Influencing Change in Complex Adaptive Systems

Characteristics of a CAS Viewing Change Through the Lens of Complexity Attributes of a CAS
1 Diverse Agents
Enable Cognitive Diversity WHY Unleash People Potential Adaptive & Self-Organizing
Cognitively diverse groups learn Inspire people to believe in their
faster and perform better in ability to create change and
complex environments Change can’t encourage them to act on it
be controlled
in complex
adaptive
systems; it can
Unlock Collective Insight only be Future-Proof Organizations
Unleash the genius of the influenced! Build organizations ready for Time
organization to solve wicked change in the 21st Century
problems Complex adaptive systems are self-organizing
A complex adaptive system consists of numerous HOW and react and adapt to change. Order emerges
diverse agents and each agent makes decisions Leverage Lean-Agile Principles Communicate & Collaborate Create Feedback Loops over time as a result of agent interactions
about how to behave. The key point is that those Behaviour of the system is When information is diverse and Use feedback loops to transfer the following simple rules. Crucially, the system
decisions will evolve over time. unpredictable, so it does little good to shared you get better answers to reaction of the system to continuously changes on its own; order cannot be imposed.
plan in detail wicked problems adapt the course of change
2 Agent Interactions Feedback Loops
Lean Strategy Experiment
Don’t try to plan out every In complex systems there are no Emergent
detail; keep your change right answers, but patterns Behaviour

Feedback
Negative
Feedback
strategy lightweight and emerge by conducting safe-to-

nimble
Good Enough Vision
Provide minimum
specifications and a general
sense of direction
Agents self-organize and interact with each
other in non-linear ways and in accordance with
simple rules. Agents learn and adapt their
behaviour in response to these interactions.
Enable Autonomy
Emergence Allow individuals to self-
3
organize and adapt to the
strategy as time goes by
fail experiments
Visualize Work
Increase transparency, trust, and
alignment in the change process by
leveraging visual working techniques
Co-Create Change
Harness the collective wisdom of the
organization in designing the change
WHAT
Shifting Our View of Organizations
Observe
Let the system react to
experiments and observe the
results
Adapt
Adapt the change approach
based on system feedback
Positive
System-wide patterns of behaviour that emerge
as a result of agent interactions reinforce
(positive feedback) or inhibit (negative feedback)
the system’s behaviour. Feedback loops are what
make complex adaptive systems adaptive.
Without feedback loops the system has no way
of adapting to changing environments.
Non-Linear Behaviour

20th Century View 21st Century View

Agent interactions lead to emergence - novel The organization is a machine and The organization is a living
and unplanned behaviour in the system. Seemingly small changes or interventions in the
people are interchangeable cogs organism, and the creative
Emergence means that this behaviour is not in the machine meant to be potential of its people are system can result in major swings in system
derived solely from the behaviour of the behaviour, while large interventions may have
standardized and controlled its lifeblood
individual agents. Instead, it develops as a result little impact. Because of this non-linearity, the
of the wider interactions of the agents. behaviour of a complex adaptive system is
Emergent behaviour cannot be predicted in fundamentally unpredictable.
advance; it is only explainable in retrospect.