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Intentional change from a complexity perspective
Professor Richard Boyatzis
For all of the time, effort, and money invested in attempts to help individuals develop through education, training, and coaching, there are few theories that help us to understand the change process. Other than [62] Prochaska et al. (1992) and [56] McClelland (1965), the actual process of change is left like a mysterious black box. Theories or models of how teams, organizations, communities, countries or even global change occur are more frequent but are often a post hoc description of how the consultants or change agents went about the process. As a result they lack the depth and utility of sound theory. Each new framework has the potential of being a new "change fad", but seldom are they put to the empirical test of demonstrating sustainable results.
One of the reasons for this paucity of good theory is that the underlying paradigm on which they are conceptualized is lacking in credibility. The idea of smooth, continuous change does not fit with the reality most of us experience. In this paper and this entire Special Issue of this journal, we will describe a theory of change that has produced demonstrable results at the individual level, and, we believe, explains change at other levels of human and social organization. We also go on to explain that it requires the use of complexity theory to understand the process of change. Once concepts from complexity theory are applied, it then becomes a distinct possibility that this theory of change helps to explain sustainable change at all levels of human and social organization.
The three features of complex systems and complexity theory that will be explored are:
non-linear and discontinuous dynamical systems, including tipping points and catastrophic change;
self-organizing into patterns of equilibrium or disequilibrium in which emergent events start a new dynamic process through the pull of specific attractors; and
fractals or "multileveledness" (the application of this theory at all levels of social organization) and the interaction among these levels through leadership and reference groups.
A complex system is a multi-level combination of systems that may behave in a way independent of any one of the component systems ([27] Complexity Forum, 2001-2003). It is more than a simple system...