Order vs. Chaos - a look at the science

Order creates a feeling of safety. Chaos, on the other hand, is a term with negative connotation.
But is order really what we want?

Using an analogy from material sciences, let's take a different look at the struggle of "order versus chaos".


Take a look at this model:

Order is the "frozen state" and Chaos is the "volatile state". I use this example on purpose: Kurt Lewin has proposed a 3-state change model, "Unfreeze-Change-Refreeze". It perfectly correlates to material sciences.

Lewin assumes that organizational structures and/or processes are best kept in a "frozen state". And in many organizations, that's true. Does it need to be true? Let's take a step by step look by examining the states first.

Different states

Frozen = Ordered

A frozen organization is ordered. It doesn't matter how effective or efficient the organization is - things are clear. Well, maybe not so much, but still. There are known structures to uphold, there are known people to address, there's a known protocol to follow and know processes to apply.
This makes things simple: If A, then B.
I go to work in the morning, know what I will be doing - and even when I take a week off, when I come back, I know the exact state where I will resume.

Terms used to describe a frozen state include: "predictable, reliable, convenient". All of these words are positively connotated both with workers and managers.

Hence, the desire to freeze the organizational system.

Along comes a troublemaker. A person who does things different. Who won't accept "That's how we always done it" for a reason. Who breaks rules to get stuff done. Who bypasses hierarchies getting in the way of success. Who messes with people following dysfunctional processes without further ado. Like - me.

In a frozen state, the organization will consider such a person a dangerous foreign body needing to be dealt with. A single person faced with frozen organizations will be forced into one of two choices: adapt - or get out. That's why change initiatives are well-nigh impossible without a strong guiding coalition as proposed by Kotter: It's not about doing things differently, it's about accumulating a critical mass of people with sufficient power to unfreeze the system before even bothering to really go on with the change agenda.

Liquid = Nonlinear

Getting out of a solid, frozen state in physics requires dissolving the bonds between system components. Depending on what you want to change, you may need to un-link structure, people and processes alike - simultaneously!

Dissolving links means that communication structures will no longer work as before, processes will no longer produce the same outcome - and results on any level may change. The bigger the incision, the more likely unpredicted side effects will occur.

People lose the feeling associated with an order state - predictablity wanes, reliability is reduced and people start experiencing the discomfort of needing to think and connecting dots differently. When essential, strong links haven't been dissolved, the system returns back to the former stable state as soon as possible and may even obtain resistance strategies - inoculation to ward off future change.

Going back to our physics analogy, we need to invest energy into an ordered system to unfreeze it. The amount of energy needed to make a permanent change in an ordered structure directly correlates with the strength of the links which need to be broken.

Let's take the example of water:
It takes a rather limited amount of energy to melt an ice cube.
With significantly more energy, we could split the molecular bonds and turn the ice cube into H2 and O2.
Should we desire to reform the very atomic bonds and turn the hydrogen atoms into helium, we need to invest a lot more energy into a much riskier and complicated process.

In either case, the former state will cease to exist - and that's where reactions such as fear, grief (Kübler-Ross) and entitlement come in.

Volatile = Chaotic

Volatile systems do not display the characteristics of an ordered system. The high energy inherent to each particle allows them to move rapidly - making it extremely difficult to predict the next state of even a single component in the system, much less enabling methodic control on the overall system.
In a chaotic state, change doesn't require an investment - it happens continuously and without trigger. Change isn't something that needs to be initiated, much rather, it would need to be channeled to produce something desirable.

In a volatile state, the system's drive to change is bigger than any component's capability to stabilize, hence no change is permanent.

A molecule in a gaseous state would not consider this state "anomalous" - much rather, it would need to be deprived of its energy before entering any other state.

And this is an important part of volatile systems - the components have high amounts of energy!

Like order is produced by draining energy from components, chaos is produced by energizing components.

State transitions

Material state transitions can be measured and predicted with high accuracy - something not quite as simple when dealing with an organizational system combined of a complex structure including many individual people, highly interrelated processes and potentially an innumerable amount of technological dependencies.

State transitions in a frozen organization are often considered undesirable, as people are afraid that something will get broken for good:

As the  "frozen" state of an organization becomes stronger, the more energy will be required to reach the "un-freeze" state which makes state transition possible. Combined with the complexity of the system, the amount of energy required for a successful defreeze might be roughly the same amount required to enter a volatile state - and depending on the size of the desired change, an excursion into a chaotic state may be required.

When being unfamiliar with the chaotic domain, there is both the danger that chaos gets out of hand or that when the system gets into a stable state again, that state is undesirable.

The false Order-Chaos dichotomy

Frozen systems are stable, but they aren't very malleable. The key characteristic of frozen systems is their lack of energy. An organization with stable structures that lack energy is in constant danger of being stuck in the wrong place - and won't be able to make the necessary move to remain sustainable.

On the other end of the spectrum, chaotic systems aren't stable - and equally un-malleable, albeit for a different reason. The key characteristic of volatile system is their high energy - and therefore, the impossibility to ever nail down anything.

It's not so easy to say whether order or chaos is better - that would depend on what you want to achieve. Based on the points above, we should realize that we're not forced to choose between order and chaos. The choice is a false dichotomy.
Just because water isn't ice, it doesn't mean that you'll die from steam burns.
It could equally be a refreshing glass of cool water or a warm cup ready to make some tea.

The idea "If it's not ordered, then it's chaos" is nothing more than a false dichotomy: There's a large spectrum of conditions between frozen and volatile - and while neither of the two extremes is specifically habitable, the range inbetween very well is.

Get used to change

When you look at a glass of water, you can't tell where every single molecule is. Even if you knew where it was five seconds ago, you can hardly tell where it will be in a few seconds. At the same time, you can tell a few things with fairly high confidence:

• You're looking at a glass of water
• The molecule in question is within that glass of water
• That molecule will still be within that glass of water in a few seconds.

You can even make more reliable predictions:

• If you throw a pebble into the glass, the water will (for the most) remain where it was.
• The pebble will not significantly affect the way your water behaves.
• When you take the pebble out, the water will look like it did before.

Interpreting the analogy, the liquid, non-linear state is both more flexible than the ordered and more reliable than the chaotic state. 

If you want to keep your organization robust to outside interference, you need to abolish the idea that everything needs to be in place: The ordered state can't deal with changing circumstances. 

In an ordered state, Lewin's "unfreeze-change-refreeze" process is essential to adapt.
In a non-linear state, there is nothing to unfreeze, and nothing in need of being re-frozen.

The practical interpretation

We talk a lot about "Agile Transformation", and in the minds of people this is unfreezing a non-agile organization, changing it towards an agile organization, then refreezing it in its agile state.
There is no such thing.

The agile organization is like water, constantly in a nonlinear state. Change in an agile organization isn't a project. Instead, everyone and everything within an agile organization is constantly subject to change.

Every person thinks about new, better ways to achieve things every day - every process can be scrutinized and modified at any time. When outward circumstances change, the agile organization doesn't start a massive adaption initiative, they just do what it takes to deal with the new circumstance.

And that's why you can't "buy agile" - to be agile, you must be in that liquid, transient state - at all times!