Adaptive tension: a prerequiste for communities of practice?
In the early 1900s a French physicist named Bénard conducted an experiment which is widely quoted in complexity literature due to its neat demonstration of self-organisation and emergence. The experiment is simple. Heat some liquid from below. At first convection currents form keeping the system in equilibrium. As the heat increases these convection currents morph into clearly recognisable hexagonal cells. These cells appear to be efficient at dissipating the energy from the liquid.
Prigogine, a complexity science pioneer, called this type of phenomena, ‘adaptive tension’.
I think adaptive tension is required for self organisation, such as the formation communities of practice. But what does this mean in an organisational context? Well 3M created an adaptive tension by mandating 30% of revenues must derive from products introduced in the last four years. GE created adaptive tension when Jack Welch made it clear that each division must be 1st or 2nd in the marketplace of it will be fixed, sold or closed down.
My experience with communities of practice suggests adaptive tension focussed on learning, professionalism, innovation is necessary for their success.
The examples above, however, are all negative. Does adaptive tension need to be negative in an organisational setting? If not, what would be examples of positive adaptive tensions?
Shawn, author of Putting Stories to Work, is one of the world's leading business storytelling consultants. He helps executive teams find and tell the story of their strategy. When he is not working on strategy communication, Shawn is helping leaders find and tell business stories to engage, to influence and to inspire. Shawn works with Global 1000 companies including Shell, IBM, SAP, Bayer, Microsoft & Danone. Connect with Shawn on:
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I agree that all these seem negative, but maybe another way to look at it is that they all are top-down, management-driven. So if your question becomes whether or not they can also be bottom-up, I think they can, particularly when a group of people who are connected to each other become impatient with the bureaucratic slowness of many organizations and want to try new ideas. How well those succeed is a another story.