Welcome

Welcome to the blog. I'm your blogologist, cmplxty. From a long career as a change agent rooted firmly in the world of Total Quality Management, I became aware of the new sciences of chaos and complexity about nine years ago. Since then I have been engaged in the study and application of metaphor and methodology from the complexity perspective. I've a broad range of interests, from organizational change and leadership, to politics; from dual-line sport kites to the ethereal delta blues of Skip James; from the sublime green chiles and blue corn of New Mexican cuisine, to the authentic teaching of Laibl Wolf.

A few words here about complex systems. For 400 years we humans, especially those in the West, have looked at the universe around us through the eyes of one admittedly great scientist. Sir Isaac Newton figured out a lot of stuff. But the one thing he missed, was that the world of complex living systems does not follow the tidy linear laws that Newton described. We humans observe complex non-linear systems in nature and society all the time. Think about the weather, or the stock market, for example. Think about your relationships at home or work.

So if we do not follow the tidy linear laws of Newton, what do we do? Complex adaptive non-linear systems exhibit several important characteristics:

- self-organizing. No one has to tell birds how to move in a flock.

- sensitive to initial conditions. Small differences get amplified over time to have big impact.

- emergence. Knowing all the parts does not help you predict observable patterns of behavior that emerge spontaneously through the local interactions of the parts.

There's more, but that's enough for now. For more information, check out the websites of folks like Ralph Stacey, Margaret Wheatley, Patricia Shaw, Bruggs and Peat, Glenda Eoyang, and more.

Welcome. We have lots to talk about.

cmplxty