Tippy Organizations and Leadership: Engaging an Organizational World of Vulnerability

Living and Leading on a Dancing Landscape/ Warped Plane

I would suggest there is an even greater challenge for leaders and their coaches during these early years of the 21st Century.  Organizational earthquakes are occurring all of the time. We may find as coaches that our clients are living not in a complex rugged landscape, but in what Miller and Page (2007) call a “dancing landscape.” Priorities are not only interconnected, they are constantly shifting, and new alliances between old competing polarities are being forged. Clearly, when a world of complexity collides with a world of uncertainty and turbulence, the landscape begins to dance and we, as organizational coaches, learn how to dance with our clients. Both we (as coaches) and the leaders we are coaching are increasingly challenged to develop superlative strategic thinking and communication skills as participants in the ongoing dance. This is the challenge I was referring to earlier when writing about the evolutionary relationship between size and deviant impact.

 Navigating on a Warped Plane

One of the most important and sometimes overlooked concepts to come out of chaos theory is the observed tendency of all fluid systems to bifurcate (split into two or more pathways). In essence, when fluid systems begin to break up (as a function of the speed at which the fluid is moving or as a result of the introduction of a foreign, intrusive element) parts of the system tend to move in different directions. These diverse movements of particles, units or people will, in turn, form into two or more coherent subsystems that may later subdivide again. Thus, if I pour a small glass of water on a smooth surface (such as a table or countertop) it will tend not to flow in one direction or remain together as one coherent mass. Rather, it will soon break into two or more sub-streams that will flow in two or more directions across the surface of the table or countertop.

The noted biologist, Conrad Waddington describes this same tendency toward bifurcation in his model of chreods—warped planes on which objects move in an unpredictable manner. Waddington uses the metaphor of a ball being placed at the top of a slopping plane (thin sheet of metal or plastic). As we bend and warp the plane, ridges and valleys are formed. When the ball is placed on the plane, the inherent dynamics of the plane become evident. The ball will begin to roll straight down the plane until it encounters one of the ridges. At this point a series of oscillations tend to occur. The ball moves back and forth before it eventually begins to roll down one of the valleys, and picks up speed again.

If several balls are rolling down the plane at the same time, this first ridge will become a point of bifurcation for the entire system. Some balls will move in one direction (depending on the pattern of oscillation when encountering the ridge) and roll down one valley, while other balls will move in a different direction, rolling down one or more of the other valleys. A ball may gain enough momentum to roll over the top of one ridge into a second valley. If there is not sufficient momentum, the ball will remain in the current valley. Thus, a few critical moments in the life of the ball’s roll down the plane make a major difference in the outcome of the roll. The pattern of oscillation determines which valley is chosen and whether or not the momentum is sufficient for the ball to shift to another valley. There is a cluster of conditions (in the form of valleys and ridges) that define the specific alternative courses to be taken by the ball.