COEVOLVE
We evolve and grow our consciousness by learning to adapt over time, but not in isolation. Our awareness needs to expand to keep pace and stay in balance with changes in our environment. Things around us need to change around us for us to remain viable in our environment. We co-evolve by learning to adapt to other systems as they adapt to us.
To create an ecosystem, its subsystems must coevolve so that they remain independent yet depend on each other for their survival. This creates interdependence, where when one system changes and others must adapt to fit to keep the whole system viable. Flowers evolved to be fertilised by flying insects and insects evolved to take advantage of flowers. Cheetahs evolved to chase gazelles whilst gazelles evolved to escape them to maintain an ecological balance. It is these alliances (cooperation) and rivalries (competition) that make coevolution a powerful force of nature. Competitiveness gives way to cooperation when mutual interest demands it.
Living systems, be they organisations or flocks of birds have complex webs of interrelationships and self-organising abilities. Coevolution as a process enables us to co-create solutions that meet others needs and enable us to thrive ourselves. Foxes lose if they eat all the rabbits. Rabbits lose if there are no foxes to keep them “fit”. Foxes lose if rabbits die of disease.
The economic and trading systems around the globe can no longer survive without each other. They have coevolved to satisfy mutual interests. We are witnessing human systems aping nature. Coevolution is everywhere.
Case Example
In the mid-1990’s I was working as an Organisation Development Consultant and invited to work with a local authority Special Needs Transport Service. The service took children to their special school and back home again. A variety of transport was used including taxis. Both parents and school principals were complaining that the children were arriving late. This was generating great anxiety.
It turned out that the taxi drivers, wanting to minimise the number of trips they had to make whilst trying to maximise their fares. So they would take on fares on their way to collect the children. The Manager of the Transport Service was under pressure to minimise fare costs and maximise the promptness of the taxi drivers.
I organised a future search meeting that brought together all the service partners (parents, principals, drivers, volunteer helpers. administrators, etc). Getting the ‘whole system’ in the room enabled all the parties to see how they could cooperate to find a mutually beneficial solution. It was resolved by giving some flexibility to the taxi drivers with a 10-minute window and penalties for exceeding it, and giving volunteer helpers, who travelled with the children, forms to monitor times and mobile phones to keep parents and school informed. This reassured parents and enabled the school to adapt.
Some of these children would be crossing the city in the rush hour and be in the taxi for over 40 minutes. The Transport Manager could see this was not a long-term solution and explored a partnership arrangement with some secondary schools to set up Special Needs Units to reduce travelling times and associated costs.
What was happening here was a shifting of the pattern to secure benefits for all the partners and so allow the Special Needs Transport Service to initiate change. But what prompted my involvement was a “breakdown” in the normal flow of the system. In Complexity Theory this is referred to as ‘punctuated evolution’.
Professor If Price makes the point in his book ‘Shifting the Pattern’.
“Learning happens when equilibria are punctuated. . . and like evolution, can be accelerated when the environmental shift that will enable it is created.”
Reading
Shifting the Pattern by If Price & Ray Shaw. Management Books 2000
The Turning Point by Fritjof Capra. Flamingo 1983
Out of Control by Kevin Kelly. Fourth Estate 1994
The Death of Competition by James Moore. Wiley 1996
Complexity by Mitchell Waldrop. Penguin 1994
