Emergence eats structure for breakfast!

No matter what a company's organizational structure is, it is the emergent properties that arise from that structure that makes it possible for that company to survive and thrive.

What are Emergent Properties?

As the familiar phrase “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts” indicates, emergent properties are characteristics that appear when parts combine to form more complex structures. From these more complex structures, properties emerge that did not exist with the individual parts alone. You cannot wear spools of thread, but weave then together and you can make fabric which can then become clothing. Fabric and clothing are emergent properties that arose from the combination of threads into fabric and the sewing of fabric into clothing. Parts combined to become something else with new properties.

In organizations people combine to form groups or teams. Group properties are capabilities, competencies, and knowledge used by the group to operate. These properties are emergent, as they developed from the formation of the group of people. Individuals in the group may have a limited level of one or more properties or may be missing them all together. However, when formed into a group these properties arise to prominence.

A classic example of emergent properties in groups of people is when the individuals display much lower levels of creativity as opposed to when they are working together. When the individuals are grouped together, their creativity exceeds the sum of the creativity of all individuals operating independently. Another example is mass production as it can only be executed by a group of people and not by an individual. 

What is organizational structure?

Uncertainty scares people. We will do anything we can to minimize it and to have a more certain environment. It is this fear of uncertainty that drives the creation of organizational structure. In man-made systems like organizations, organizational structures attempt to bring predictability and order. 

An organizational structure defines how data, decisions, and work will flow between individuals and groups of people working together. The structure defines the responsibilities of a role or a group and who is reporting to whom. The reporting lines define the flow of information, decisions, and work. 

Although most of us think of hierarchical structure when discussing organizational structure, there are many other organizational structures: flat, hierarchy of groups, a network of groups, matrix, etc. It does not really matter what the structure type is, as they all define the flow of information, decisions, and work.

The purpose of organizational structure is to create visibility and clarity of who is responsible for what, who is making the decisions, and how data and work should flow in the organization. 

Why do emergent properties eat structure for breakfast?

While formal organizational structures have a lot of benefits, they have two main disadvantages that are relevant to our topic. 

First, most organizational structures struggle when responding to unplanned events. When an event impacts a company, it must respond as fast as possible. Having to traverse many lines of structure to acquire approval and refinement prior to responding to an unexpected event often results in too little too late to be effective. 

Second, a man-made organizational structure assumes it is a distinct system in the environment. However, there is a naturally emerging informal social system that forms when people interact. The informal social structure is a network of connections between people without regard for their position in the formally defined organizational structure and its existence within organization is not inert. The formal organizational structure does not drive behaviors and decisions independent of the influence of this informal social system.

Emergent properties can be created by each one of the structures defined. However, they will be created much faster when not hindered by a process requiring formal requests or a guiding hand such as required in a formal organizational structure. To give an example, if four people meet and decide that they want to promote a cause, they can set up a group, invite people, and start to engage in activities to initiate that cause very quickly in the absence of a formal structure. This type of interaction can impact the organization fast, very fast. 

As mentioned above, emergent properties can evolve in each structure, but they will develop quicker and easier within an informal structure. This is an advantage to the materialization of emergent properties. Groups form rapidly in informal structures, producing emergent properties more rapidly. In a formal structure, the same will take much longer and in some cases will not even be feasible to create. For instance, try creating a group having people from marketing and operations following a common organizational structure and you will see the point.

Many emergent properties are not predictable. They emerge unpredictively from transient interactions. Such emergent properties may be positive or negative for an organization and are themselves transient interactions associated with complex systems and result in additional emergent properties which act to provide balance. In other words, the uncertainty of emergent properties is better resolved by additional emergent properties which are generated by that uncertainty, because they are adaptive. The rigidity of formal organizational structure cannot manage this type of uncertainty which is common in complex systems. While formal structure reduces predictable uncertainty, the more rapid development of emergent properties in informal structures creates a significant competitive advantage and efficiency in reducing uncertainty in unpredictable situations.

When does emergence eat structure for breakfast?

Emergence always outperforms a formal organizational structure, but there are specific times when it has a significantly greater advantage. When uncertainty arises requiring new capabilities and rapid response, emergence will eat structure for breakfast. When organizations start to lose competitive advantage, emergence will eat structure for breakfast. When accountability goes down or complaints about communication grow, once again emergence will eat structure for breakfast.

There is one common denominator to all the scenarios above, they were all generated by increased complexity inside and outside of organizations. Complexity is a condition of unpredictability generated by many autonomous, diverse, and closely interlinked elements working together to reach a common goal. These interlinked elements reduce the impact of unpredictability on the local (teams and groups) scale. However, on a global (companywide) scale these interlinks produce unpredictability at a higher level.

When complexity starts to be more common, emergence will eat structure for breakfast. The reality is that we cannot stop complexity because every day, companies are creating more internal variety which generates more complexity. Variety is important and is needed to be on top of the competition following the law of requisite variety (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variety_(cybernetics)). Complexity is a by-product that we must all learn to deal with, and emergent properties are one of the best tools available for us to do so.

Who is responsible for emergent properties?

Everyone that believes he is a leader and anyone who was nominated to be a manager is responsible for emergent properties. Emergent properties are one of the most important tasks of leaders and managers, but rarely will you see or hear people working on it, why? Because it is not an easy and simple task. 

A leader and manager’s role are to continuously improve what they are responsible for and use it to increase competitive advantage for the company. They are also expected to prepare themselves and others for unexpected events. All these responsibilities require emergent properties and the more the merrier. 

In non-man-made systems, emergent properties are created by the system without any leadership or management. In a man-made systems emergent property will also form naturally. Examples of this include language, art, and social norms that emerge in societies. However, it is the role of a leader or manager to not only manage naturally occurring emergent properties, but also to think about additional emergent properties needed and how to motivate the team to create them.

This leads to the conclusion that anyone who is part of a team can take leadership and motivate the group to think and create a new emergent property. You do not need to have a formal role to do this. 

How can I use them?

Let us get into the practical aspect of emergent properties. When group interactions result in new emergent properties either intentionally or unintentionally, how can we use them?

The most beautiful thing about emergent properties is that we don't need to do anything to use them. Once they are created the group will add them to a bigger collection of emergent properties and they will be used and adjusted by the group without any trigger or instructions. All we need to do is to create them and be aware of and react to those which occur unintentionally.

Emergent properties will continuously be adjusted by the group every time that they are used and based on their effectiveness to respond to an event. Over time this makes them better and more relevant. At some point in time, some of these properties may not be used anymore as their relevance to the events the group is dealing with fades. However, while the majority of the people in the group remain, those emergent properties remain as well and are there and available for use. 

Last words

In the past, the level of complexity was not the same as it is today. Companies looked for stability, certainty, and rigid structures to provide what they needed to survive and thrive.

This is not the case today. Complexity has grown exponentially and is now a common problem for organizations. In these conditions the agility that emergent properties provide gives companies a better ability to operate under complex conditions.

Emergent properties are one of the best-kept secrets of successful leaders. Emergent properties which occur spontaneously may not be easy to recognize, and they are certainly not easy to create; but once they are created, they provide exceptionally good tools to deal with the growing complexity in the business world. In our dynamic world emergence eats structure for breakfast.

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