1. Emergence in Complex Systems

In this short video, Steve Lansing from the University of Arizona explains how insights from the new field of complexity science can give us a better understanding of the dynamics of social systems.

2. What is Emergence?

Since its inception in 1992, The Berkana Institute has been experimenting with the lifecycle of emergence: how living systems begin as networks, shift to intentional communities of practice, and evolve into powerful systems capable of global influence. The following material has been excerpted from the article: Using Emergence to Take Social Innovation to Scale by Margaret Wheatley & Deborah Frieze.

What is Emergence?

Emergence violates so many of our Western assumptions of how change happens that it often takes quite a while to understand it. In nature, change never happens as a result of top-down, pre-conceived strategic plans, or from the mandate of any single individual or boss. Change begins as local actions spring up simultaneously in many different areas. If these changes remain disconnected, nothing happens beyond each locale. However, when they become connected, local actions can emerge as a powerful system with influence at a more global or comprehensive level. (Global here means a larger scale, not necessarily the entire planet.)

These powerful emergent phenomena appear suddenly and surprisingly. Think about how the Berlin Wall suddenly came down, how the Soviet Union ended, how corporate power quickly came to dominate globally. In each case, there were many local actions and decisions, most of which were invisible and unknown to each other, and none of which was powerful enough by itself to create change. But when these local changes coalesced, new power emerged. What could not be accomplished by diplomacy, politics, protests, or strategy suddenly happened. And when each materialized, most were surprised. Emergent phenomena always have these characteristics: They exert much more power than the sum of their parts; they always possess new capacities different from the local actions that engendered them; they always surprise us by their appearance.

It is important to note that emergence always results in a powerful system that has many more capacities than could ever be predicted by analyzing the individual parts. We see this in the behavior of hive insects such as bees and termites. Individual ants possess none of the intelligence or skills that are in the hive. No matter how intently scientists study the behavior of individual ants, they can never see the behavior of the hive. Yet once the hive forms, each ant acts with the intelligence and skillfulness of the whole.

This aspect of emergence has profound implications for social entrepreneurs. Instead of developing them individually as leaders and skillful practitioners, we would do better to connect them to like-minded others and create the conditions for emergence. The skills and capacities needed by them will be found in the system that emerges, not in better training programs.

Because emergence only happens through connections, Berkana has developed a four stage model that catalyzes connections as the means to achieve global level change: Name, Connect, Nourish, Illuminate (see Appendix). We focus on discovering pioneering efforts and naming them as such. We then connect these efforts to other similar work globally. We nourish this network in many ways, but most essentially through creating opportunities for learning and sharing experiences and shifting into communities of practice. We also illuminate these pioneering efforts so that many more people will learn from them. We are attempting to work intentionally with emergence so that small, local efforts can become a global force for change.

The full article can be downloaded from the Cauldron section. 

3. The Nature of Emergence

By adopting a complexity perspective we can look at social change in completely different ways. We start to realise that [complex systems] cannot be changed according to plan or desire; instead the best we can do is to try to build new connections and relationships so that a process of self-organisation can take place. 

The following excerpt is from Culture and Complexity: New Insights on Organisational Change, by UK change consultant Richard Seel.

The Nature of Emergence

Emergence is one of the key attributes of complex systems. It is both mysterious and commonplace and very hard to define. Kevin Mihata does as well as any:

…the process by which patterns or global-level structures arise from interactive local-level processes. This “structure” or “pattern” cannot be understood or predicted from the behavior or properties of the component units alone. (The Persistence of Emergence 1997:31)

Most change in complex systems is emergent; that is to say it comes about as a result of the interactions between the ‘agents’ in the system. In an organisation the agents are people—themselves complex systems. Complexity theory suggests that when there is enough connectivity between the agents emergence is likely to occur spontaneously.

The concept of emergence is slippery when we try to examine it in detail but some things are becoming clearer. What emerges is a new pattern, at a higher level in the system from the agents which created it, and the new pattern can feed back down to influence the further development of the lower level (figure 2).

Figure 2—Emergent process: a system of diverse agents (A), richly connected (B), gives rise to an emergent pattern (C), which feeds back down into the system (D).

Figure 2 may be somewhat misleading since it shows a big new pattern emerging. In practice most emergences will be quite small, often appearing to be insignificant. However, appearances can be deceptive since complexity theory suggests that it may take no more ‘effort’ to create a large emergence than a small one.

The work of Per Bak and his colleagues (Bak 1997) shows that when a system is in a state of self-organised criticality it will be subject to changes of all sizes simply as a result of small outside influences. Their example is that of a sand pile, built up by the dropping of a steady stream of individual grains, a bit like the sand inside an egg timer. Once the pile has reached the critical state a single grain of sand dropping onto it may have no observable effect or it may cause a small slippage or even a major avalanche.

The size and frequency of changes follow a power law: that is, the are lots of small changes, fewer medium-sized changes and very few large changes. The point, however, is that the size of the response is not dependent on the size of the stimulus. Once the system is in the critical state even the smallest stimulus may cause major changes.

Human systems are a lot more complex than sand piles but there is some evidence to suggest that they, too, can get into this critical state (see Dooley & Van de Ven 1999). If so, this has profound implications for our attempts to change organisational culture. We should move away from trying to change organisations and instead look at how we might help them become ready for change—to move to a state of self-organised criticality.

Practical implications

The focus of organisational change interventions moves away from ‘planning change’ and onto ‘facilitating emergence’. If we are looking to help a new paradigm emerge we need a new way to think about the role of the change agent—whether external consultant or internal OD specialist. We need a new metaphor.

One possibility is change agent as ‘midwife’. It seems to work reasonably well: the good midwife develops a personal relationship with the pregnant woman; she recognises the uniqueness of each encounter, treating the woman as a living being not a machine; she knows that birth should not be forced but assisted; she understands the importance of working with the body’s natural processes.

Most change agents seem to have a much more mechanical view of themselves—how can you be a good consultant, how can you re-engineer or fix an organisation, if you don’t have a full ‘tool kit’? This is the complement of the prevailing metaphor of ‘organisation as machine’ which has been around since the time of Taylor and Fayol (Morgan 1997). It implies that the change agent can stand outside the system, diagnose and understand its working parts and then intervene to redesign it to operate in a more effective way. The midwife metaphor, on the other hand, has the merit of seeing the organisation as a complex self-organising entity to be worked with rather than worked on. But it does not go far enough; it still places the change agent outside the system. The complex systems approach invites us to work in the system, to give up the illusion that we can comprehend its complexity and to adopt more modest aims.

One approach is that adopted by Patricia Shaw and Bill Critchley (Shaw 1997). They choose to work both formally and informally in organisations helping people have conversations which they might otherwise not have had. There is no linear plan of campaign; instead they work towards helping the organisation become ready for its own transformation. In Bak’s terms they help to remove barriers and open up channels so that the system can self-organise to a critical configuration, where change becomes possible.

An epidemiological approach

Some organisations need more structure and reassurance. Recently, working with the IT division of a major public service organisation looking to change its culture, I developed a different, but equivalent, approach which was both radical enough to offer the prospect of significant change while being contained enough to keep their anxiety at manageable levels. The model I proposed was based on an epidemiological approach to culture change. This is not new; the French anthropologist Dan Sperber (1996) has been using the model for some years although not in the context of organisational development. In terms of this model an appropriate metaphor for the change agent may be something like a virus—except that this virus is benign and welcomed by the host body.

Together with my colleague, Rita McGee, I designed a workshop to be rolled out to everyone in the division. Its explicit aim was to sensitise people to the power of culture and paradigms and to encourage them to discover a compelling vision of a future culture which would motivate them to behave differently. Most importantly, we encouraged all participants to become change agents or ‘missionaries’, spreading the word and engaging in different kinds of conversation with their colleagues. Again, our aim was to help them self-organise.

Thus, by building greater connectivity between people and by encouraging them to make different meaning about their day-to-day working lives we aimed to help the organisation remove barriers and open up channels so that it could self-organise to the critical position and become much more able to change. Organisational change is sometimes characterised as either top-down or bottom-up. Our approach isn’t really either of these. Instead it could be characterised as middle-out: everyone is involved and there is no preferred starting place.

Things are never this simple, of course. Once any real degree of change seems likely the organisation’s ‘immune system’ will start to resist the infection from new ideas and practices. Some people will try to reassert the power they feel they are losing; some will be cynical and pour scorn on the process; some will feel afraid and withdraw from the changes. This is where the senior management have a significant role to play. They must act as an immuno-suppressant, trying to damp down resistance and to nurture and encourage the new behaviours. Until a critical mass is achieved the change is very frail and can be easily destroyed. 

Your can download the full text of this article here.

4. Conditions For Emergence

If an organisation [or any other complex social system] is change-ready, even a small stimulus can bring about major change. What follows is an edited excerpt from Emergence in Organisations by Richard Seel.  It suggests some of the things to which we might pay attention in order to help an organisation become ‘change-ready’.  

1 Connectivity

Change in an organisation is a change in the patterns of relationships between those who are members of the organisation together with new patterns of interaction with the environment. Connectivity thus becomes crucial. Existing patterns of connection ‘ossify’ and without more connectivity they cannot change.

Too little and too much connectivity can inhibit emergence. Though too much connectivity is rarely an issue in organisations as a whole, it can frequently be an issue in very tightly bonded teams. When connectivity is too high, diversity is excluded and groupthink is a very likely outcome (see below).  But in general organisations suffer from too little connectivity and building connections—especially across boundaries—becomes vital for preparing an organisation for change. 

2 Diversity

Diversity is crucial for emergent change to occur. Strictly speaking, it is an increase in diversity which is required for change to occur. The greater the diversity in an organisation, the greater the ‘possibility space’ which it can explore. What is needed is diversity of all kinds—cultural, intellectual and emotional. 

3 Rate of information flow

If connectivity specifies the possibility for effective communication, it is still necessary for actual transactions to take place between individuals. 

In most organisations the rate of information, energy and resource flow is too small and so the challenge is to help increase them. But there are times when it can become too great and then the challenge is in the opposite direction. One example of the latter is the fashion, still common in many organisations, of ‘cc-ing’ e-mails to everybody who might have even a slight interest in the subject. This is usually done as a defensive manoeuvre in organisations where a blame culture is strong.

4 Anxiety containment

Too much or too little anxiety inhibits emergence.  We can only cope with a certain amount of anxiety. If our levels of ‘uncontained’ anxiety rise too high we will construct defences against it. This is true at both individual and organisational level, leading to both dysfunctional work practices and rituals which serve no purpose other than to protect against anxiety. Bureaucratic rules and regulations are often a symptom of attempts to guard against uncontained anxiety. These defences will nearly always work against change.

On the other hand, if there is too little anxiety—and therefore too much comfort—the incentive to challenge and innovate may be missing. Working with anxiety in organisations can be both difficult and fruitful. 

5 Proportionate power

If the power differentials in the system are too high or too low, emergence can also be inhibited. The case where the power differentials are too great is perhaps closer to most people’s experience. Those who have power and who feel threatened (possibly accurately) by the possibilities implicit in new forms of organisation will often act to suppress emergence. In my experience, while it is not usually possible for the senior managers in an organisation to ensure change, it is possible for them to inhibit it. For this reason, any change must have the positive support of a large proportion of the senior management; otherwise it is likely to fail.

On the other hand, if there is no good leadership; if there are no clear power relationships; if no-one is prepared to take responsibility, then emergent change within the system is also unlikely—though change from outside may be inevitable.

6 Identity maintenance

One reason why change—especially unpredictable emergent change—can feel threatening is because it may seem to challenge the very identity of the organisation itself. Just as people invest considerable emotional energy in their personal sense of identity, so do people in organisations. Even if I don’t like the place in which I work and want it to change I still want it to keep its essential identity. Takeovers and re-brandings can be very difficult for workers and they will often do whatever they can to subvert and resist this sort of change.

Organisational identity is often vested in symbols and rituals. A problem can occur when a desired change starts by discarding some of these. They may, in themselves, be of little value but if significance has been vested in them, their disappearance can lead to a lot of resentment and resistance.

7 Good boundaries

Good boundaries seem to be necessary for emergence to occur. These may be deadlines, clear goals and intentions, prescriptions about length or size, and so on. The common factor seems to be that there is a well-bounded ‘space’ within which the emergence can occur.

There is, for me, some link here with Transactional Analysis—at least as an explanatory mechanism. The creative artist cannot create without giving the "Child" free rein. Yet if the demands of the "Parent" are not heard and taken into account there is likely to be self-indulgence rather than art. The role of the "Adult" is to freely let go of control and yet to still retain enough authority to be able to ‘referee’ when required.

In fact, I believe that this is a crucial principle for the management of self-organisation in corporate life. That is, lay down very strict boundaries specifying what is not permitted, add a clear goal, and then give freedom to experiment within those parameters. 

8 Intentionality

Intention seems to play a part in emergence in human systems, especially in encouraging a particular kind of outcome. However, it has to be recognised that intention is not a simple intrinsic property of human agents. Instead, it is often—perhaps always—co-created as a result of interactions with other people. Intention, therefore, can be thought of as an emergent property created from the interactions within a human system which then feeds back into the system and influences its future development.

In organisational terms, emergent change is more likely if there is a compelling vision which engages the majority of the people involved. For many, the term ‘vision statement’ conjures up pictures of a series of bland or wordy vision statements posted on the walls or promulgated through company newsletters. In practice, these statements rarely have any effect. They may energise and motivate the senior team which put them together but most others in the organisation will remain unmoved; indeed, cynicism and scepticism may easily be increased.

To be really effective a vision must be communicated in the stories people tell one another. A new vision implies new stories. Stories have two great advantages over other forms of communication: firstly they engage the heart as well as the head and secondly they offer the possibility of participative co-creation. When someone hears a compelling story about the future of the organisation, their first instinct is to re-tell the story in their own particular context.

9 Positive emotional space

High performing teams have a high ratio of positivity to negativity. The ratio of positive to negative comments is known as the emotional space and the highest performing teams had far more positive comments than negative. From their work it seems that emergence is much more likely if there is a positive emotional space.

10 Watchful anticipation

Finally, but not least in importance, is the need for watchful anticipation. Premature closure can inhibit emergence, or at least prevent its full blossoming and subsequent feeding down into the continuing development of the system. The desire for action in human systems may be almost overwhelming but emergence cannot be rushed; it requires a kind of expectant waiting and a sensitivity to the unfolding moment—a state often referred to in the literature on creativity.

In an organisational context this condition is the hardest of all to find. Most organisations have some deep seated cultural rules which say things like, “Be busy”, “Never leave first” or “Long hours are heroic”. One of my favourite slogans is, “Don’t just do something, stand there!” but it is really hard in modern organisational life. The problem is that most organisations are only prepared to attempt the path of change if they can travel in ways which actually reinforce the existing patterns—to do different and be different is really hard.

Command & Control vs. Emergent Organisations 

The numbers in parentheses refer to the ‘ten conditions’ 

Command & control paradigm	Emergent paradigm
Keep people in ‘silos’	Build connectivity (1)
Ensure everyone ‘salutes the flag’	Encourage diversity (2)
Manage communication initiatives	Create spaces for spontaneous communication (3)
Create bureaucratic processes	Acknowledge & deal with anxiety (4)
Make it clear who’s in charge	Give everyone leadership opportunities (5)
Announce new brand identity	Consult on identity change (6)
Tell people what to do	Tell people what not to do (7)
Set objectives	Agree energising goals (8)
Blame people for failures	Learn from events (9)
Keep busy	Wait expectantly (10)

Download the full article here

5. The Lifecycle of Emergence

Since its inception in 1992, The Berkana Institute has been experimenting with the lifecycle of emergence: how living systems begin as networks, shift to intentional communities of practice, and evolve into powerful systems capable of global influence. The following material has been excerpted from the article: Using Emergence to Take Social Innovation to Scale by Margaret Wheatley & Deborah Frieze.

The Lifecycle of Emergence

Stage One: Networks. We live in a time when coalitions, alliances and networks are forming as the means to create societal change. There are ever more networks and now, networks of networks. These networks are essential for people finding likeminded others, the first stage in the lifecycle of emergence. It’s important to note that networks are only the beginning. They are based on self-interest--people usually network together for their own benefit and to develop their own work. Networks tend to have fluid membership; people move in and out of them based on how much they personally benefit from participating.

Stage Two: Communities of Practice. Networks make it possible for people to find others engaged in similar work. The second stage of emergence is the development of communities of practice (CoPs). Many such smaller, individuated communities can spring from a robust network. CoPs are also self-organized. People share a common work and realize there is great benefit to being in relationship. They use this community to share what they know, to support one another, and to intentionally create new knowledge for their field of practice. These CoPs differ from networks in significant ways. They are communities, which means that people make a commitment to be there for each other; they participate not only for their own Communities of Practiceneeds, but to serve the needs of others.

In a community of practice, the focus extends beyond the needs of the group. There is an intentional commitment to advance the field of practice, and to share those discoveries with a wider audience. They make their resources and knowledge available to anyone, especially those doing related work.

The speed with which people learn and grow in a community of practice is noteworthy. Good ideas move rapidly amongst members. New knowledge and practices are implemented quickly. The speed at which knowledge development and exchange happens is crucial, because local regions and the world need this knowledge and wisdom now.

Stage Three: Systems of Influence. The third stage in emergence can never be predicted.Systems of Influence It is the sudden appearance of a system that has real power and influence. Pioneering efforts that hovered at the periphery suddenly become the norm. The practices developed by courageous communities become the accepted standard. People no longer hesitate about adopting these approaches and methods and they learn them easily. Policy and funding debates now include the perspectives and experiences of these pioneers. They become leaders in the field and are acknowledged as the wisdom keepers for their particular issue. And critics who said it could never be done suddenly become chief supporters (often saying they knew it all along.)

Emergence is the fundamental scientific explanation for how local changes can materialize as global systems of influence. As a change theory, it offers methods and practices to accomplish the systems-wide changes that are so needed at this time. As leaders and communities of concerned people, we need to intentionally work with emergence so that our efforts will result in a truly hopeful future. No matter what other change strategies we have learned or favored, emergence is the only way change really happens on this planet. And that is very good news.

6. *NEW* Engaging Emergence

Click on the title below to download a draft of Peggy Holman's forthcoming book:

Engaging Emergence: Turning Upheaval into Opportunity

About the Book

We live in unprecedented times.  With financial systems crumbling, oil prices rising and falling, educational systems failing their students, whole industries like newspapers and auto manufacturing collapsing, it is clear that dramatic change is happening whether we like it or not.  The pathways of the past no longer reliably guide us to understand the needs of the present, much less the future. Since change is a given, how do we work with it to transform the systems we care about? All around us, our social systems – organizations, communities, political systems, economic systems, educational systems, etc. – are crying out for radical shifts in how they operate.  More and more, people are venturing into unchartered territory, re-imagining their systems. Leaders and change agents are struggling to find a compass to guide them through the major changes they know are needed. And since our tried and true ways of changing aren’t doing the job, change itself requires an alchemical twist.  Enter emergence.

Actually, the story lives at the intersection of four paths:

• The science of emergence – how simple acts of individual entities can, together, create higher-level order.
• Whole system change – practices in which conversations  among diverse people about complex, often conflicted, topics lead to unexpected breakthroughs;
• Evolutionary dynamics – how change naturally occurs gained through exploring the mother of all change processes – evolution.
• A pattern language – a means for communicating theory and practice originated by architect Christopher Alexander and colleagues that makes visible essential qualities for designs that serve us well.

This book is about finding the gifts and potential inherent in today’s unprecedented turmoil.

7. Leadership-in-Community

Berkana’s Four Stages for Developing Leadership-in-Community

Berkana works with pioneering leaders and communities using a four-stage approach. This has evolved out of our understanding of how living systems grow and change, and years of practice and experimentation.

I. Name
Pioneering leaders act in isolation, unaware that their work has broader value. They are too busy to think about extending their work, and too humble to think that others would benefit. Berkana’s first act is to recognize them as pioneers with experiences that are of value to others.

II. Connect
Life grows and changes through the strength of its connections and relationships. (In nature, if a system lacks health, the solution is to connect it to more of itself.) Berkana creates connections in many different ways. We design and facilitate
community gatherings. We host networks where people can exchange ideas and resources. Our collaborative technology supports communities of practice through dedicated websites, online conferences, asynchronous conversations and cocreated knowledge products.

III. Nourish
Communities of practice need many different resources: ideas, mentors, processes, technology, equipment, money. Each is important, but foremost among these is learning and knowledge: knowing what techniques and processes work well, and
learning from experience as people do the work.

Berkana provides many of these sources of nourishment but, increasingly, we find that the most significant nourishment comes from the interactions and exchanges among pioneering leaders themselves. They need and want to share their
practices, experiences and dreams. Creating opportunities for people to learn together has become our primary way of nourishing their efforts.

IV. Illuminate
It is difficult for anybody to see work based on a different paradigm. If people do notice such work, it is often characterized as inspiring deviations from the norm. It takes time and attention for people to see different approaches for what they are:
examples of what the new world could be. The Berkana community publishes articles, tells our stories at conferences, and host learning journeys where people visit pioneering efforts, learn from them directly, and develop lasting relationships.