I'd resolved to get back to business and not be drawn into this discussion
again, but some things caught my attention that I simply cannot let go
without comment. My finding time to respond usually means the
conversation has moved several iterations ahead so, in the risk of tardy
redundancy I'll comment anyway.
On Monday, 8 Dec 1997, Dr. Steve Eskow wrote:
>Organizations aren't alive. Since they aren't alive they have none of
>the powers of >living beings: they don't have intelligence, nervous
>systems...They can't learn, >adapt, weep, be happy.
What is alive? Do all living things give birth, weep, have intelligence
and nervous systems? Most of us probably agree many things are alive that
do not - like the whole plant kingdom as a start. So is a person really
"alive" or are just your individual cells alive and acting in concert with
many others to form structures to accomplish some result and make you as a
whole unit seem alive? Communication and connection between the cells is
what lets the whole collection become tissue and collections of tissues
become what we interpret as a single "individual."
But this is only in so called "higher" life forms. What about all the
single- celled life forms of which there are millions? Remember, many of
your cells too will remain alive for awhile after you as a collective unit
"die." Those cells could be cultured separately from their existence in
your body whether you as a whole unit are "alive" or not. Colony dwelling
one-celled organisms, for example, form structures and act in concert
together in some similar ways to organs in your body. So is the colony
"alive" or just the individual cells? Is your heart alive, or just a
collection of "living" cells formed in a structure to accomplish some
result? Clearly there are many shades of gray (fuzzy logic?) between
"alive" and not alive - and perhaps many individually- held definitions.
All living things, however, follow and abide by some common overarching
principles, regardless of what shade of gray they happen to be.
If we cut to the chase and accept the general human definition, then most
of us participating in this list probably qualify as "alive." Thus, in
organizations, if "alive" individual human members communicate and join
together to act in concert with others to form functional units to
accomplish some result, is the organization alive? If that same
organization adapts and changes to different pressures around it and
different combinations of members, is it then alive? Remember, until just
a few years ago, we considered all life to be photosyntheticly based -
then we discovered the chemosynthetic life living round the hot chemical
vents on the ocean floor. Are the electronically based artificial life
simulations run on computers alive? Many act like it. So, what other
types of life could exist? As Stuart Kauffman asks in his book "At Home
in the Universe," are the carbon- based self-replicating chemical systems
we know as life here on earth the only type of self-replicating chemical
system possible, or just the one that happens to have sprung up here.
Could there be other types of self- replicating chemical systems based on
some other element out there in the universe that would thus exhibit the
characteristics we call "life" here on planet earth?
I don't find much value in debating whether organizations are actually
"alive" by some shade-of-gray definition. What I have tried to share is
the recognition that the overarching set of operational strategies and
characteristics which organizations are evolving to sustain themselves in
today's ecosystem-like environments are steadily mirroring the same ones
shown by living organisms. Many organizations are getting awfully close
to meeting some generally-held definitions of "alive." In looking
backward to see what "environmental" pressures might drive such an
evolution if it were true, I found those pressures to the very ones I
would have expected to initiate the development of "living"
characteristics. Both observing what is taking place and searching the
reasons why lead to the same conclusion.
>(snip) an organization as if it were a living, sentient being that could
>learn and >otherwise behave as if it were a human being.
Who said anything about a human being? Biological evolution did not
produce humans first! Evolution to living organizations will not either.
It is also (and I am confident will continue) following a similar process
of beginning with more basic types of "living" organizational forms first.
We are talking about parallel approaches. We are also much too early in
the evolutionary process to start looking for refined characteristics such
as reproduction by giving "birth" and highly developed "nervous systems."
At this stage of evolution, we need to look for comparison between
organism and organization in the "lower" life forms such as single celled
and colony organisms, not to the "higher" life forms like humans and other
vertebrates. There are plenty of characteristics of lower life forms
being exhibited by many organizations. We'll get to the higher ones in
due time.
>(snip) we can look at an organization "as if" it were a machine, and
>design, say, a >structure of government, as the Founders did, as if it
>were a machine with >"checks and balances."
The major reason many business organizations and most governmental ones
(along with plenty of NGO's too) are having so many problems is precisely
because they are trying to maintain structures and functions created
around machine models and metaphors in an era that has shifted far from
that period. Most of our governmental organizations and many business
models were developed when life was slower-paced and change proceeded at a
leisurely rate - in an age of mass production, mass markets and rigid
hierarchies. Those days are past but organizational structures built in
those times remain - and trouble follows. Yes, the founders followed
machine models and many others have followed them in the same paradigm -
but that age is past. Building organizations around machine models or
trying to maintain existing ones around those outdated approaches is
precisely what we must AVOID.
Several years ago I did an article titled "Bionic Business" noting that we
were in a transition between the machine age and the era of biological
models, with many business organizations having characteristics of each.
They are bionic. Unlike the Six Million Dollar Man of the '70s however,
bionic (part living, part machine) was not a condition of increased power,
but a time of often difficult transition. In the end, the "weak" living
component of "bionic" organizations proves to be more durable, outlasts
and ultimately replaces the "strong" machine part because it is flexible
and adaptable while the machine remains rigid and fixed in a changing
world. And there are plenty of checks and balances in the living world
too. If there weren't, for example, none of us would last long for life
itself exists "balanced on the edge" of a phase transition between the
rigid and chaotic regimes as I noted in the last post.
As for basketball teams being alive, anyone ever hear of team "chemistry?"
Best wishes to all,
Cliff Hamilton
Progressive Visions
Hillsboro, OR, USA
<cliffrh@aol.com>
--CliffRH <CliffRH@aol.com>
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