Phase changes in social systems

Posted by  Andrew Rixon —April 28, 2006
Filed in Culture

Connectivity_avalancheYou may have heard of the Forming-Storming-Norming-Performing metaphor for team development. This metaphor provides a lens by which you can view a groups evolution through the initial ‘forming’ right through to when teams are ‘performing’. Just as water, when boiled, goes through a phase change from liquid to gas, social systems also go through phase changes. It seems to me that a  phase change for a group or teams’ evolution would be the moving from ‘storming’ to ‘norming’. Another kind of phase change might be the awareness and perception of ‘insiders’ versus ‘outsiders’ in a developing community of practice.

Network theory provides interesting insight into phase changes. In this tiny application (3.2M) called ‘Connectivity Avalanche’ you can see a demonstration of how a collection of nodes, getting randomly connected at each step goes through sudden, unpredictable phase changes characterised by what is known as a connectivity avalanche. That is, there are periods when the whole system remains fairly unconnected, and then suddenly the system will undergo a phase change and go from low connectivity to high – in this example around 5% to over 60%. You can see repeated avalanches as the system keeps unfolding.

When it comes to thinking about phase changes in social systems, I wonder what some other kinds of phase changes might be?

About  Andrew Rixon

Comments

  1. Nancy White says:

    We have been playing with all kinds of phase changes:
    * online/offline/online
    * open spaces/closed spaces/open spaces
    * one language/many languages
    * large group/subgroups
    * no trust/trust (sometimes back to no trust)
    * pre event/event/post event
    * course and classroom to community
    * hopping and skipping between online interaction tools (and what happens as we change)
    I used to subscribe deeply to the forming/storming/norming/performing as a mostly linear progression. As I start to pay attention to both phase changes and the networked nature of our lives in the internet era, I am not seeing that pattern. I’m seeing things go in different orders, recursive loops, and basically, far more complex formations. Some of this has accellerated collaboration and innovation. Some of it makes me feel like my wheels are spinning.
    Clear as mud, eh?

  2. Andrew Rixon says:

    Thanks for your post Nancy!
    One of the interesting things that Shawn and I have chatted about is how often frameworks can be (mis?) perceived as linear.
    An example recently was at a meaning making symposium where many of the collaborators were discussing about Keagan’s 5 stages of personal development. Interestingly the 5 stages seem to be congruent with a ladder metaphor and so naturally one wants to ‘progress up the ladder’ to the 5 most advanced level. And maybe, that is what’s best?
    If a different metaphor was somehow incorporated, one which for instance alligned itself with the seasons, or maybe a circle, I think that would help to take some of the ‘linearity’ out.
    All again suggesting that, maybe, as soon as we box something, life finds a way of waking us back up again.
    Again, I agree. Clear as mud. 🙂
    Warm regards,
    Andrew

  3. ken says:

    In times of ever accelerating change it might be nice to take some time out, to stand back, in the cool mud of the river bank, and just watch time flow by, for a spell, maybe losing sense of time, like a fisherman in a zen like state of flow. In a quiet time, a quote bubbles up and we see that the ladder helps us get a better view, but we need not cling to it, we can choose to throw the ladder away and move on (to badly paraphrase Mr. Wittgenstein 🙂
    Loop the S-Curve back on itself and it’s an infinite cycle of growth and decline. The word that comes to mind, for me, from the scaling connectivity, is “crisis”: and from that one word the thoughts flow in many directions, ways that a wiki seems better fitted to absorb than this wee comment box 😉

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