Dancing with Pace Layers
The first two pieces I dug into for Organizations as Ecosystems - thanks to the volume of recommendations from many of you - were Stewart Brand's The Clock of the Long Now and Donella Meadows' Dancing With Systems. Brand's work, especially the concept of pace layers, seems to be highly cited in my orbits, so I almost felt compelled to read that first. Thankfully, many of you sent over recommendations not just for Brand's writing, but also your own interpretations [3][4].
The Clock of the Long Now / Pace Layers
For the uninitiated, Brand proposes "six significant levels of pace and size in the working structure of a robust and adaptable civilization. From fast to slow the levels are:
Fashion/art
Commerce
Infrastructure
Governance
Culture
Nature" [1]
He goes on to note that the layers must respect the differences in pace and that change which works too suddenly can do critical damage to the system, and that “the total effect of the pace layers is that they provide many-leveled corrective, stabilizing negative feedback throughout the system. It is precisely in the apparent contradictions of pace that civilization finds its surest health.” [1]
I love this framing and was immediately drawn to exploring where my own work has succeeded or failed through this lens. I thought about a recent client project where my research identified a need to make changes in both governance and infrastructure. What was less clear to me then, but pace layers helps explain, is that the biggest objections to these changes came from teams where there were differences in culture.
In this organization, Team A was onboard and excited about the changes, because the new governance and infrastructure aligned to their world view and culture. Team B was less excited because their foundational (literally, the layer below governance here) way of being/acting in the organization was less compatible with these changes. Successfully navigating this new world would require them to adapt - not just what tools they used and how they used them, but the way they viewed the role that the tools played overall, and their orientation to the system. For us to move things forward, we had to not only have the discussion about the changes (governance and infrastructure), but make visible the differences in culture - and reconcile those.
Organizational Pace Layers
If I was to map these pace layers out against an organization (and I'm sure that someone has and even more sure that one of you will point me towards it), V0.1 would probably look like:
(Individual) Work
Communication
Tools
Process
Culture
Orientation* Niche
* (I don't want to call this mission or strategy, since it’s about the general orientation of the company - what you’re trying to do, in what industry/space, etc - so if you have suggestions, I’m all ears)
I don't love this yet, but I'm putting it out here because part of this project is about being wrong in public to spark a discussion. So, here's my "wrong" version of "Organizational Pace Layers." (Note - Brand himself chimed in on Twitter to suggest “Niche” instead of Orientation. I’m keeping the original image above for archival purposes. This is the joy of writing in public.)
Pushing on this made me wonder what are examples of simultaneous changes to two or more layers? Corporate reorganizations (or "reorgs") are arguably some of the most destructive things that happen within a company and often simultaneously impact multiple layers - governance, infrastructure, and commerce at a minimum (or process, tools, and communication if you'll let me inject my own layers). What are other examples of shocks to the system - for good or for bad? Would love to hear people's thoughts.
There's a lot more I could say about Pace Layers, but that's enough for now.
Dancing with Systems
This piece from Donella Meadows was recommended by Tom Critchlow (thanks!) and immediately drew me in.
Meadows' primary argument is that people study systems thinking that doing so will allow them to "Make Systems Work." [2] Sadly, that's not what really happens, because - as we all know - "systems can’t be controlled, but they can be designed and redesigned.” Instead of feeling disheartened by this, Meadows takes the optimistic view and says that we can (and I'd argue should) learn to dance with them.
She goes on to lay out 13 rules for "dancing with systems" - all of which I love, though 1, 12, and 13 are probably my favorites:
1. Get the beat.
12. Expand the boundary of caring.
13. Celebrate complexity.
In rule 1, Meadows doubles down on her argument, reminding us that it's our job to observe a system's behavior before we interrupt. Not only that, but ignoring behavior will lead us to confirmation bias at best, and ignorance at worst.
Starting with the behavior of the system directs one’s thoughts to dynamic, not static analysis–not only to “what’swrong?” but also to “how did we get there?” and “what behavior modes are possible?” and “if we don’t change direction, where are we going to end up?”
I'm going to repost all of rule 12 here, because it's excellent:
Living successfully in a world of complex systems means expanding not only time horizons and thought horizons; above all it means expanding the horizons of caring. There are moral reasons for doing that, of course. And if moral arguments are not sufficient, then systems thinking provides the practical reasons to back up the moral ones. The real system is interconnected. No part of the human race is separate either from other human beings or from the global ecosystem. It will not be possible in this integrated world for your heart to succeed if your lungs fail, or for your company to succeed if your workers fail, or for the rich in Los Angeles to succeed if the poor in Los Angeles fail, or for Europe to succeed if Africa fails, or for the global economy to succeed if the global environment fails.
In rule 13, Meadows shares what I'll consider to be her systems version of Jared Diamonds' "nasty, brutish, and short" - nonlinear, turbulent, and chaotic:
Let’s face it, the universe is messy. It is nonlinear, turbulent and chaotic. It is dynamic. It spends its time in transient behavior on its way to somewhere else, not in mathematically neat equilibria. It self-organizes and evolves. It creates diversity, not uniformity. That’s what makes the world interesting, that’s what makes it beautiful, and that’s what makes it work.
What I love about the idea of the organizations being "nonlinear, turbulent, and chaotic" as a starting point is that it reminds us that when things are "working well" it's an outlier, not the norm. In fact, chaos is all around us, though it may be at a different level, have just passed or be on the horizon, or be invisible from our perspective. But it's there.
Outro
This idea of systems being consistently (though perhaps invisibly) chaotic brings us back to Brand's Pace Layers. The "robust and adaptable" organization is one that is resilient enough through the turbulence between layers that the chaos is controlled - to a degree. Or perhaps only made visible when leadership wants it to be and in the ways they can manage.
This leads me to questions I'll leave you all with to think about for your organizations - To what extent do you think your organization’s leadership knows about, cares about, and/or has the ability to successfully dance with systems? Which layers (Brand’s or mine) do they pay the most attention to and/or operate at?
That’s all for now. Thanks for making it this far and an even bigger thanks for all the wonderful reading suggestions that are coming my way. I’m excited for the journey ahead and grateful for your companionship.
References:
The Clock of the Long Now: Time and Responsibility by Stewart Brand [Book]
Dancing with Systems by Donella Meadows [Post]
Wisely and slow, they stumble that run fast by Leon Lin [Post]
The Culture Layer by Jorge Arango [Post]