Re: Worldwide competition

[Roger Key <roger.key@onet.co.uk>]

Bob in responce to Steven's quote from OOTC on Darwin...
>
>I would just like to give a slight 'spin' to this.
>My understanding is that Darwin's Law was not about 'survival of the
>fittest' per se.
>But more accurately, survival went to those species most able to adapt to an
>ever changing environment.

Hmmmm  I have long struggled with this one, even at college I had some very
indepth discussions with my biology lecturers about Darwin and evolution,
or even neo-Darwinism, none of which seem that convincing to me. They all
assume random mutation confering better fitness on the organism.  To my
mind that is just so unlikley and does not seem to be born out by the peaks
and troughs we see in evolutionary changes.  There seems to be a lot more
in Stu Kaufmann's ideas about complexity and fitness landscapes and within
the ideas that have been developed around "Gaia"  (and I mean the sound and
properly expressed hypothesis first mooted by James Lovelock and not the
psudo scientific neo religions that have utalised the name, before I get
more abusive back line mails about daring to mention Gaia again on the
DEN).  The downside of these ideas for nature is that change happens in
fits and starts and tends to be limited by the potential within the DNA of
the organism. - To take a real extream Darwinism and Neo-Darwinism do not
preclude the development of wings in frogs as an addition to the two sets
of legs.  A bit like frog angels, whereas a more integrated and systemic
view - such as Kaufmanns precludes this as the potential does not exist
etc.  Sometimes the neo-Darwinists portray the idea of enforced evolution
or context specific evolution and the presence of peaks and troughs in the
evolutionary pattern as being neo-Lamarkism.  Lamark suggested that if you
- generation after generation were to cut the tails from mice, eventually
they would be born tailess.  I understand that there is some developing
evidence that a form of Lamarkism may operate, with biological systems
showing feedforward as well as feedback.

What has this all to do with business.  Well there are paralles between
Kaufmanns ideas and those of Stacey (amongst others) in fitness landscapes.
IN that a particular business culture/structure sytem will have maximum
potential, which may or may not be acheived.  To gain access to a possible
future where the potential is greater than that current the business needs
to break the fitness landscape it is currently part of.  This is where we
make out over nature where you cannot break the fitness landscape with out
major implications - the mass extinctions that were followed by massive
increases of evolutionary activity were such breakings of the fitness
landscape.  With businesses - as with the major extinctions - there is no
guarentee that you will survive the breaking of the landscape - infact the
chances are thet you will not.  This then means that we have to stay on the
same peak that we are on and struggle to reach the top - after which it is
all down hill!

I think that the SoPK will help organisations a) head for the peak of the
current fitness hillock, and I feel with the right application it could be
used to mitigate against the jump from the current to a potentially new one
- which may or may not have more potential through allowing the
organisation to (purposefully) exist in two states.

If we rely on Darwin it think that we will be relying too much on chance
and comfort.  I think we need to think beyond that.

R


	Roger.

---------------------------------oooOOOooo--------------------------------------
Roger C. Key 				 mailto:roger.key@onet.co.uk
Prescient - The Whole as One
(44) 01639 871062
Web based training for Organisations,	 http://virtual-deming.com
Leadership and Life!


[Moderator's $0.02 USD on Gaia:  For those interested in truly "superordinate
systems" thinking - see any of James Lovelock's Gaia work - very interesting!]