Tag Archives: EssentialBalances

Corona-induced Cohesion

The balance between autonomy and cohesion is one of the three balances, essential for everything living and social. It’s fascinating to watch when there is a shift both in the balance itself and in the way it is achieved. The times of Coronavirus are exceptionally rich in new ways of maintaining social cohesion.

There are various factors and forces for cohesion. They can be distinguished once in terms of origin and influence and then for different system scales – individual, organization, and society. This way, there are nine categories: individual factors for individual cohesion, individual factors for organizational cohesion, individual factors for the cohesion of society, then organizational factors for individual cohesion, organizational factors for organizational cohesion and so on for all nine combinations.

Some factors work in similar ways at different scales, while others do not. For example, the need for safety, the need to reduce uncertainty, and the need to increase self-esteem, are individual facts for both organizational and societal cohesion.

Most ways to increase cohesion reduce autonomy. This is the case, for example, when social cohesion is achieved through any form of centralization of decision-making power.

However, there can be an increase in cohesion without reducing autonomy. In fact, it can even do the opposite, enable it. Such is the case with the world wide web. On the web, everyone is free to say whatever they want (autonomy), but it can be consumed only if it is shared using some agreed standards (cohesion). These standards ensure a uniform way to publish, identify, and access documents on the web. They enable individuals and companies to invent various web applications (autonomy), but again, these applications could only be widely used if they conform to the agreed standards (cohesion). Of course, such a system is not immune to tumours where the tight integration of data and services can bring a new form of centralization, using the scale of the internet to achieve its internal balance between autonomy and cohesion (example: Facebook) at the expense of that of the web.

If we imagine the dynamics of autonomy and cohesion as a seesaw, we can tell the relative degree of autonomy and cohesion with the respective angles A and C between the beam and the fulcrum base. The balance is achieved when the beam is horizontal.

When angle C is the same as angle A, there is balance, and when it is smaller, there is disbalance caused by too much cohesion.

But not always.

In keeping with the seesaw metaphor, a crisis situation can be imagined as a slope. The next drawing shows the seesaw at the time of crisis when the angle C must be smaller than A to keep the beam is horizontal, in balance.

In times of crisis, maintaining the balance requires either more cohesion or a new kind of cohesion to compensate for the loss of normal cohesion.
Continue reading →

Notes on Stability-Diversity

To be healthy, organisations – like human beings – have to operate in balance. Going temporarily out of balance is OK, but if this goes on for too long, it’s dangerous. Just like riding a bike, the balance is the minimum organisations need to be able to move forward.

What kinds of things need to be balanced? There are three essential balances. The first one is between autonomy and cohesion, the second is about maintaining both stability and diversity, and the third is balancing between exploration and exploitation. The important thing to recognise here is that the nature of each balance will differ between organisations. And what needs to be done to restore balance will change over time. So we can’t be prescriptive or learn “best practice” from others. We can only give people the glasses to see what is going on and the knowledge that will help them maintain the balances in their organisations.

I’ve been doing the Essential Balances workshop for four years now. During the workshop, all three of them seemed relatively easy to get yet a bit more difficult to work with and create a habit of.  Based on the feedback I received from people using in practice these glasses for organisational diagnosis and design, the first and the third balance, Autonomy-Cohesion and Exploitation-Exploration, come more naturally (with certain difficulties in the fractal dimension), while the second one, Stability-Diversity, creates problems. All three of them and a few more will be explained in detail in the forthcoming book Essential Balances, but until then, I’ll make some clarifications here. I hope it will also be of use for people who are not familiar with this practice.

Stability and Diversity. At first glance, it might be difficult to see it as a balance. In fact, it covers three dynamics. So, it might be easier to see it as three different balances. Different, yet somehow the same. And the key to it is exactly in these two words: different and same. Continue reading →

The Art of Form as a Form of Art

In Brussels, at the southeastern end of the Mont des Arts garden, there are stairs leading to Rue de Musée. Climbing up one of the stairways, you see a wall on your right. A few months ago, a form of art started spreading on that wall. I don’t know if it was spontaneous or organized.  And it doesn’t matter. Every organization was at some point spontaneous, and everything spontaneous is worth talking about if it has led to some organization.

When approaching it, all you see is empty frames.

Getting closer, they (actually, you) start to make sense, but the name, given by the artist, accelerates the process. The name and the image enter into a loop, the name confirming the image, and the image confirming the name. Continue reading →