The Physics of Change

Hidden Levers of Transformation

A chance encounter and a round of drinks changed the course of history.

In January 1960 two young American men sat in a beer hall in Kyoto, Japan talking about poetry and politics. One was beat poet Gary Snyder, a pacifist living in Kyoto studying Zen. The other was Daniel Ellsberg, a military analyst stationed in Tokyo doing research for the US Air Force.?

Ellsberg had decided to visit Kyoto for the weekend, inspired in part by Jack Kerouac’s novel The Dharma Bums, where Snyder is a main character. He never imagined he’d meet the man himself. By chance, Ellsberg wandered into a bar where Snyder was drinking with friends. The two men struck up a conversation that lasted for two days, setting off a chain of events that would help end the Vietnam War a decade later.?

Reflecting on their conversation, Ellsberg said: “My memory of him stayed with me as a kind of touchstone—an image of an alternative way of living. But doing it his way—deciding on my own to speak truth to the world—still lay some years off for me.”?

By 1970, Ellsberg had become committed to the anti-war effort and decided “not to let a security classification on truths the public needed to know keep me any longer from conveying them.” He released 7,000 pages of classified documents to The New York Times: the Pentagon Papers. This act prompted Henry Kissinger to label him “The Most Dangerous Man in America.”?

The conversation with Snyder had been so significant to Ellsberg that one of his last acts as a free man—he was sure he would spend the rest of his life in prison—was to track down Snyder at a remote homestead in California’s Sierra foothills. Ellsberg said of that meeting “I didn’t show him any papers from the trunk [of my car], so as not to implicate him; but I hinted he was implicated anyway, in the process of my awakening. I wanted to thank him.”??

These two men have long been heroes of mine. Like Ellsberg, I was drawn to Kyoto by Kerouac’s writing. I lived there for six years and studied Zen in the same temple as Snyder. Years later, in San Francisco, I met Ellsberg after becoming friendly with his wife, and co-conspirator, Patricia.

This is a story of courage, friendship, and the quiet power of a good conversation. But it’s also a story about how small leverage points can trigger cascades of change that transform large universal systems.?

The Second Law of Thermodynamics?

In physics, a law is a fundamental principle about how nature operates. Laws consistently and accurately predict what will happen under certain conditions.?

The Second Law of Thermodynamics essentially states that the universe is continuously becoming less structured. Physicist Max Planck puts it this way: “Every process occurring in nature proceeds in the sense in which the sum of the entropies of all bodies taking part in the process is increased.”?

Entropy is a fancy word for disorder. So the essence of the law is that the total amount of disorder in the universe is always increasing.?

Entropy explains why we can smell a spritz of perfume on the other side of a room. The perfume atoms go from concentrated into a liquid (ordered) to mixing with air and spreading out (disordered). Eventually the perfume becomes so dispersed that we can no longer smell it at all.??

This isn’t a bad metaphor for the universe as a whole, actually. Like liquid perfume, everything in the universe was once tightly condensed and ordered, until the Big Bang spritzed it into existence around 13,800,000,000 years ago.?

Everything in existence, all matter and energy, all space and time, is the result of this big spritz. And it’s falling apart, which is certainly how life can feel. Entropy may seem distant and abstract, but it’s all around us and has very practical implications.?

A clearer example of entropy in action is the erosion of a sand castle. All sand castles turn into sand piles, but piles never spontaneously become castles.?

A sand castle is a specific arrangement of billions of grains of sand, and a pile is just a looser arrangement of those same grains. The reason castles become piles, but never the other way around, is probability. Because there are exponentially more ways to arrange sand? into a pile than into a castle, a pile is the more likely arrangement.?

If you were alone on an island and found a sand castle on the beach, you’d instantly be sure that you were not alone on that island! Order like that doesn’t arise on its own, it requires human intervention.

Lessons of Entropy

Entropy teaches us two important lessons about how the universe works.?

First, everything we build will fall apart. If we want things to last, we have to get used to fixing them.?

Robert Frost captured this beautifully in his poem Mending Wall reflecting on the unseen force that breaks apart the stone walls on his property year after year, and his annual ritual of repairing them. In the first line of the poem he says: “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.”?

That something is entropy.

The second lesson is that the more rigid something is, the more fragile it becomes. Flexible, adaptive structures endure. Finely-tuned, complicated ones lose their shape more quickly.

Piles last longer than castles.?

Entropy is a constant force chipping away at everything we build, including our institutions like businesses, governments, economies and legal systems. The same forces that shape galaxies also shape our world. Just as nature must adapt to entropy, so must the systems we build.?

Entropy Proof Organizations

Lean manufacturing provides good case studies in how to build resilient, effective, entropy-resistant organizations.?

That first lesson of entropy states that everything falls apart, so if we want the things we build to last, we need to repair them regularly. Lean builds in practices to continuously identify and make small repairs and improvements to systems, processes, and products.?

The second lesson of entropy states that the more detailed a structure is, the more likely it is to fall apart. Don’t build a castle if a pile gets the job done. One of the key features of lean systems is flexiblility. This favors principle-driven processes that depend on human judgment over strict rules.?

Consider Andon Cords from the Toyota Production System. These cords dangle at regular intervals along a production line and stop the line when pulled, allowing a problem to be fixed immediately. All workers are expected to pull a cord without hesitation whenever they think it’s necessary.?

This is unlike old-school factories, where stopping the line could get you fired because owners thought it decreased productivity. Workers were expected to mindlessly keep doing their job without deviation no matter what. Lean innovators realized that when workers are empowered to pause and fix little problems, they don’t become big catastrophic problems.?

Lean processes give workers agency. When people have ownership over a process, they feel a responsibility to it. Feeling included and respected leads them to be members of a dynamic team, rather than mindless cogs in a machine.?

In my work at changeforce, I help design design and support change programs big and small. Our team has developed software tools that measure qualities like cognitive diversity and psychological safety because we’ve learned they are powerful leverage points for improving productivity, retention, and innovation.?

To build an entropy-proof organization, keep these three principles in mind:?

1. Keep it simple.
2. Fix it often.?
3. Treat people like people.?

Unfortunately, putting these principles into practice usually requires that we design, implement and manage change—something that is notoriously difficult and often fails.?

We need to understand one last trick entropy has up its sleeve—and hang on, it’s a bit of a brain-bender.

Order Happens

Complex structures may seem to contradict The Second Law of Thermodynamics. If everything is falling apart, why is there so much stuff in the universe? How do galaxies, stars, black holes and planets exist at all??

In reality structures emerge because of entropy.?

On the long journey from order to disorder, and the eventual heat death of the universe, entropy creates something surprising: complexity. As with many things in life, a cup of coffee can help us see this clearly.

Imagine adding milk to coffee and watching the two liquids swirl together. Initially,one is a cold white liquid, the other is a? hot black liquid. Separate, there is more order than when they are combined. As they mix, temperature and color both change, becoming a uniform beverage.?

It can help to think of the cups being full of different colored sand or piles of different colored books to grasp why one state is more ordered than the other.?

As we pour milk into coffee, a beautiful array of intricate and ever-changing swirls emerge, increasing the system's entropy. These patterns are so complex that in the history of the universe, there have never been two identical cups of coffee.??

Self-organizing complexity also happens at a cosmic scale, as gravity condenses gas and dust into stars and galaxies. Biological life, a complex arrangement of matter, most likely emerged from entropic processes. The human brain, quite possibly the most complex hunk of matter that’s ever existed, emerged from the same processes. I told you this was a brain-bender.

Everything we know and all we are is the result of complex whirlpools in the river of time. This insight has influenced modern philosophy, but it also provides grounded and straightforward ideas to manage organizational change.??

A defining feature of complexity is non-linearity. In a non-linear environment, change is not proportional, and cause and effect aren’t neatly aligned. Small moments can create massive shifts, big efforts can do nothing. This is why human history often unfolds in sudden and unexpected leaps rather than in a smooth and predictable progression.

We can see non-linearity even in something simple like the erosion of that sand castle. Little pieces fall one-by-one, until suddenly a huge section cascades into the sea. Change cascades like this when we hit a tipping point.?

Tipping points are all around us. Sometimes they can change history: a conversation helps end a war, Rosa Parks stays in her seat accelerating a movement, Paul Revere rides at night mobilizing a revolution, and a wrong turn in Sarajevo triggers a world war that kills millions.?

Non-linearity is why time travelers are warned not to change anything. It’s also why a shaky cell phone video could topple a comic legend like Bill Cosby, and why a glitch in Knight Capital’s trading algorithm could wipe out $440 million in 45 minutes.?

In complex systems, small actions don’t always produce small outcomes; they can unleash massive, unpredictable cascades. Non-linearity is why managing change can be so frustrating. Our best laid plans fall flat, while an offhand comment or unexpected event can reshape everything in ways we never saw coming.

If we can better understand entropy, complexity and non-linearity, maybe, just maybe, we can get better at change—a necessary core capability in these unprecedented times.?

Leverage Points??

The easiest way to transform an organization is to start a cascade. We don’t chip away at a problem until it disappears, we chip away until we trigger that cascade.?

In the world of change management we’re usually clear on desired outcomes. We want something like more output, better quality, or less attrition. The art lies in choosing and making changes that deliver those outcomes. Should we add Andon Cords or start firing people??

When we design a change program, we’re looking for spots where a small shift can create a positive cascade. Some parts of organizations are more likely to have these tipping points—something MIT systems Theorist Donella Meadows called leverage points. In her influential piece “Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System”, she identifies 12 organizational leverage points we should pay attention to.?

One of the most effective leverage points is mindset. A conversation triggered a change in Ellsberg’s thinking, leading him to release the Pentagon Papers, shifting public opinion, and finally forcing Congress to withdraw support for the war. A few years later Saigon fell, and the war was over.?

The conversation didn’t end the war, but it set off a cascade of events that did.?

The challenge with leverage points is that they can be hard to see until many small shifts start to compound. Removing a single grain of sand can collapse a castle, but only after many other grains have been moved out of the way. One second a change has no leverage, and the next second it tips a whole system.?

Finding leverage points requires seeing your organization differently because tipping points are continuously emerging. In one second a change, like introducing a new feedback loop or tweaking an incentive structure, will unleash a cascade of change; in the next second the same intervention may do nothing.

It’s essential to approach change work with humility and curiosity, and to have the courage to move decisively when necessary. Because seeing differently is so essential, a good place for leaders to start is with our own mindsets.?

My primary intent with this article is to get you to see your organization as a dynamic, non-linear and ever-changing system—rather than something static, linear and mechanical.?

Eventually you’ll have to plan and execute a change program with timelines, meetings, and project management tools. This inevitably makes our thinking more linear and mechanical. That’s OK, as long as we keep the entropy-resistant organization design principles in mind:?

1. Keep it simple.
2. Fix it often.?
3. Treat people like people.??

A mantra I find helpful as I manage change comes from political scientist Brian Klaas: “We influence everything, but control nothing.”?

The Leverage We Have

Sometimes change is deliberate and sometimes it just happens. Every organization is in a continuous state of evolution.?

Ellsberg and Snyder didn’t plan to change history that winter evening in Kyoto. They fell into a conversation that lodged itself in Ellsberg’s mind and quietly worked on him for a decade. Eventually he saw a lever and had the courage to pull it. A small moment of thoughtful engagement triggered a massive cascade.?

Leverage points are everywhere and often hard to see. A broken process draining momentum. A cultural norm keeping you stuck. A conversation waiting to happen, or a relationship that needs healing. Many hidden forces shape an organization (like power structures, norms, and biases) and they are invisible until they create friction.?

The challenge is not to do more, but to see more. Historian Hannah Arendt once wrote: “The smallest act in the most limited circumstances bears the seed of boundlessness, because one deed, and sometimes one word, suffices to change every constellation.”?

We are all time travelers creating the future. The question isn’t if you will change the world, but how.?

Originally published on bobgower.com (https://www.bobgower.com/principia/the-physics-of-change)

Bibliography

If I’ve piqued your interest here are a few resources where you can dig a bit deeper.

Ellsberg, Snyder & The Pentagon Papers

“The Dharma Bums” by Jack Kerouac (novel)

“For Gary Snyder’s 60th Birthday, The First Two Times We Met” by Daniel Ellsberg (essay)

“Did Gary Snyder Help End the Vietnam War?” The Beat Museum (article)

“The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers” by Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith (documentary film)

Entropy & Complexity

“The Most Misunderstood Concept in Physics” Veritasium (video)

“Why does it feel like the world is falling apart? | Brian Klaas” Big Think (video)

“Can Life Really Be Explained By Physics? (featuring Prof. Brian Cox)” Be Smart with Joe Hanson (video)

“Cream & Coffee | Sean Carroll” Long Now Foundation (video)

“The mind-bending physics of time | Sean Carroll” Big Think (video)

“Fluke: Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters” Brian Klaas (book)

“Cosmos” by Carl Sagan (book)

Systems Thinking

“Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System” Donella Meadows (article)

“Thinking in Systems: A Primer” Donella Meadows (book)

Case Studies

“The Machine That Changed the World: The Story of Lean Production—Toyota's Secret Weapon in the Global Car Wars That Is Now Revolutionizing World Industry” James P. Womack (book)

“NUMMI” (How Toyota showed GM the secrets of its production system.) This American Life (podcast)

“Hannibal Buress: how a comedian reignited the Bill Cosby allegations” Lucia Graves, The Guardian (article)

“How a Wrong Turn Started World War I” Sarah Pruitt (article)

“Knight Capital Says Trading Glitch Cost It $440 Million” Nathaniel Popper, NYT (article)

Change?

“Change: How Organizations Achieve Hard-to-Imagine Results in Uncertain and Volatile Times” John P. Kotter, Vanessa Akhtar, and Gaurav Gupta (book)

“How Minds Change: The Surprising Science of Belief, Opinion, and Persuasion” David McRaney (book)

Misc

“Mending Wall” Robert Frost (poem)

“The Human Condition” Hannah Arendt (book)