The Management Theory Toolbox
Imagine boldly navigating the complex world of management with a broad range of management theories at your disposal. The Management Theory Toolbox promises you a mind-expanding experience. Prepare to think, rethink, and discover the theory that underlies management practices.
This isn't your typical management podcast. Yes, there are plenty of resources out there that will give you the ABCs of how to run a meeting, hire someone, or even how to fake a sick day without getting caught, but here we like to talk about the behind-the-scenes topics, those concepts and ideas which transcend specific management practices, the ideas which give birth to good management and business practices, rather than simply restate them. We aren’t going to give you specific tips and tricks for becoming an effective manager. Here at The Management Theory Toolbox, we’re interested in the why behind it all, the discoveries of behavioral science, psychology, business, and economics that will open our eyes to what’s happening behind the scenes.
If you're a manager, team leader, aspiring entrepreneur, business student or simply someone toying around with the idea of starting a business and you’re interested in a scientifically rooted discussion of management and business, one which systematically discusses the ideas behind the specific practices you’ve probably already heard a lot about, then this podcast is for you. One thing you’ll be able to count on in this podcast is that every statement is supported by research, and you’ll be able to download the show notes for each episode to find links and references to the source material for everything taught in each episode.
The Management Theory Toolbox
Episode 2: Organizations, Emergence, and Living Systems (Part 2) with Dr. Werner van Zyl and Ryan McCreedy
What does management theory have to do with Jurassic Park? Or quantum physics? Join Dr. Werner van Zyl and Ryan McCreedy on this episode of The Management Theory Toolbox where we explore the idea of organizations as complex adaptive systems. Not only does this open our eyes to the "matrix" of the business world, but it has profound implications for leaders who need to be prepared to iterate rapidly in today's ever-shifting landscape.
Dr. Werner van Zyl [Guest], B. Comm (Hons), MBA, DBL, is highly passionate about complex systems, blending his doctoral research in complexity with practical experience. His specialization lies at the nexus of human behaviour and technology, with a keen focus on the psychology and neuroscience underpinning human actions. This unique perspective guides his approach in consulting and daily work improving organizational effectiveness and efficiency. He uses his experience in knowledge management, human behaviour and complex systems to provide novel perspectives on problem solving at Jizni Performance, where he is a business development principal, always looking for ways to ensure processes and workflows improvement in a complex environment.
Ryan T. W. McCreedy [Guest], is a Leadership and Organizational Psychology scholar-practitioner based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, dedicated to creating inclusive, equitable workforces and economic systems. He works as a Principal Organizational Effectiveness Consultant at Slalom Consulting in Boston, focusing on talent and organizational development for Fortune 100 clients, and leads Slalom's global Leadership and Team Development capabilities. With a background in engineering and behavioral sciences, Ryan has contributed to transformative changes in various industries. He also engages in organizational behavior research and helps teach graduate courses at Harvard. Ryan holds several degrees, including a B.S. from George Mason University, an A.L.M from Harvard Extension School, and is pursuing a doctoral degree at William James College focusing in applications of neuroscience in workplaces. Beyond his professional life, he enjoys brewing beer, cooking, music, philosophical discussions, and traveling with his wife Hannah.
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.
For me, understanding that an organization is a complex adapter system can help leaders and managers create strategies that are flexible, responsive and adaptable to the changing environment.
Travis Mallett:You're listening to the Management Theory Toolbox, your top destination for exploring the why behind it, all the discoveries of neuroscience, psychology, business and economics that open our eyes to what's happening behind the scenes of the business and management world. I'm your host, Travis Mallett, and I'm excited to be on this journey with you. In our last episode, we started exploring the question what is an organization? Which sounds pretty boring, I know, but after a philosophical tangent about emergence in nature, we came across this idea that businesses and organizations in general are not just machines. Instead, they exhibit emergent phenomena, much like many living systems in nature. This idea is so compelling, in fact, that we decided to dedicate another episode to peeling back yet more layers of this important paradigm.
Travis Mallett:As we'll find in upcoming episodes, it's important to have a view of organizations which sufficiently acknowledges the underlying complexity. Otherwise, we'll stay stuck at a surface level, collecting management tips and tricks, like my nine-year-old daughter and her friends collect Pokemon cards without understanding how the underlying mechanics of the game work. At first, my daughter only cared about the hit points, or HP, of a card. The bigger the better, right. But as we've explored how cards interact with others, she's discovered that even a card with a large HP might be useless in the wrong context. And that's exactly the kind of exploration we do at the Management Theory Toolbox. So in today's episode we're really going to focus in on the idea of emergence and how that leads us to the idea of living systems or, as we'll discover, the idea of complex adaptive systems. And here to guide our understanding . Hi, Werner, and welcome to the show. Hi Travis, and thanks for having me Great. So before we get started, go ahead and introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your background and your work.
Dr. Werner van Zyl:I'm Werner van Zyl, and I'm a Business Development Principal Jizni Firearm Firearm Accessories in South Africa. Before that, I received my Doctorate in Business Leadership from the University of South Africa, the Graduate School of Business Leadership. I do a lot of thinking and work in the area of human behavior, technology systems and, in particular, complexity, so I'm really excited to talk to you about these topics today.
Travis Mallett:Excellent, and thank you for joining us. So in our last episode just to remind our listeners we came across this idea of emergence in nature, and that led us to understand that organizations are not just these static objects that we can really easily understand. So, before we get into the complexity of it all, can you teach us just a little bit about emergence? What is it and what do we mean by that idea?
Dr. Werner van Zyl:So emergence is a really fascinating phenomenon. That's observed in various systems, but it's seen in nature and in a human-designed context such as technology At its core. Emergence refers to situations where complex system displays properties or behavior that are not evident by breaking them down into its constituent parts. This is often better expressed as the whole is more than the sum of the parts. So in nature we see striking examples of emergence. Consider how individual atoms bond to form molecules. Each was characteristic, quite distinct from those of the isolated atoms.
Alan Adams (MIT):Your intuition was developed by throwing spears and running from tigers and catching toast as it jumps out of the toaster, all of which involves things so big and with so much energy that quantum effects are negligible. As a friend of mine likes to say that you don't need to know quantum mechanics to make chicken soup. However, when we work in very different regimes, your intuition is just not a reasonable guide. It's not that the electrons and this is I cannot emphasize this strongly enough it is not that the electrons are weird. The electrons do what electrons do. This is what they do and it violates your intuition, but it's true. The thing that's surprising is that lots of electrons behave like this. Lots of electrons behave like cheese and chalk.
Travis Mallett:That was Dr Alan Adams from MIT giving his famous opening lecture to introductory quantum physics. What Dr Vansil and Professor Adams are saying is that atoms in combination with other atoms give rise to new physical properties, and that's the essence of emergence. Individual atoms don't melt when heated up, they just have higher energy. But cheese melts, and we would say that the ability to melt is a property that emerges from the system.
Dr. Werner van Zyl:Back to our guest in the realm of biology. Ants are a classic example. Each ant follows relatively simple rules, but collectively they exhibit complex behaviors such as building intricate colonies or finding the most efficient part to food sources. If I can give you one more example, the flocking of birds, Each bird in a flock reacts to a few neighbors, yet this results in the entire flock moving in an impressively coordinated way. This isn't due to any single bird leading or all of them following a shared plan. It's an emergent property of the interaction between the individual birds. These instances show how emergency is about surprising and complex behavior that arise from simple components interacting with each other.
Travis Mallett:Werner brings up a stellar example with ants, and I wanna linger on that for a minute. Imagine we do an experiment with an ant. The ant starts down a maze and follows a trail leading to a wide junction or split in the path. If it goes left, the ant will find food, but there's no food if the ant goes right. Assuming the ant can't sense the food down the path, we expect it to make a random choice, and that's exactly what happens. But what happens if we repeat that experiment many times with the same ant, always keeping the food on the left? You'd think that the ant would eventually learn the food is on the left and always take that route. But here's the interesting part no matter how many times this experiment has been repeated, the ant always makes a random choice to go left or right. It never seems to learn that the food is on the left. In fact, researchers have never been able to train ants to do anything. And before you ask, yes, people have, with all the seriousness and gravity of the scientific method behind them, tried training ants. The twist, however, lies in how ants communicate. When one ant discovers food and returns to the nest, it leaves a pheromone trail. Other ants sensing this are more likely to follow the successful path. The result Just two simple rules programmed into ant behavior allow an ant colony to quickly find and swarm even the tiniest crumb.
Travis Mallett:But on their own no single ant can do that. It's only when they come together in a colony that that behavior emerges. And that's what emergence is simpler elements coming together to produce more complex phenomena. So, warner, people are clearly more complex than atoms, ants or birds. What can you tell us about what happens when people come together in an organization? What kind of emergent phenomena do we see?
Dr. Werner van Zyl:This concept of emergence is not just confide to natural systems. It has profound implications in areas like business, technology and social systems, where understanding emergent properties can lead to more effective strategies and solutions. These emergent properties, as we've seen, are not always directly predictable from the characteristics of the individual elements, such as the employees, processes or policies, just to name a few examples. Instead, there are the result of complex interactions within the organizational system. An example can be seen in market dynamics with a business ecosystem. Consider, for example, how small scale interactions between businesses, consumers and market forces can lead to large scale phenomena like market trends, economic cycles or consumer behavior. These are not the results of any single decision or policy, but emerges from the complex web of interactions between the market. In business, emergence can also be observed in self-organizing teams. When teams are given autonomy and flexibility, they often develop unique ways of working, problem solving, approaches and dynamics that are not explicitly planned or predicted by any person in management. These emergent properties can lead to higher efficiency, innovation and adaptiveness, which are valuable in a rapidly changing business environment. And, lastly, understanding and harnessing emergent properties in organizations involved, recognizing that these properties un-always controlled or cannot always be predicted. So instead, it involves creating an environment where positive emergent properties are more likely to arise through the interaction of systems components. So this approach essentially requires a shift from the traditional top-down management, as in a hierarchy, to more decentralized, adaptive and responsive organizational structures.
Travis Mallett:So one of the things that you talk about in your articles is the idea of complex adaptive systems. Can you tell us what's the main idea of complex adaptive systems and how does it relate to emergence?
Dr. Werner van Zyl:Yeah, sure. So I am fascinated by a complex adaptive systems. As you can imagine, I see them essentially everywhere, now that I know a little bit more about them, since I studied it as a large part of my doctoral studies. So complex adaptive systems are a key concept in understanding how systems themselves behave in environments that are not just complex but are also dynamic and ever-changing. So these systems are composed of multiple, diverse elements which interact with each other that are often, as they say, not linear and unpredictable.
Ryan McCreedy:See the tyrannous, or it doesn't have any set patterns or park schedules. It's the essence of chaos.
Amanda Rasmussen (Travis' sister-in-law):Still not clear on chaos.
Ryan McCreedy:Oh, it's simply deals with predictability and complex systems. The shorthand is the butterfly. The butterfly can flap its wings if it came in Central Park or get raided instead of sunshine. And then I go too fast. I go too fast. I did a fly box. Give me that big glass of water. We're going to conduct an experiment. It should be still the cards bouncing up and down, but that's okay, it's just an example. Now put your hand flat like a hieroglyphic. Now let's say you drop waterfalls in your hand. Which way is the drop going to roll off? Which finger are you rolling on Some? Okay, now freeze your hand, don't move. I'm going to do the same thing. Start with the same Same place again.
Travis Mallett:Which way is going to roll off?
Ryan McCreedy:Let's say the same way, same way the chain. Why? Because tiny variations the orientation of the hairs on your hand, the amount of blood to sending your vessels, imperfections in the skin, infections in the skin Like microscopic, macroscopic Never repeat and vastly affect the outcome. That's Unpredictability there. Look at this, see. See, I'm right again. Nobody could have predicted that Dr Grand would suddenly, suddenly jump out of a moving vehicle. There's another example, see. Here I'm now by myself, talking to myself.
Travis Mallett:That's KM's theory. That was Dr Sattler, played by Jeff Goldbloom, explaining chaos theory in the 1993 Jurassic Park. The idea is that complex systems cannot be modeled and predicted in the same way we might reliably predict where a basketball will land using classical physics. Jeff mentions the butterfly effect, and my sister-in-law, who's a school teacher, gave a pertinent example of this recently while we were visiting family for Christmas.
Amanda Rasmussen (Travis' sister-in-law):I had an interesting experience happen recently. Travis recommended a podcast to me and as I was listening to the podcast they recommended a book and it piqued my interest. So I started listening to it this summer and was just blown away by the content. It was so fascinating to me and just changed my perspective, even as an educator with many years of experience as a facilitator of a committee. I mentioned this book and now the whole committee is doing a book study and we're partnering with the parents and the teachers. Who knows how far the ripple effect might reach? It may impact parents and how they parent their children and how us teachers view our students, and then these students get to build on that and achieve success, grow and learn without limits. Who knows, maybe one of these students may grow up to be a game changer, a world leader. But all this would have not come about if I hadn't listened to that podcast that Travis had recommended, probably close to a year ago.
Travis Mallett:Of course, I can't take any credit for the positive impacts of that. That goes to my sister-in-law and her leadership and tenacity for continuous learning. But this effect, popularly known as the butterfly effect, comes from the idea that a butterfly in one area of the world might flap its wings, causing a small gust of wind that creates ripple effects which later cause a change in the weather. Now that popular example is a bit of hyperbole, since scientists have argued that large-scale climate phenomena are much more stable than that. Human interactions are, in many respects, very unstable. When Dr Van Zael says that organizations are complex, adaptive systems which are nonlinear and unpredictable, this is exactly the type of phenomenon that we're talking about. Even small perturbations in a human system can have major unpredictable outcomes, and that has profound implications for us as managers. So, warnor, can you now explain the adaptive part of complex adaptive systems?
Dr. Werner van Zyl:The adaptive part of the complex adaptive systems refers to the ability of the systems to change and learn from their past experiences, thereby affecting the systems overall behavior. So the main idea behind complex adaptive systems is that the behavior of the whole system cannot be simply inferred from understanding its individual parts. The interplay, for example, between departments, employees, external stakeholders and market forces can lead to immersion phenomena like culture, market trends or innovation dynamics. And, for me, understanding that an organization is a complex adaptive system can help leaders and managers create strategies that are flexible, responsive and adaptable to the changing environment.
Travis Mallett:So a closely related concept is the difference between open systems and closed systems. How important is it for a business to be an open system and what are the risks of being a closed system in today's rapidly changing business landscape?
Dr. Werner van Zyl:So I'll start with open systems. Open systems interact freely with their environment, where they exchange information, energy or resources. Some people, they virtually do that as a material. They adapt and evolve based on feedback and changes in their surroundings. In contrast, the closed system has limited interaction with their environment. They operate in isolation, with minimal external input or exchange, and in business, a closed system might ignore external market trends, focusing rather on internal processes and existing models.
Dr. Werner van Zyl:So, for businesses, being an open system is crucial in today's interconnected, interrelated and independent world. Open systems are more adaptable and responsive to changes, which allows for greater innovation and resilience. They can better anticipate and meet customer needs, stay ahead of market trends and competitors, and integrate new technologies into their organizational systems. Lastly, when you have a closed system, it poses significant risks to an organization, which is something I think many organizations don't always realize how close they are, because such businesses may become obsolete as they fail to adapt to new market realities, customer preferences and technological advances. It's vital for businesses to operate in an open system, embracing the change and external interactions as opportunities for continued improvement and innovation.
Travis Mallett:Now, this also leads us to think about how organizations are organized and controlled, and the complex adaptive system makes us think maybe there's some self-organization going on. Can you tell us a little bit about that, and if that's something that's desirable, and if so, how can it be implemented? Sure.
Dr. Werner van Zyl:So self-organization in companies, research to a process where order and structure emerge from bottom-up interactions among the system's components, which can be the employees or the teams, without any external direction. The concept is rooted in principles of convex adaptive systems, as we've just seen, where the simple rules and interactions lead to complex and adaptive outgoes. You can just think of the human body on so many different levels it self-organizes. Once you're cut by a knife or quick by needle, the cells in your body self-organized to heal itself without any external direction. So to practically implement self-organization, there's a number of things that companies can do. They can empower employees, which means to give the employees the autonomy to make decisions and solve problems.
Dr. Werner van Zyl:As Dan Pink wrote a beautiful book on what motivates people autonomy, mastery and purpose. Those three things, and here autonomy really stands out. So autonomy basically involves trusting them and allowing employees to self-manage and take initiative. Then also encouraging collaboration, which fosters a culture that values teamwork, human communication and cross-functional collaboration. And lastly, adapt the leadership style from a commandable troll leadership style to one that facilitates, guides and supports autonomous teams. I'm sure we've both been in some kind of authoritarian organization that is governed from the top down and how that bifles any growth. And then, of course, because it's a complex environment, managing the complexity and interdependence of their actions can become quite a challenge.
Travis Mallett:Yeah. So, speaking of managing all of this, if you let people have autonomy, I think the concern some might have is well, isn't this just going to turn into chaos? How are you going to actually control your business, your strategy, things like that? And you talk about this idea of living on the edge of chaos. Just talk about how we balance the difference between controlling and letting emergent properties, even if they're chaotic, emerge.
Dr. Werner van Zyl:Yeah, it's absolutely. I often think about the human body as existing on the age of chaos. I once read a book about molecular biology in which the author goes into the details of the absolute chaos that goes on inside the cell. It is essentially like a hurricane that manifests itself 24 hours a day, seven days a week, nonstop, and yet we are organized into a coherent set of processes and cells that are able to make decisions, think and feel. So I just want to give a brief definition of the age of chaos.
Dr. Werner van Zyl:In complex systems theory, it refers to a state of balance between the older and the chaos. It's either old and it's a sweet spot where systems speak the exhibit enough order to maintain coherence and enough chaos to foster the flexibility, deptability and creativity. In a business context, operating at the age of chaos means finding a dynamic balance where there's sufficient structure to ensure the stability and efficiency but, on the other hand, also enough openness to ensure innovation and adaptation. So this balance is crucial for businesses to thrive in a rapidly changing environment. Practitioners, such as consultants, should be prepared to iterate rapidly, experiment and pivot strategies based on real time feedback and change in the environment.
Dr. Werner van Zyl:As problems become more complex, solutions will increasingly rely on collaboration across different disciplines, industries and even cultures. So embracing diversity and fostering a collaborative culture will be key. So the rapid pace of change will require that we make an commitment to continuous learning and professional development to stay abreast of new theories, technologies and practices. So in ASAN's, managers should prepare for a future with adaptability, integrated thinking and respond to complex, evolving systems or not just advantages, but absolutely essential for success and sustainability. Thank, you.
Travis Mallett:This is fascinating. Before we sign off, can you tell our listeners how they can find you in your work?
Dr. Werner van Zyl:Sure, you can find me on LinkedIn under Dr Bernadette R Van Zael, and I'd love to hear from you and connect with you all. Thanks again for having me on the trend. I really appreciate it, thank you.
Travis Mallett:Hopefully that helps clarify what emergence is and how it applies to our study of organizations. For me, this idea of complex adaptive systems carries two main takeaways for us as managers. First, it helps us understand just how little control we actually have. I'm reminded of what Harvard Business School professor Linda Hill said in her article titled Becoming the Boss.
HBS Professor Lynda Hill played by voice actor Yvette S.:New managers typically focus on the rights and privileges that come with being the boss they assume. The position will give them more authority, more freedom and autonomy. No longer, in the words of one, will they be burdened by the unreasonable demands of others. New managers nursing this assumption face a rude awakening. Instead of gaining new authority, those I have studied describe finding themselves hemmed in by interdependencies and meshed in a web of relationships, all of whom make relentless and often conflicting demands on them. The fact is, you're really not in control of anything, says one new manager. The only time I'm in control is when I shut my door and then I feel I am not doing the job. I'm not doing the job I'm supposed to be doing, which is being with the people. Another new manager observes it's humbling that someone who works for me could get me fired.
Travis Mallett:Due to the inherent unpredictability and instability of human systems. Business leaders need to understand that we don't have as much control as we would like to think. Speaking of instability, that brings me to my second takeaway. Think back to the butterfly effect, the idea that the flap of a butterfly's wings could cause nonlinear effects that change the weather. As I said, climate systems are not exactly that unstable. But why is that? After all, airflow dynamics are strongly nonlinear. I'm not a meteorologist or physicist, but recent studies suggest that climate models have terms which would tend to dampen out small perturbations like that. And what are those terms? This is, of course, highly simplified, but we can imagine that mountains and other geographical features, along with the rhythm of the sun's rays, play a much larger role in the formation of large climate conditions than a butterfly's wings.
Travis Mallett:In the same way, human organizations have many systems, structures, processes and elements of company culture which help hold the organization together and keep the whole thing from descending into chaos. These are the performance reviews, regular work schedules, shared values, expected behavior in a professional environment, unspoken rules, job descriptions and pay stubs, and one of our jobs as managers is to build and maintain the glue which keeps the organization on the edge of chaos, as Dr Van Ziel said. So that wraps up our introduction to emergence organizations and living systems, or does it? I feel that something is missing. Although the idea of complex adaptive systems opens a whole new world for us to explore, it can also be a very abstract concept, somewhat difficult to grasp onto, and often, when dealing with complex topics like this, it's useful to have an analogy or metaphor for us to keep in mind, provided we recognize their limitations and boundaries of efficacy.
Travis Mallett:Let's give Ryan McCready a call again to see if he can help. We heard from Ryan in the trailer episode as a doctoral candidate at William James College studying the intersection of neuroscience and leadership. He might have a useful perspective to offer. Hi, ryan, and welcome back to the show. Travis, thanks for having me back again. Quick question for you. In today's episode we're further exploring the idea of organizations as living systems, and I'm wondering if you have any ways of thinking about this that could help our listeners latch on to the idea, since it'll provide a foundation for future episodes.
Ryan McCreedy:So it's very easy for folks to try to use organizations as a living system. A lot of people like say that there's organs and organelles and that it's like a body and that's the boundary. Sometimes that's effective, but what's really interesting is in complex, adaptive systems it defies the logic of that tradition. The general concept of organization in the mind is that every individual maps social systems within their mind. They have a model or a framework or a representation that mirrors the external world Imperfectly. I want to be clear because we have a lot of assumptions. One of my favorite people is Michael Graziano from Princeton and he has spent time on a theory of consciousness and essentially his theory of consciousness is that you have these mental models of these social systems within your mind. You also have a mental model of yourself in your mind. In a way, consciousness is your ability to interact with your mental model of self in play scenarios with social systems, ie other mental models of other people and or the groups that they recognize. That's what's happening right now when you think about what's Ryan going to say next. What's going to happen later tonight with my significant other over dinner. What's going to happen when I walk out of this room and I go beat with the rest of my organization. We are such a social creature. There were always trying to make those mental models work together. So they act in nodes. So play with me. Here you have these little mental models and they have little connections between them and we're always trying to figure out what they're doing. What's fascinating is that that pretty much describes a neural network, and those mental models sit within parts of our minds and we have circuits that are constantly doing that. When you look at an organization and you look how they communicate with one another, it actually does almost the same thing. There's a concept called organizational network analysis. You can see who's talking to who, how they're talking to each other, how often they're talking to each other, etc. It's a reality of that same mental model in the same way. I think it would be processor. What's interesting about that is that at a very deep level, you could assume that everybody has these circuits that are firing. They're similar, but they're a little imperfect from one another.
Ryan McCreedy:What's super fascinating one of my most favorite things is in physiological synchrony or interbrain synchrony. So when we get to the group level, there's actually different things that can happen, where we mirror one another, but not just two people. We mirror all the people. You will see us actually have our brain waves start to sink and get in phase with one another. I'm talking about, within a millisecond, very, very, very precise brain wave synchronization.
Ryan McCreedy:We have done studies on this and that interbrain synchrony can predict how close people are in that organizational network that I was just talking about. It can take complete strangers. Think of college students that are just starting freshman year and they watch an introductory video at different times. If their brains are more closely in sync while they're watching that video, it predicts how close they'll be in that social network later on in that same college career. You can predict friendships with this. It goes even further than that. If you get people with completely different heart rates, different brain waves happening at different times, you get them into a room.
Ryan McCreedy:You do some simple exercises, things like mirroring. If you hold up your hands listening to music, everybody's listening the same BPM. Eye contact, sometimes physical touch, actually increases oxytone, which is another part of what we study. All of those things will actually enhance sense of connection and alignment. But not group thought, not group think. So when you're dealing with some of these really really, really tricky things. By getting people to synchronize that way, we actually move past some of the storming and we allow for productive storming. We allow for people to actually work through some really tricky problems with one other, and so what's cool about that is, say you have a dysfunctional group. I'll be designing interventions with those things in mind, such that subconsciously, these folks start to become more physiologically in sync, which allows for productive dialogue where they can actually work through some of their disagreements, become more aligned and have better outcomes and feel more connected at a very deep physiological level.
Travis Mallett:Got it. Thanks, ryan. Hope to have you back on the show soon. So just to summarize, we started in episode one by seeking to understand what an organization is. Katie Livingston dispelled the myths of organizations as machines for us and led us to this idea of organizations as living systems, which has all kinds of implications for management. But what kind of living systems are we talking about? Dr Van Zil explained to us, when we get into the nitty gritty details of how an organization works, we're really working with something called a complex adaptive system. And finally, ryan McCready just explained to us what kind of living system we should be thinking about. The closest analogy turns out to be the human brain.
Travis Mallett:Hang on to these ideas, because they're going to provide the foundation for many of our upcoming episodes. So what's next? If we're going to study organizations and if organizations are complex adaptive systems much like neural networks, it makes sense to start by studying the neurons themselves, the behavior of the people which make up an organization. In management theory, this is called organizational behavior, and we'll dive into it starting next week and along the way we're going to be collecting a lot of tools for our management toolboxes, while developing a deeper understanding of the theory that underlies those tools. With that, thank you for tuning in to the management theory toolbox, your top destination for the behind the scenes of management and business theory. As always, each episode is based on the latest and most robust management theory and you can download the show notes to find references and learn more. Until next time, keep learning, keep growing and keep building your management theory toolbox.
