptive systems (CAS) displaying emergent features.
- Super Alignment
For organizations, reaching anywhere close to this level of performance is only possible in a decentralized environment. But decentralization of decision rights requires corresponding levels of personal responsibility.
Agile project teams are an excellent example.
George: “Birds flocking, fish schooling, bees swarming, all move effortlessly in the same direction, it is a more efficient way to forage and travel, the whole uses less energy to operate in this way. Somehow great teams and great organizations are able to operate as something approaching this ‘frictionless’ state. There is something extra–something invisible at work.
“Some companies become fossilized by centralizing all authority. This is suboptimal. Decisions have to be made as close to the customer as possible, at the lowest level of knowledge and skill. Organizations are patterns of relationships. Conversations are the heart and soul of organizational life. Conversations shape commitment to the organization and create a sense of what is possible. Like Buckminster Fuller’s trimtab on the rudder of a ship, conversations seem insignificant, but have tremendous hidden power. Conversations characterize everyday work life and negotiations between people in the organization and their customers. They determine the quality of service and the overall effectiveness of the company. In many organizations, conversations are negative and blocked or fall into otherwise destructive loops.
“Change cannot be imposed or controlled from the top or from the outside. It is better to work with people at all company levels to help them discover for themselves what is possible and what can be done better. This helps to facilitate new conversations, which often cross boundaries within organizations. By focusing on those conversations at the core of the organization, the greatest leverage can be created, for executives working on strategy, teams working on projects, the whole organization working on its next transformation, or any other critical business function. Systems, structures and processes all help the effective organization, but they count for little if the conversations and relationships are not real. Imposing command-and-control solutions to business problems, especially around knowledge work, has proven to be almost completely ineffective.”
