New from Management Books 2000 Small actions can ripple through the world SHIFTING THE PATTERNS Memetics, complexity and organisational or individual transformation by If Price and Ray Shaw
See also the Chapter Headings or read the Preface At one level, the idea is simple. Performance reflects patterns, patterns which simultaneously enable - and limit - levels of performance. Yet, if it is so simple to grasp the connections, how come so many of us find it so difficult to shift our patterns for a different level of result? Academically rigorous, well-documented, yet lucidly written this is a startlingly original book - management theory of a higher order. In just the same way as all living organisms develop along evolutionary lines by a process of natural selection and replication of genetic variations, imagine that companies - and the individuals within them - simply conform to patterns (rules) rigidly enforced by behavioural replicators in their own Corporate DNA, or organisational memes. It then becomes possible, given the use of Complexity Theory and other developing ideas, to put the biology of business on a sound theoretical footing. We see how companies, indeed all organisations, function not as machines but rather as obstinate life forms self-organising, self-replicating and fiercely self-protective. No wonder it is so hard to change them. Patterns of Survival To succeed, and even to survive, in today's market conditions companies must at least react to, and at best generate changes in the arenas in which they operate. Doing so requires that they, and their members, learn to continually adapt and change. The need is not lost on most senior managers. New strategies, visions, missions, processes and systems abound - yet all too often nothing really changes. Powerful forces seek to perpetuate the stability of a particular status quo; implicit contracts, rules, exist in any group of people and in wider groupings of companies, entire industries or societies. Sometimes an elite is so steeped in the prevailing thinking that it simply cannot see another way. Frequently membership of any group carries an implicit obligation not to rock the boat. The unwritten rule becomes, in effect | |
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