CHAOS THEORY

Science affects the way we think together. Like music and other forms of artistic expression, science gives an educated person new eyes with which to view the world. I remember one time when we were living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, my son, Ryan, who was in the first grade, came home from school and with great excitement told me that if a butterfly flapped its wings in China, it could change the weather in Cambridge. What he was referring to is an ancient Chinese proverb that says that the power of a butterfly's wings can be felt on the other side of the world. The proverb implies the effect of natural processes, that small changes in the input can produce huge changes in the output. This is the origin of the now famous " butterfly effect" described in chaotic systems, one of the well-known popularizations of chaos theory.

Like the butterfly, a business organization, by tapping into the heart and mind of each employee, can unleash infinite possibilities ”small changes in the input can produce huge changes in the output. Organizations can be endlessly creative and innovative, or they can be unimaginative and uninspired. It depends on the key practices each organization chooses to reward and toward which "attractors" of meaning they will be drawn.