Malcom Gladwell’s “The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference” was just one of the many books in early 2000s to drive up excitement around the new science of complexity or what was popularized as ‘chaos theory.’ Of particular interest was the potential for understanding and gaining insights into how tipping points occur, i.e., when ‘more becomes different’ as in when water turns to ice.
Scientists for example, were able to model the rate at which polar ice caps are melting much more accurately when they incorporated causal influences previously ignored like black water and refracting sunlight. With similar thinking, scientists became much better at modelling how diseases ‘tip’ into being an epidemic or how small brush fires ‘tip’ into becoming wildfires.
Complexity theory has helped scientists gain insight into tipping points in a whole host of other interesting things affecting our lives, ranging from weather patterns, traffic jams, the economy, terrorist activity, to the expansion of the internet.
Operating State Tipping Points
But until now, complexity hasn’t been applied in any serious way to how organizations evolve into what we have referred to as their ‘Operating State.’ In our last blog, we introduced four distinct Operating States: Synergistic, Insular, Pluralistic, and Tumultuous. We argued that Operating State reflects how well a company’s people are aligned around Vision, Strategy, and Culture - the essential components that determine resilience and ingenuity.
The strategy for effecting a tipping point starts with detecting and assimilating ‘hot spots. Leaders must always be on the lookout for hotspots. Hotspots represent a source of innovation. Take for example, 3-D printing. Developed in the 1980s and 1990s in Japan, it wasn’t very successful initially. But in 2010, the quality of 3-D printers improved significantly while prices dropped dramatically. Executives who saw the potential and were able to effect the required changes and soon disrupted the market for on-demand manufacturing of industrial parts. 3-D printing is now rapidly spreading to a wide variety of industries, many of which are undergoing their own tipping points as a result.
As we stated in ‘Making the Magic,’ market Leaders are also likely to have Magic Cultures. It is their network of ties extending both internally and externally into their respective ecosystem that keeps them abreast of interesting and potentially important hot spots. But Leaders also need the right kind of culture to resist out-of-hand rejection of ideas whose potential is not immediately obvious. In fact, the further away the hot spot originates from where it is being considered for another purpose, the more powerful its effect but equally, the more powerfully it will be resisted.
How you manage the assimilation of hotspots is key to sustained success of Operating State and market position. Senior executives who succeed in understanding, engineering, and integrating hotspots will reap the benefits. Want to find out more? Check out our latest blogs and case studies. Or contact us directly at info@businessingenuityinc.com; we’ll be happy to answer all your questions.