Tiny movements made today define the big ideas of tomorrow.

48 hours left to set off your own Butterfly Effect

My colleague Jeremy Weinstein, PhD reminded me of the “Butterfly Effect” theory with his Provocation newsletter story today:

The Butterfly Effect suggests that tiny fluctuations in an initial state can have large differences in the final state. For example, if a butterfly flaps its wings in Central Park it may lead to a Cyclone in the Great Barrier Reef.

First, the theory presupposes that everything is interconnected in a singular system. What you do will affect me. What I do affects someone else. And so on, forever.

Second, the idea is a core element of chaos theory. Chaos is my preferred state of being. The ideas really resonate: what appears to be random never really is. If you look hard enough there are patterns, connections, feedback loops, and self-organisation that brings some magic ideas to life.

Third, the fact that it evokes the butterfly is beautiful. But it also hints at the metamorphosis the original caterpillar undertook, and gives a nod to the constant reinvention each of us goes through in our lives.?

The core theory of the Butterfly Effect describes how I feel about the work we do with schools, but also the work school leaders and teachers do every day.?

When we work with schools, or, indeed when teachers work with students, the effect of the discussions, comments or outputs may only be observed much later in life.

How many times have we thought about that teacher in Grade 4 who changed the way we think about maths? Does she even know she changed our lives? We maybe didn’t do too well on the maths test that year; it was only much later that the lesson sank in and we could appreciate her words of wisdom.

This reality is starting to emerge for me in the work we do at NoTosh. On one of my first days on the job we were working with a school on the redesign of its learning spaces, after working with them for three months the gig was up.

I thought we’d ‘failed’. I thought they didn’t really get what we were trying to do for them.

Then a year later I ran into the Head of School who told me that they’re still working through the initial ideas we laid out for them and I realised: “What takes us only a minute to say might be a year's worth of work for a school.”

The same thing happened last week when a former participant of our online course Leading from the Middle reflected on LinkedIn about the impact we’d had on his thinking, and how pivotal it had been in further evolving that thinking.

It took three years to get that far, small moments on our course accumulating momentum as he moved schools and countries, and gained even more confidence.

That news was a powerful reminder of the Butterfly Effect and that the work we do today can have huge implications further down the line. The biggest impact will nearly always happen when we’re no longer standing in front of them.

Does everything need to take years?

Does everything good need small butterfly wings to become a monumental shift?

No.?

Often the work we do has a more immediate impact.

Last year the cohort in our online course Leading from the Middle made the biggest improvements we’ve seen to date in terms of

1. Increasing their confidence in creating a vision (an improvement of 12%); and
2. Increasing their confidence at enabling others (an improvement of over 14%).

These are two of the most important things a leader needs in order to lead effectively.

Leading from the Middle delivers them in spades.

In practical terms, this means evaporating all those niggling doubts about whether or not the vision is coherent, or whether you have the best tools at your fingertips to help a staff member to do their best work. It means walking into work with the confidence that you can effectively lead no matter your position in the organisation.

Signups for Leading from the Middle close on Feb 21. Less than 48 hours to get yourself on the fifth cohort for 2024. And then it's closed until 2025.