Surfing the Edge of Chaos : The Laws of Nature and the New Laws of Business

FROM THE PUBLISHER

From best-selling author Richard Pascale, a brilliant and powerful redefinition of what everyone in business needs to know about strategy and management.

Business is like nature -- a nonstop battle between the preserving forces of tradition and those of transforming change. There is no permanent winner, only species and organizations coping with crises and challenge as best they can. Through the use of brilliant examples and parallels between business and nature, Richard Pascale provides businesspeople with a new way to think about and act on the challenges they face, one based on original thinking and decades of experience in working with companies around the world. Ten years ago, a huge fire devastated Yellowstone. It was so big and intense because for 100 years the National Park Service imposed equilibrium by quickly extinguishing fires ("Only you can prevent forest fires.") A huge layer of deadfall and debris built up and a lightening strike aided by drought and wind did damage from which Yellowstone is still recovering. Sears was the juggernaut of retailing from its founding in 1880 through the 1950s. But then it began its equivalent of "only you can prevent forest fires." Equilibrium took over and it missed everything in the marketplace until Arthur Martinez began its turnaround in the 1990s. Sears' demise took decades, but everything now hits the fan much more quickly. Surfing the Edge of Chaos provides an new way to both think about and respond to this rapidly changing world. Pascale's use of living systems as a model for business people isn't just a metaphor. It's the way it is. The managers who see companies as embodiments of nature, not as machines to be engineered, will win.

THE FOUR CORNERSTONES OF LIVING SYSTEMS Equilibrium Is Death: Any system, including your company, that fails to innovate and evolve will ultimately fall prey to one that has. Innovation Occurs at the Edge of Chaos: The most truly innovative ideas in science and the arts—and in business—are found at the fringes. Self-Organization Occurs Spontaneously: Those with talent and an instinct to innovate and collaborate will seize the high ground before slower, well-established competitors even spot the hill. Systems Can't Be Directed, Only Disturbed: The idea that intelligence can be centered at the top and can issue cause and effect directives has never worked.

SYNOPSIS

Every few years a book changes the way people think about a field. In psychology there is Daniel Goleman's Emotional Intelligence. In science, James Gleick's Chaos. In economics and finance, Burton Malkiel's A Random Walk Down Wall Street. And in business there is now Surfing the Edge of Chaos by Richard T.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

In this breakthrough business book, Pascale, Millemann and Gioja troll the emerging science of complexity for "ideas [that] can produce a concrete bottom-line impact." Extracting key "dynamics of survival" from the life sciences, these three management consultants successfully show business leaders how to turn their companies into agile and adaptable "living systems" that achieve long-term vitality and sustainability in a swiftly evolving environment. Their four "bedrock" principles are "Equilibrium is a precursor to death"; "Living things move toward the edge of chaos"; "Components of living systems self-organize" in response to turmoil; and "Living systems cannot be directed along a linear path." Writing with clarity and verve, the authors illustrate these larger points by comparing the functioning of organic systems (e.g., Yellowstone National Park), the behavior of organisms (dental plaque) and of insects (fire ants) with detailed case studies of five companies (British Petroleum, Hewlett-Packard, Monsanto, Royal Dutch/Shell and Sun Microsystems) and the U.S. Army. Practical-minded readers will appreciate their nitty-gritty insights into the relative advantages of "adaptive" and traditional "operational" leadership, as well as their consistent distillation of concrete business guidelines. While the authors aver that "there is no permanent victory in this eternal cycle of life and death," they make a persuasive case that "understanding living systems does not decisively win the game but, most assuredly, it improves the odds." (Nov. 1) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

Richard Pascale's great story telling, experience-based insight, and effortless prose convey a compelling message: leading the talent-driven, distributed enterprise is the management challenge of the knowledge economy. He shows that answers lie in complexity science, which provides relevant insights into the workings of living systems. Surfing the Edge of Chaos is the Rosetta Stone, translating between real-world problems and exciting, illuminating theory. Pascale has at last made practical the idea of organization as organism. — Christopher Meyer, Director, The Cap Gemini Ernst & Young Center for Business Innovation and author of Blur

Surfing the Edge of Chaosis a breakthrough book that synthesizes new developments from the life sciences, social sciences and physical sciences into an exciting framework that will help organizations and their leaders thrive and revitalize themselves in this post-modern, hypo-turbulent era. It has the added advantage of rendering subtle and complex ideas into readable prose by refracting the ideas through the prism of real life organizations. This book will be must reading for any serious executive or student of organizational change. — Warren Bennis, University Professor and Founding Chairman of the Leadership Institute, University of Southern California

Grounded in both theory and practice,Surfing the Edge of Chaos helps any manager facing change to replace equilibrium and the status quo with innovation and self-renewal. The links drawn between the world of nature and the world of business form a particularly rich source of ideas for turning complexity and chaos into resolve and results. — Dave Ulrich, Professor of Business, University of Michigan and author of Results Based Leadership.

Surfing the Edge of Chaos is an action plan for bringing organizations to life and life to organizations. An organization is a living system that must adapt to a changing environment - the same as species in nature. Thinking of a company as a "well-oiled machine" or of yourself as a cog in that machine is a recipe for extinction. Richard Pascale, Mark Millemann and Linda Gioja provide exciting new ways to think about the professional and personal challenges everyone faces today. — Gary Hamel, author of Leading the Revolution and Competing for the Future

A broad transformation is occurring in the business world. Firms co-evolving with one another are coming to be understood as more like co-evolving species in an ecosystem than as Newtonian machines. The "Econosphere" is, in fact, an extension of the biosphere. The biological metaphor is not a metaphor, but the truth. In this fine book, Pascale, Millemann and Gioja clearly explicate this new view and demonstrate it in action in living companies that have made the transition. Surfing the Edge of Chaos is a must read to understand the new economy. — Stuart Kauffman, Bios Group and author of At Home in the Universe

ACCREDITATION

Richard T. Pascale is the coauthor of The Art of Japanese Management and author of Managing on the Edge. He has written for The Harvard Business Review and for twenty years was on the faculty of the Stanford Business School. He is now an associate Fellow of Oxford University, a writer, and a consultant.

Mark Millemann was a senior advisor to CSC Index and has extensive experience working with CEOs and executive teams of companies around the world, including Sears, Hughes Space and Communications, BP Oil, Borg Warner Automotive, and the Illinois Power Company. He is the founder of Millemann and Associates, a management consulting firm based in Portland, Oregon.