| New from Management Books 2000 |
Small actions can ripple through the world
SHIFTING THE PATTERNS
Memetics, complexity and organisational or individual transformation
See also theChapter Headings or read the Preface
At one level, the idea is simple. Performance reflects patterns, patterns which simultaneously enable - and limit - levels of performance. Yet, if it is so simple to grasp the connections, how come so many of us find it so difficult to shift our patterns for a different level of result?
Academically rigorous, well-documented, yet lucidly written this is a startlingly original book - management theory of a higher order. In just the same way as all living organisms develop along evolutionary lines by a process of natural selection and replication of genetic variations, imagine that companies - and the individuals within them - simply conform to patterns (rules) rigidly enforced by behavioural replicators in their own Corporate DNA, or organisational memes. It then becomes possible, given the use of Complexity Theory and other developing ideas, to put the biology of business on a sound theoretical footing. We see how companies, indeed all organisations, function not as machines but rather as obstinate life forms -- self-organising, self-replicating and fiercely self-protective. No wonder it is so hard to change them.
| Patterns of Survival
To succeed, and even to survive, in today's market conditions companies must at least react to, and at best generate changes in the arenas in which they operate. Doing so requires that they, and their members, learn to continually adapt and change. The need is not lost on most senior managers. New strategies, visions, missions, processes and systems abound - yet all too often nothing really changes. Powerful forces seek to perpetuate the stability of a particular status quo; implicit contracts, rules, exist in any group of people and in wider groupings of companies, entire industries or societies. Sometimes an elite is so steeped in the prevailing thinking that it simply cannot see another way. Frequently membership of any group carries an implicit obligation not to rock the boat. The unwritten rule becomes, in effect, Dont be too different. |
This perception, argue co-authors If Price and Raw Shaw, provides the key to shifting the hidden blocks within organisations that create underperformance and damaging structural rigidities. Their book takes us on a journey of discovery, widening our appreciation of the memetic patterns that exist at multiple and interconnected levels, determining how people and organisations interact. Their eclectic approach offers a valuable synthesis of current organisational thinking, to show not only what these patterns are, and how they develop - but how they can be shifted, and new patterns cultivated that permit far higher levels of performance.
Yet, say the authors, it doesn't stop there; for each new pattern created imposes its own limitations to growth and development. Consequently managers need to become continual pattern shifters, consciously expanng their own and others horizons and performance e so that each person in the organisation has the opportunity to increase their own generative capacity. With this intriguing thought management theory comes full circle.
The Authors
If Price is a Visiting Professor in Innovation Management and director of research programmes at Sheffield Hallam University's Facilities Management Graduate Centre. He is also an international speaker and consultant.
Ray Shawdirects The Extraordinary Performance Company, working to assist individuals and organisations shift the results they can create in the world.
Shifting the Patterns will be published in June 1998 by Management Books 2000 at £14.99. To order, or for more information: