Complexity and Diversity: Page (2011, p. 17) makes the strong case for the important interplay between complexity and diversity. Systems that are complex and diverse will be more resilient and amenable to change:
“Systems that produce complexity consist of diverse rule-following entities whose behaviors are interdependent. . . . I find it helpful to think of complex systems as “large” in Walt Whitman’s sense of containing contradictions. They tend to be robust and at the same time capable of producing large events. They can attain equilibria, both fixed points and simple patterns, as well as produce long random sequences.”
There is one thing we have learned in recent years that has almost become an axiom: if there is extensive variability (disturbance) within the environment in which a system operates, then there must also be extensive variability (diversity) inside the system. Page (2011, p. 204, 211) identifies this axiom as the Law of Requisite Variety:
“. . . the greater the diversity of possible responses, the more disturbances a system can absorb. For each type of disturbance, the system must contain some counteracting response. . . . The law of requisite variety provides an insight into well-functioning complex systems. The diversity of potential responses must be sufficient to handle the diversity of disturbances. If disturbances become more diverse, then so must the possible responses. If not the system won’t hold together.”
These perspectives on evolution and diversity strongly suggest that creativity and a flourishing of Being occur when mutations, flaws, trial balloons, and controversy are abundant. In shifting our attention to the conditions where diversity is absent, then we confront nothingness. The Void exists when this diversity is absent, and everything seems frozen in place. Just as our eyes must always be moving (dithering) if we are to see something and not “phase out” the static image in front of us, so our world of people, settings, and ideas must always be moving or the world “phases out” to a state of nothingness.
Cracks and Crevasses: mutations in an environment can create new, adaptive variations among entities in this environment. Similarly, cracks and gaps in a system can lead to creative enactments (as well as failures) within this system. Ralph Stacey (1996) writes extensively about this creative dynamic in organizations, noting that organizations grow and adapt precisely because they are not orderly.
Theorists and researchers who study complex adaptive systems propose that an unstable, marginalized entity or person operates outside the standard structure and constraints of a system, will elicit considerable positive and negative feedback, as well as information from diverse sectors within the system. Without formal guardrails, this “renegade” entity or person will self-organize, forming a creative mode of operation and distinctive set of desired outcomes.
As this “outlier” (to use Malcolm Gladwell’s term) or “anomaly” (to use Thomas Kuhn’s term) gains some ascendancy in the system, then emergence will occur. The entire system will have to adjust to the presence of this Outlier. It must, therefore, undergo fundamental transformation. At this point, the system either fails to survive this transformation or it becomes a complex, adaptive system. As Donella Meadows (2008) has described, the small, revolutionary change can provide the leverage for large-scale change. The following graphic provides a summary view of how leveraging occurs and a complex adaptive system is created.
