The Management Theory Toolbox

Episode 1: Organizations, Emergence, and Living Systems (Part 1) with Kati Livingston

• Travis Mallett • Season 1 • Episode 1

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Are you ready to have your perspective on organizations fundamentally transformed? This episode promises to do just that as we traverse through cosmic evolution to the intricate dynamics of modern organizations. Our guest, Kati Livingston, brings her expertise in adult development and psychology, to unravel the intriguing concept of organizations as living systems, potentially the pinnacle of emergence in nature. We'll challenge your perception of organizations as a mere web of individuals and propose an alternative view of them as organic entities.

Diving deeper, we unpack the profound implications of viewing organizations as living systems, illustrating its impact on corporate strategy and leadership behavior. This perspective embraces the internal dynamics and external influences on an organization, shifting the focus from stabilization to adaptation. We also venture into thought-provoking philosophical debates, comparing the machine model of organizations with the living system model. Moreover, we touch on how understanding the complexities of the physical world matters in organizational management and explore the influence of the Protestant work ethic on American culture. Don't miss this enlightening exploration that pushes the boundaries of traditional organizational understanding.

Kathrine (Kati) Livingston [Guest], M.A., Ed.M., Adult Development and Psychology, has worked in several leadership positions at Harvard University, including the Assistant Director of the Change Leadership Group at the Graduate School of Education. Presently Kati focuses on executive coaching, team dynamics, and adult development, delivering team and leadership initiatives to clients in the pharmaceutical, biotech, healthcare, communication, and finance sectors, and teaches in the graduate Management Program (MLA) at the Harvard University Extension School. She is also a certified yoga instructor, mindfulness meditation facilitator, and augments her work with somatic practices and principles from the neuroscience of change.

Travis C. Mallett [Host],  is  a Masters of Liberal Arts (ALM) candidate at Harvard University Extension School, where he has also earned Professional Graduate Certificates in both Organizational Behavior and Strategic Management. Travis previously received undergraduate degrees in Electrical Engineering, General Mathematics, and Music from Washington State University. He also served as an Engineering Manager at Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories, where he led a team responsible for developing and maintaining SEL's highest-selling product line. An innovative force in engineering, Travis holds numerous patents and has authored papers and books across diverse subjects. His passion for continuous learning and organizational excellence propels him to explore and illuminate the intricacies of management theories. Through his podcast, "The Management Theory Toolbox", he offers valuable insights on effective leadership, business innovation, and strategic methodologies.

Want to dive in even deeper? Visit the full show notes for this episode.

Kati Livingston:

Almost like these amoebas that we're trying to adapt together and figure out not only what's coming but how can we best adapt and thrive and stay alive. Because that's the other thing too about the living system model. It's all about what is giving life to the system. Living things want to survive, and so they'll find ways to do that.

Travis Mallett:

Welcome to another episode of the Management Theory Toolbox, your top destination to understand the behind the scenes theory of the management and business world. If you're an entrepreneur, manager or even just someone interested in the business world and you're always curious about the why behind certain management concepts, not just the what, then you're in the right place. I'm your host, travis Mallett, and today we'll be venturing into the fascinating world of organizations and emergence. Let's start with a basic but crucial question what is an organization? From your local corner bakery to multinational tech giants like Microsoft and Intel, organizations are a fundamental part of modern society, so much so that several commentators from Harvard University expressed it this way Modern societies are not market economies. They are organizational economies, in which companies are the chief actors in creating value and advancing economic progress. So here's a textbook definition of an organization. An organization is a network of individuals forming a coordinated system of specialized activities. They aim to achieve specific goals over an extended period, with continuity over time, regardless of changes in individual membership. Now, this definition might seem straightforward, and you probably could have taken a good stab at guessing something relatively close to it if I had asked you out of the blue. But at the management theory toolbox. We always want to look behind the scenes. Forget the boring textbook definition. Let's develop a deeper view of organizations, one which adds a bit of intrigue and mystery to the concept, in a way that just might become a tool in your management toolbox. You might recall from the introductory episode that studying management is like gazing at the stars, and infinite number of data points and concepts are in our view. Today, we're going to take that perhaps a bit too literally. Does this sound like it calls for a philosophical tangent? I wouldn't expect anything less. So pack a lunch. We might end up in some unexpected places.

Travis Mallett:

The story of our universe, often termed cosmic evolution or Darwinian cosmology, began around 13.8 billion years ago. This narrative takes us from a homogenous point of pure energy to an explosion, or rather an expansion. The four fundamental forces separated electrons and nuclei formed out of. Hold on, we're getting a call. Yeah, I had a question. Are you sure this has something to do with management? I wasn't expecting a science class. That's a good question. Hang on, we're getting there and we're going to end up with a whole new way of understanding organizations, one that just might have a real impact on your business ventures. So where were we. Oh yeah, the Big Bang formed atoms, and those atoms clustered, forming stars and planets. Stars, through nuclear fusion, expanded the periodic table from the original three elements to almost a hundred naturally occurring chemical elements. They spread these elements throughout the universe through supernovae explosions. The dust of the Earth brought forth single-celled life, which eventually evolved into more complex organisms and societies.

Travis Mallett:

The underlying unifiers in this tale are evolution and complexity, interweaving physical, biological and cultural changes in a broad, inclusive cosmic evolutionary scenario. Together they produce a phenomenon known as emergence. Emergence in its most basic form is a process where the whole becomes more than just the sum of its parts. It's the complexity that arises from a collection of interacting simpler elements. Atoms combine to produce molecules which exhibit characteristics and behavior significantly different from their underlying constituents. Molecules combine together to produce cells, which again display emergent behavior quite unlike their individual parts. Single cells combine together to produce multicellular organisms, and so on. This story culminates in the most complex object currently known to exist in the universe, the human brain, where cells and neurons combine to produce a cumulative, emergent behavior that is absolutely wildly different from any of the underlying elements.

Travis Mallett:

So what exactly does this have to do with business and organizations? From a philosophical sense. Organizations are one of the latest developments in the universe's continual unfolding of emergent behavior. Ever since humans began forming groups to accomplish unified goals, they've put on an impressive display of the latest unfolding of emergence. And when we participate in the business world, we are participating in the greatest show on earth, to repurpose the phrase from Dawkins, a show that has produced wonders of unimaginable complexity computers, the internet, asphalt, space travel and Snapchat. This is the essence of emergent behavior. Okay, let's come back to earth. After that philosophical tangent, you might be wondering if there are any practical applications for this idea. In fact, I think this idea that organizations are a spectacular example of emergence, perhaps even the pinnacle of emergence, in nature, this idea of emergence leads us to a management theory with profound implications for our day-to-day activities in the business world. It's a view of organizations as living systems rather than as machines. To help us explore this idea, we're joined by Katie Livingston. Hi, katie, and thanks for joining us.

Kati Livingston:

Yeah, Travis, thanks for having me on.

Travis Mallett:

Before we get started, go ahead and introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your background and work.

Kati Livingston:

I'm Katie Livingston. I am an instructor in the graduate management program at the Harvard Extension School. I've been doing that for about 12 years now. I also have a consulting practice. It's called CMS Associates. That stands for coaching mind-able systems. We're all about systems and the human messiness of systems. My background is in adult development and psychology, and so that's what brings me to this work.

Travis Mallett:

Thanks, katie, and just to say we're thrilled to have you on the show Today. We're just exploring the concept of emergence in nature and discussing how organizations fit into that story that's been unfolding. A question that comes up is are organizations more than just a fixed web of individuals? Maybe we should be thinking about them as living systems. Before we get into that, I think we should first talk about an all-too-common counterview the model of organizations as machines. Could you tell us a bit about that idea, the idea of organizations as machines, and maybe tell us where that idea comes from?

Kati Livingston:

Yeah, sure, this idea of organizations as machines has been around for a while. It really got codified in the early 1900s. The basic idea is that organizations exist to produce something and the activity of producing that something can be broken into parts and roles and processes can be created that make production happen as efficiently and seamlessly as possible. The term really comes from Frederick Taylor. He was an American engineer who published the Principles of Scientific Management back in 1912. That was really the beginning of companies using these series of rules that are very disciplined and routinized to organize human behavior.

Travis Mallett:

Thanks, giddy. I come from an engineering background. Engineering is all about abstraction, modeling and control. The process is to abstract from the complex details of a system, circuit or product and dial into the kernel of functionality and model it. Once you can model a system, then you can control it. Now, when you apply that mindset to organizations, imagining them as machines and setting aside the intricate human dynamics, it seems like it gives clarity on how information and materials flow through the various processes. It's not surprising to hear that this approach played a pivotal role during the Industrial Revolution and in tackling certain business challenges. Could you shed some light on which problems this model fits best?

Kati Livingston:

The engineering context that you just introduced is quite relevant here. This metaphor is useful when there's one best way of doing something, or you can figure out what's the best option of many. You know what your starting point is, you know what endpoint you're after, and then from that you can build a system that's linear and predictable. For example, I work a lot in financial services and there are some processes that need to be predictable and linear. There are clear rules to follow, there needs to be a process, there have to be timelines.

Kati Livingston:

Building a system that's linear and predictable allows everybody on the team to know what the steps are, they know what their roles are and they know what the end result looks like. In a highly compliant environment like financial services, you do not want mistakes. I would assume the same thing in a lot of engineering processes where people going off the rails is going to introduce potential harm not only to the workers themselves, but also to the end user. This idea of the machine model is when you've got highly predictable results that you want to get after and you're trying to produce something again that predictable.

Travis Mallett:

So it seems that viewing organizations as machines aligns closely with the notion of predictable linear systems. But when we think about organizations and the concept of emergence, we realize pretty quickly that organizations might be much more intricate than that, maybe resisting the neat boxes and boundaries that the machine model might try to impose. So where does this organization, as machines approach, start to break down?

Kati Livingston:

Yeah, and this will lead into the other model we're going to talk about living systems. The machine model really encourages predictability, and in organizations where human activity is involved, that same predictability can often promote boredom. I come in, I do the same thing every day. I know what's going to happen, and from that the brain starts to build patterns and habits, which the brain loves because it helps us be efficient. And those same patterns and habits can often lead us to stop paying attention when things change, which change is always happening in organizations.

Kati Livingston:

Or you may find that this process or model we built needs some updating and innovating. It's this double-edged sword where the benefits of the machine model actually can hinder us, because we can either get bored or we stop paying attention to things. There's a couple other common criticisms of the model, and those include that it places a story in the hands of a manager or a leader and that the workers just follow instructions, that human workers become just parts of the machine, and then, when the processes or humans don't work according to plan, they can often get framed as problems, and often humans get lumped into that category of problem. That's when this starts to not work in our favor.

Travis Mallett:

So let's shift gears to the alternative perspective, the idea of organizations as living human systems. Can you tell us what it entails to view organizations through this lens and perhaps some of the ramifications of adopting such a mindset?

Kati Livingston:

Yeah, so it's a different way of looking at what organizations are. Organizations in this sense are not an entity in and of themselves, but they're the creation of the people within them. The other principle of the living system model is that humans are bringing their own past experiences and expectations to organizational activity. So there might be a dictated one right way, but in the minds and hearts of the people coming to work there are many different ways of doing something. There's a book that we actually use in our class, the Appreciative Inquiry for Change Management, and the authors, I think, put it really nicely in just calling this kind of organization as a human phenomenon. It really puts human interaction and interactivity at the heart and soul of what organizations are.

Kati Livingston:

Some of the underlying assumptions of the living system model are that humans are not always rational. Organizing human activity is going to be chaotic at times. It's going to be naturally messy and that's not actually a bad thing. It's not a problem to solve, but rather it's a series of conversations to work through, to have people make sense of what they need to be doing, what are the ways we want to be working together and what are the next steps we need to take. One of the things about thinking of organizations in this way is it takes the pressure off of trying to fix and stabilize things and allows people to share what they're seeing, contribute their ideas, reinforce the patterns of interaction that are giving life to the system and producing results that the organization wants to see.

Travis Mallett:

The something that I'm hearing from your description is that this model recognizes and embraces a whole bunch of messy internal interactions within an organization, which makes sense when we think of something as being alive. But I think the living system idea also has another important implication. When we think of living organisms, we also understand that they're located within and are responsive to their environment. Can you tell us a bit more about the external influences in the context of the living?

Kati Livingston:

system. Yeah, so this model also assumes that the external environment is part of the system, whether it be changes in the industry maybe there's new innovations by competitors, changes in the marketplace, humans need to be able to respond and adapt their activity through what they're picking up. The pandemic is a great example. So there's a team and they all have these different roles and ways in which they're working. They know what they need to do, they need to talk to each other, they need to share information and it got some sort of root-nised way of going about their day and getting things done.

Kati Livingston:

The pandemic was an external environment force that came in and really disrupted that system that they had in place, and what I observed is that teams who struggled the most wanted to get back to those processes that they knew they wanted to lock down on. Okay, here's what we need to do, here's how we need to do it. Let's get back to work, let's not be inefficient, and the teams that thrived took on that more living system model, which was whoa. There's this thing that just came out of the blue. We do need to figure out how to get back online and work together, but maybe our carts need to interact in different ways that we hadn't been doing before. An emergence, almost, of a new system, rather than trying to stay so rigid at old roles like a machine.

Travis Mallett:

So the pandemic is a really interesting example because it touches on so many different aspects of an organization employee health, psychology and, of course, the economics of the business environment. And that makes me think that the living systems idea might also be integral to corporate strategy as well, since strategy is fundamentally about finding that strategic fit between an organization and its environment. But this seems like it adds a whole new dimension to strategy, since the living system idea implies the organizations are not just these static objects that you can pick up and move through the business environment per a strategic analysis, Because they're also being acted upon by the business environment as well.

Kati Livingston:

Yeah, and it's recognizing too that once you've figured out your strategy, it doesn't mean that that's going to be it. The external environment is going to continue to change and there's got to be a dialogue between the organization and what's happening in the external environment. And the dialogue also needs to be happening within. So it really is like these anibas that we're trying to adapt together and figure out not only what's coming, but how can we best adapt and thrive and stay alive. Because that's the other thing too about the living system model. It's all about what is giving life to the system. Living things want to survive, and so they'll find ways to do that.

Travis Mallett:

So how does thinking about organizations this way change our behavior as managers or business owners?

Kati Livingston:

Yeah, what I find interesting about understanding the contrast of these two models is that they raise our awareness about habits and the possibility of choice. The scientific management approach has a long legacy in business and management theory and management study, and so there can be a tendency for leaders to assume that business activity can be controlled, rationalized and fixed. It's something that's just been in our vernacular for so long, and I found that leaders often use scientific management language out of habit when they actually might want something different of their teams and their organizations. So I'll give you a specific example. I once worked with a team where I was brought in because the team leader really had aspirations of her teams being collaborative and relying less on her as the leader and more on each other as resources. In our initial conversation, just understanding what would you like to see? And she said I'd really like them to be a well-oiled machine. So in my mind I thought, ok, there's that scientific management language one. What she's describing to me isn't really fitting in that metaphor.

Kati Livingston:

But what was interesting is when I interviewed all the team members and I said listen, your leaders expressed the desire to have you all act as a well-oiled machine. I asked them what that looked like. What would they be doing day to day? How would they be interacting with each other? And what I found were a couple of predominant themes. One is that people describe their role as being well, I know what my role is on the team. I know what I'm supposed to do when I come in every day. I know what our deadlines are. I know what my part is on that, and it gets really frustrating when somebody on the team doesn't meet the deadline, and so they were already describing themselves as machine parts. I then asked the question about okay, so when that happens, what's the next step, what tends to happen next? And they said well, we go to the leader, we report to her that somebody didn't follow through or needs to be spoken with, and that kind of thing. What was interesting I found is that the language that the leader was describing was really probably not even consciously directing team members' concept of what they were supposed to do and how they were supposed to be, and directed their behaviors.

Kati Livingston:

When we came together and had a big conversation about this, what they decided is really that's not what they want, that's definitely not what the team leader wanted, and so they scratched around and played with some different metaphors, and what they came up with instead is we need this team to act more like an aunt colony.

Kati Livingston:

Now, none of us are scientists, so this may not even have been 100% accurate, but the spirit of the idea is that, yes, they came in, they still had their roles, but when something happened, when somebody needed some help, they were willing to reallocate resources in time to go help that person. So the aunt colony analogy is like listen, you can build an aunt colony, you can build a perfect system of tunnels and interconnections, but a storm comes and it wrecks it. Now you've got to start over and read it boy resources. So it just gave them a more fluid way of thinking about themselves and helped them understand the expectations a little bit differently and helped shift their understanding about what the team leader wanted and also what the behavior would look like. So that's the choice I'm talking about. I think that this is an interesting model because it gives people different choices about what it is they're looking to create.

Travis Mallett:

So just dismantling the organization as machines model seems like a good start because it opens our eyes to a lot of the complexities that are happening around us. But and I'm sure some of our listeners can relate it feels like we've cracked open the door, peeked behind the curtain, and we might regret it. I forget the clear, well-established principles of scientific management as we get thrown into this messy, chaotic water with only a vague idea about how to swim around. And I'm wondering are there any tools or frameworks that we might use to help navigate business life once we realize we're working within living systems?

Kati Livingston:

So I think there's a couple of things that come to mind. One is the Kunevin model. It's spelled C-Y-N-E-F-I-N, and what this does? It does an interesting tool to help you discern what kind of challenge or business opportunity you're dealing with. It's in a nutshell it's simple, complicated, complex and chaotic. What this model helps you understand is what you're working on predictable. Do you know all the parts? Do you understand what the A to B is and how to get there? And if so, the machine model might be very appropriate.

Kati Livingston:

If you've got something more in the complex and chaotic areas, that's when this living system model can be very helpful, because the starting point is not to lock down on a prescribed route, is really to start with observing the system, trying to see what all the different patterns are that are emerging, what's working, what do we want more of, what do we need to attend to that we don't, and really engage people in that inquiry and questioning rather than directing and telling, and both can be valuable and just depends on what your challenge is.

Kati Livingston:

So that's where I think that other tool, the appreciative inquiry approach, comes in and a book you can go look at as appreciative inquiry for change management, using appreciative inquiry to facilitate organizational development and that lays out an approach in which you are trying to understand how people are making sense of their environment, of this chaos, of this challenge, of all the complexity, and then from there what can emerge is priorities. Here's what we're gonna begin, here's what we're going to experiment with, here's what we're gonna be looking to learn and then iterate from there, because in complexity there's just way too many variables, there's too many independent parts that we don't quite understand yet.

Travis Mallett:

Well, thank you very much for teaching us about these concepts. This was really enlightening and it was a pleasure to have you on the show. Can you tell our listeners how they can get touched with you?

Kati Livingston:

You can find me on LinkedIn K-A-T-I Livingston. I'd be happy to connect and hear from you all and Travis, I just want to say thanks again for having me on.

Travis Mallett:

Thank you. Wow, that was a lot. If you're like me, you might be thinking. Well, that escalated quickly.

Travis Mallett:

We started off innocent and naive, hoping to understand what organizations are. The textbook definition seemed simple enough An organization is a network of individuals forming a coordinated system of specialized activities. But rewind the clock a few billion years and we find that organizations are deeply connected with one of the most remarkable and mysterious features of the universe emergence, connected with the mystery of life itself, a stamp of the divine, if you will. And when we see organizations in this way, in a way that is similar to a colony of ants, where the cells of the human body all working together to produce the human phenomenon, we expand our understanding of what an organization is. Organizations may be better thought of as living systems. And then we barely cracked open the door of this idea and we're drowned in a deluge of new information and ways of looking at organizations. But don't worry, we're going to be diving into all these different topics in future episodes. Before we wrap up, I want to offer two different perspectives or dimensions on this topic, an analogy to help provide some structure to the organizations as machines versus living systems idea and implications for where we should go next in our study of organizations and management.

Travis Mallett:

Before entering the management and business world, I got degrees in electrical engineering, mathematics and music and if I were asked what is the one thing that is common between all three topics, I would say categorically it's the philosophical concept of abstraction. We're filtering out complex details to see higher order, phenomenon which I think is closely related to the idea of emergence. Does this sound like the start of another philosophical tangent? Well, if you insist, I'll give you a two for one, special, just this once and only because it's a special occasion the very first episode of the management theory toolbox Plus. As you probably already realized, I like philosophical tangents. So here we go. Let's take Ohm's law, for example. If you aren't familiar with Ohm's law, it's just the relationship between voltage, current and resistance. V equals I times r.

Travis Mallett:

Electrical engineering would not be possible if we didn't have ways of simplifying the complexities of the physical world. Under the surface we have wave propagation, quantum electrodynamics and particle physics. Designing something as simple as a voltage divider would be difficult and certainly not economical if we had to take into account everything, if we didn't have some way of simplifying the problem. And if we didn't have any ways of simplifying the problem. This would not just be difficult, it would literally be impossible, because we have not yet learned everything there is to know about how the physical world works.

Travis Mallett:

The ravel hole of science may be infinitely deep for all we know, but we have discovered that under certain conditions, say if a circuit is small enough compared to the relevant signal frequencies and if there's no energy storage components in the circuit, then we can use what's called the lumped circuit model and the measurements and equations result in a simple, predictable equation Ohm's law. But here's the catch as soon as we have a circuit that breaks those constraints, we find that our measurements do not match the predictions of Ohm's law. We need to start taking into account the complex underlying phenomena, otherwise we're going to be left guessing and using the wrong tools for the job. This is just like the organizations as machines versus living systems. Under certain conditions, if the problem to be solved is linear and predictable and if the desired result is well-defined, we can think of our organization as a machine, and this can be a powerful tool for controlling our business processes to achieve an optimal outcome. But, as Katie mentioned, even such predictable systems can break the constraints of the machine's model, workers might get bored. Changes in the social or political climate may affect both workers and the business environment, causing cracks to appear in the so-called organizational machine. And that's where we must abandon the simplicity of the machine model and realize that we're working with a living system.

Travis Mallett:

It's useful to zoom in and out of different levels of abstraction to look at an organization as a machine in one moment, when the conditions are right, when the problem to be solved fits the constraints of the predictable linear causality, and the next moment to realize the complexities of the living system as soon as there are signs there might be more going on under the surface. And there are always complex human interactions going on under the surface. We understand that the study of organizations is like an intricate tapestry. Pulling on one thread can cause the whole pattern to shift, and that leads us to where we're going next in the Management Theory Toolbox, see, once we open the door to the living systems model of organizations, we find a whole host of interactions rooted in human behavior. The study of human behavior in organizations is called organizational behavior.

Travis Mallett:

If we only had the scientific model of management at our disposal, we might think that squishy, fuzzy topics like employee emotion, personality, motivation and communication are not that important, but that all changes under the living systems model. These become not just auxiliary topics but central ones that touch every aspect of our business in ways that we've only barely scratched the surface. It's going to be a long journey and there are so many topics to cover, but this idea of living systems provides the foundation, the bedrock, even the justification for the relevance of organizational behavior. As Katie said, organizations are a human phenomenon and we're going to revisit this concept time and time again. So bookmark this episode and perhaps listen to it more than once, because we're going to be coming back and grounding ourselves in this idea.

Travis Mallett:

So that's it for our first episode of the Management Theory Toolbox. Stay tuned for part two, where we talk more about emergence, to get a better grasp on the topic, as well as explore some practical examples of the living systems idea. As always, each episode is based on the latest and most robust management theory. Check out the show notes, which contain citations, references and links to the source material for every management theory concept in the episode. Until then, keep exploring, keep learning and keep building your Management Theory Toolbox.

People on this episode

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Travis Mallett, ALM

Host
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Kathrine (Kati) Livingston, M.A., Ed.M.

Guest