A manager in a client company told me recently that re‐organisations, which had been an annual event during the 1990s, were now happening quarterly. She lamented that “the place is in constant chaos!” The pace of change in the business world has clearly accelerated to the extent that managers see the only certainty in business as unpredictability. Organize with Chaos attempts to help my client both to understand what is going on and to work with it more effectively.
Robin Rowley and Joseph Roevens are both practising change consultants and academics. Their thesis, outlined in an earlier edition of this book in 1996 and by other writers such as Ralph Stacey and Richard Pascale, is that traditional management thinking about people and organisation, particularly the need to over‐control, is obsolete for today’s business conditions. Their overall aim is to present the reader with “a radical new approach to management based on the established principles of chaos theory.” This they seek to do by giving readers a practical tool to change people’s behaviour and habits and a new way to prospect their own organisation for new levels of performance, commitment and innovation.
In essence chaos theory clarifies the special types of behaviour that a complex system such as an organisation can show. These do not comprise unbridled anarchy, but rather irregular patterns in constant flux, high sensitivity to small changes and paradoxical “both/and thinking.” These ideas came to the business world from physical science as a more useful way of understanding the business environment than approaches built upon classical science. At the heart of Organize with Chaos is a model or “lens”. Rowley and Roevens propose that change should focus on the following key elements. The first and last are concerned with efficient control, the middle two with creative chaos:
Enhance: create an atmosphere that enhances risk taking, co‐operation, and self‐organising behaviour.
Perturb: “shake” the organisation out of its current orbit: create a controlled state of uncertainty so self‐organisation begins.
Attract: bring about emotional commitment, in order to produce the critical mass needed for change.
Excite: create an emotional state that excites people, this gradually leads to a higher level of order.
This “lens” emerges as the book unfolds. Change is the rule, not the exception; this requires different types of organisation with the customer as “the absolute leader of the hierarchy”. It is they, with the entrepreneurs (employees), who define what the organisation is. The authors then present the full model before looking at the roles of the change leader.
The book ends with a useful set of exercises for use by you or with a team and I found the appendices are very useful. They include a short summary of the history and development of chaos theory and a glossary of some of the key terms that accompany it. The Internet is, to many, the ultimate metaphor for chaos and a section in this book is useful in guiding thinking about what it means for organisations and how it might evolve.
In true feedback style, one thing that I would have liked more and one of which I would have liked less! I could have done with more about the research from which the ideas and themes of the book were drawn. I could have done with fewer quotations that are scattered liberally throughout. They start and end chapters and are found at all points in between, sometimes in groups of three or more. Some are thought provoking or sum up the discussion perfectly. Others seem oddly disconnected.
Overall I liked the book and intuitively felt at ease with the ideas. I particularly liked the chapter challenging the assumptions behind much current thinking in management and some of the approaches to change in recent years such as business process re‐engineering. It could be read in a couple of hours as the authors suggest but I would recommend several sittings. My experience of chaos and complexity is that they do indeed challenge the traditional thinking of managers and the ideas presented here, particularly the “lens”, need some time to digest.
Whilst reading Organize with Chaos, I heard a radio programme on the history of management training. A voice from the 1960s reassured managers that following a few “simple to learn rules and principles” would enable them to be much more effective than trying to “fly by the seat of their pants”! This book does not suggest the exact opposite but will help my client and other managers understand that they might need to do both.
