A New Science for Management & Leadership

by Louis Cioletti

Management and leadership practices have been discussed and debated in many articles, books, and seminars.  What has resulted from this erudite examination is a continuing need for more articles, books and seminars.  New perspectives indicate an emerging trend away from the analytical manager (and leaders who may be equally as analytical as managers) to a more fundamental approach.  Managers seek control over their organizations through an arsenal of procedures, policies, “proven” practices, and essentially anything that prevents problems from occurring or recurring. 

In the natural world, variations and chaos occur frequently–at times imperceptibly–but they occur.  Yet in the business world, managers subscribe that order and constancy are normal and seek to preserve stasis in their organizations like they believe it exists in nature. 

This paper examines how the natural world adopts changes to create order and what these events might hold for the contemporary manager and leader.  Although this article does not probe into specific details, it does cite credible references and compelling information that, like Bob Dylan’s admonition, “things have changed.”

Distinctions between managers and leaders are not raised here.  Managers and leaders have their personal perspectives toward their organizations, but they contend with similar issues as performance objectives, goals, budgets, resources, procedures, directives, etc.  They also rely on the principal functions of management-planning, organizing, directing, controlling, and coordinating.  Add a hierarchical structure and we have produced a “hardware/software” combination that depicts our modern day organizations and systems.

This type of organization and control sounds pretty typical and it should–it’s been around for millenniums.  The Greeks and Romans believed the gods controlled all facets of their existence.  From the Middle Ages through the 18^th century, an aristocracy ruled its subjects by divine right.  Even Isaac Newton, the master of physical science, described how nature (and the universe) is a mechanically and mathematically ordered arrangement with precise measurements of solar events occurrences.  Certainly human beings are part of the same natural predictability and process that are derived from gods, kings, and Isaac Newton’s view of nature.

It’s no wonder that organizations follow a historical and rational timeline to measure their “mechanical” processes–performance-based measurement systems, statistical models, financial analyses, strategic plans, systems analysis, and decision matrixes–to maintain order and reduce chaos in the organization.  Despite these management “tools” (the mechanical vernacular is hard to dismiss), CEOs fail and organizations still falter; some recent business collapses have been pretty spectacular.  They are not likely to be the last ones.  Is there anything leaders or managers can do differently?

Clearly, other forces are at work.  Bjerke (1999) examined the technological, ideological, and sociological aspects of organizational culture and its integration with human knowledge, beliefs and behavior.  This interesting mix of relationships creates an organizational culture that cannot be measured by traditional business school methods.  That’s what makes it so appealing.  Culture is an organization’s adaptation to external and internal influences that are always dynamic and not simply governed by management policies.  Bjerke stated, “There is a degree to which people share a culture … not everyone has the same level of knowledge, belief, or assumptions.”  Any number of interactions in an organization defy any hope of synchronizing cultural attitudes.  Even with a chaotic mix of company rituals, leadership styles, structures and processes, and group/individual expectations, a sense of order is still created in a “culture web.”  However, Bjerke  cautions that “culture does not compete with the laws of nature … it simply supplies the social context in which these forces operate.” 

Bjerke’s findings only reveal the behavioral forces at work in the business environment.  What other forces might be relevant to the manager and leader?

The answer, arguably, might be found in two very interesting contemporary works.  First, Clippinger (1999) recently addressed the complexities between biological systems and business systems and found similarities.  Despite the internal and external changes inherent in biological systems, they are able to self-regulate, self-organize, and thrive.  In a sense, capital markets do the same thing when faced with similar circumstances.  Why not organizations? 

Clippinger advocates a Complex Adaptive System (CAS) approach “to help [managers] keep their enterprises balanced between order and chaos–in that ‘sweet spot’ where creativity and resilience are at their maximum.” CAS has seven basic elements that involve four properties (Aggregation, Nonlinearity, Flows, and Diversity) and three mechanisms (Tagging, Internal Models, and Building Blocks).  Without going into much detail, these properties and mechanisms permit a manager or leader more facilitative control–selecting for or against certain behaviors–rather than exerting the traditional authoritative control over their organization.  Under CAS, a manager uses less analytical processes to solve organizational problems and relies on more diffuse, nonlinear, distributed systems that are “soft-assembled.”  Rather than expect or design a specific outcome, managers or leaders should create conditions that permit selection from a range of desired outcomes.

Next, Wheatley (1999) brings a scientific perspective with a more contemporary outlook, saying an entire system must be examined, not individual parts.  The relationship among the networks is critically important; focusing too intently on smaller parts means missing how the entire system relationship works (or doesn’t work).  What manager doesn’t want to get “to the bottom line” or “cut to the chase”?

There is a scientific answer to that question, too.  The traditional mechanical thinking of Newtonian science treated everything as movable parts of a larger machine.  That 17th-century science has largely been adopted by modern business.  If you think times have changed, then why are organizations still “re-engineering” themselves?  People are put into roles (not holes) like pieces that fit a puzzle, and organizations still have highly structured entities much like a mechanical drawing (sometimes called a “wiring diagram!).  When things are not “working” in an organization, we take apart the suspected piece(s) and try to find the problem and fix it.  “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is a corporate mantra that validates how mechanical organizations really are.

According to Wheatley, organizations should embrace more fluid patterns of relationships to foster greater creativity and to cope more effectively with chaotic situations.  When new circumstances suddenly happen, new knowledge is gained only if effective organizational relationships exist; then more information is shared through this interconnectivity and the organization is strengthened.  Just as nature possesses the capacity to self-organize, organizations do, too.  Therefore, managers must look at the entire organization for greater understanding, not at the finite parts.  The paradox, according to Wheatley, is that “order is never imposed from top down or from outside in.  Order emerges as elements of the system work together, discovering each other and together inventing new capacities.”

Leadership and management must become a behavior and not a role or a position.  The new science asks that we take another path and accept nature’s chaotic changes that, if one is looking, leads to a new order.  Here are some suggestions to help you:

Wheatley (1999) sums it up best: “The potent force that shapes behavior in organizations and in all natural systems is the combination of simply expressed expectations of purpose, intent, and values, and the freedom for responsible individuals to make sense of these in their own way.  … When each person is trusted to work freely with those principles, to interpret them, learn from them, talk about them, then a pattern of ethical behavior emerges.  It is recognizable in everyone, no matter where they sit or what they do.”  Things have changed-did anyone notice?

Bibliography

Bjorn Bjerke,  Business Leadership and Culture: National Management Styles in the Global Economy.  Cheltenham, UK:  Edward Elgar Publisher,  1999.

Clippinger John H., III, Editor.  The Biology of Business: Decoding the Natural Laws of Enterprise,   , Jossey-Bass Publishers, , San Francisco, CA: 1999.

Wheatley, Margaret J.,  Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World, 2nd edition, San Francisco, CA:  Berrett-Koehler Publishers,  1999.

 About the author:

Louis Cioletti, M.S. is a program coordinator - Biotechnology Group at Wyle Laboratories Life Sciences in Houston, Texas.  Cioletti has been with Wyle, a NASA Johnson Space Center contractor, since 1989.  He also served on the NMA Board of Directors from 1994 to 2000 and held positions as a Southwest Area Chairman, Community Services Committee Chairman, and Professional Development Committee Chairman.