SELF-ORGANISATION

When you watch birds flocking or people in crowds engaged in spontaneous behaviour they are self-organising. When the nervous system receives data from your senses, the meaning you generate, the emotions you then feel and the way your body moves is the result of the self-organising capacity of billions of neurons in your nervous system.

What brings order to this self-organising system are the pathways and structures that determine how you are likely to react. These structures and the relationships between them create habitual connections which make your Way of Being more predictable and controllable. Yet we can still be spontaneous and unpredictable. This makes our world uncertain and our nervous system adaptable.

In the same way that the duck at the front of the flock is not the designated leader, it’s a role they take on when they find themselves in that position. The duck adapts to the situation it finds itself in as a result of the emergent and self-organising capacity of the flock.

Rules and Conscious Choices

Human beings have levels of consciousness that allow them to observe themselves and coordinate their actions with others. But this ability also has its self-organising and emergent qualities. In teams, we work collaboratively yet maintain our autonomy. We feel we need to perform well enough to stay in touch with others and make our contribution. We also seek to belong and use our talents and skills to connect with others and feel appreciated or valued by them. It is these qualities or initial conditions that will enable a team to self-organise its actions and deliver a shared goal.

It seems that complex behaviour does not have to have complex rules to be effective. The dynamic and flexible nature of each free ‘agent’ in the system can cooperate and perform in a self-organising way to ensure that a shared goal is achieved. For animals it is instinctive, but for humans, it is often a conscious choice. However, when our behaviour gets ‘locked-in’ by habits and beliefs, then the benefits of self-organisation are more difficult to realise, so we create agreed rules and procedures to get coordinated action.

Leadership is an ’emergent’ behaviour that exists within our Way of Being.  It’s about what we do, not just what we know. When this is evident, then anyone can be an ‘Building Adaptive Capacity

Our performance improves when we are more responsive, productive and happy. It’s about helping each other observe, understand and influence patterns of social interaction and decision-making that serve our common concerns and are acceptable to our intentions. As human beings, we benefit from a clear focus on connecting common interests and seeking shared visions of the future.

The thing about self-organised behaviour is that it does not have to have a complex explanation.  Order emerges from seemingly complex situations where “actors” in the system adapt to new circumstances and adopt similar codes or rules for action. When a disaster happens, if everyone knows how to respond and produces what the situation requires, a new order emerges that better fits the new social landscape and makes for more viable and sustainable relationships. They have adapted to what the situation demands, without the need for centralised control. As networks of conversations see a need for control, coordinated action emerges as individual actors write a new script and make commitments and promises made to each other to make things work better.

Self-Organisation in a Schools Library Service

A number of years ago I worked with the Schools Library Service in Birmingham when it wanted to explore how a job-share management arrangement could be made to work effectively. The Director of Education was concerned that this could be a recipe for disaster as the service was facing severe budget cuts and would need to develop new ways of working. The team was composed of strong, independently minded individuals with many years experience of working in certain ways.

It appears that order emerges from self-organisation. A new way forward has been opened up to an adapted form of organisation in which individual actors manage themselves as their inner director sees where the boundaries lie and improvements in action are needed.

It is possible to explain the role of self-organisation as it applies to human systems is everyone develops the capacity to adaptive to change by shifting their way of looking, being and acting to secure a more viable outcome for the system as a whole.

Reading

The Turning Point by Fritjof Capra. Harper Collins 1983

Out of Control by Kevin Kelly. Fourth Estate 1994

Being Digital by Nicholas Negroponte. Coronet 1995