Bubbles in a Pot of Boiling Soup

[FVoehl@aol.com]

In a message dated 6/1/99 6:42:29 AM, DANSWART@aol.com wrote:

<<In a dynamic system there are interactions 
between people, equipment, environment, methods, and materials that come and 
go like bubbles in a pot of boiling soup. The condition appears and then 
disappears.  Another question might be:  "Can we re-create/discover the 
conditions under which the interaction of these forces caused a plane to 
crash, so as to find a way to avoid those interactions again?">>

I like Dan's analogy of interactions seeming like bubbles in a pot of boiling 
soup.  A number of years ago, I had a conversation with Dr. Deming about a 
client organization of mine--a publishing company--and one of their teams of 
people working in the editorial department.  At the time, they didn't have 
the expensive computer and accompanying communications technology that would 
have simplified their work considerably.  The overarching bureaucracy of the 
organization did not seem to allow them to go out and choose what they felt 
they would need to simplify time-consuming strokes at the touch of a 
keystroke.  

Whatever communications equipment they had was chosen for them.  Yet the 
bureaucracy produced evidence in the boardroom that it had saved a great deal 
of money on the equipment that it did buy that year.  Dr. Deming's comment 
was that it had the effect of a dead hand on the innovation and imagination 
of the team and was acting at a great cost, expense, and stress to all 
involved, including the many authors who tried to supply them with product 
manuscripts.  The solution:  given the need for profit and clear ethical 
constraints and guidelines, why not allow people to realize their goals 
according to their own inner images of what is right and good, especially if 
they are members of communities (teams) within the organization?  In other 
words, why not have faith in the complexity that arises from their 
interacting individual images--their imaginations!

The timeframe of this discussion was early 1990 and it was the first occasion 
that I had to discuss *dynamic systems and the science of complexity* in 
relation to the Deming philosophy.  Dr. Deming's point was that given certain 
clear parameters, the communities or teams will become self-organizing.  They 
will be attracted to certain flowing states of organization natural to people 
who make them up.  In chaos theory, these flowing states--these bubbles in a 
pot of boiling soup--are poetically called strange attractors.

A strange attractor is a pattern that traces the swirling evolution of a 
system, for example a pendulum, given slightly irregular laps in a circle.  
The system is both dynamic and chaotic because it is impossible to know 
exactly where the pendulum will be next.  However, charting the system over 
time will begin to show an overall pattern to which it returns again and 
again.  Even the most chaotic of pendulum swings will never overstep certain 
boundaries.  It will move within a shape that we come to recognize as the 
pendulum's *strange attractor.*

The application to the work system is that the work team made up of 
collaborating individuals would have--if we could measure and plot 
creativity, failure, and success--it's own strange attractor that depicted 
the edges and patterns of the team's behavior.  This pattern would be 
constrained by the forces operating within the company system and outside in 
the global marketplace (the extended enterprise of Dr. Deming), but it would 
be most affected by the focus and vision of the team.  A strong purpose and 
vision--the AIM-- acts as a kind of strange attractor, allowing natural 
creativity while acting as a natural constraint to behavior that is 
detrimental to the team and to the system.  

Dr. Deming and I concluded that without repressive rules, my publishing 
team-- which was a cohesive team with strong AIM, sense of ethics, and task 
behavior-- could be allowed a great deal of leeway to develop its own 
approach to problems.

I would like to continue this post under the heading of *AIM as a Strange 
Attractor* in order to bridge Dynamic Systems and Chaos Theory into an 
advancement of Dr. Deming's System of Profound Knowledge.  I believe that he 
would have wanted us to explore this extension and furtherance of his 
philosophy into the arena of *strange attractors.*

Frank Voehl (FVoehl@aol.com)
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