Recent research reveals the average age of an S&P 500 Company today is less than 20 years, down from 60 years when measured in the 1950s. Yet there are organizations that have endured the test of time: complex adaptive systems (CAS). The question is, what needs to happen to morph the culture and running of an organization to operate more like a CAS? Here we will look at getting the process going at the very beginning of an employee’s life cycle.
What must first be understood is an overarching characteristic of any CAS. CAS are those organizations that successfully maintain the core of what they represent — their raison d’etre — while simultaneously adapting to or even successfully making incremental changes in real time. So any new-hire training ideally gives an intimate, visceral experience of both these sides.
In the Marine Corps, for example, a colleague related to me that when he joined he felt his identity progressively stripped from him. His head was shaved, he was given a uniform to wear and he was provided specific reading materials to internalize. Further, he had to undergo an intense daily routine for months on end. He had to learn to be and act a certain way, and eventually he began to experience himself and those around him differently. Something of the Marine’s hymn, “First to fight for right and freedom and to keep our honor clean,” dawned on him in a visceral way.
Often for something new to dawn, space has to be created. There is a famous Zen story of the scholar Tokusan who came to the Zen Master Ryutan to learn about Zen. Ryutan poured Tokusan a cup of tea but did not stop when it began to brim over. Finally unable to watch the tea continuing to spill, Tokusan exclaimed, “Stop! The cup is full.” Master Ryutan replied to the effect of, “You are like the cup: full of ideas and ego. First empty your cup, and then maybe something of Zen will be able to enter into you.”
In essence, this is what the training at the Marine Corps, I believe, was trying to achieve.
A similar experience is the outcome of the new-hire training and onboarding program we employed at Zappos for much of its history. There is a set of rules by which each participant must abide, including myself when I joined. It does not matter where anyone comes from. It does not matter who they are, or what role they will play going forward. What seems essential is the experience of complete equality, which is the lifeblood of the system of self-organization that animates our corporate life. To understand self-organization, one’s cup has to be emptied first, and then refilled in such a way that will make them successful.
An equally important part to the new-hire training is the experience of what it means to “deliver WOW through service,” one of our Core Values. This is achieved through spending 30 to 40 hours on the phone, with a dedicated crew of coaches always present, teaching in real time, and then later through dissection of calls as per a detailed architecture of creating the desired experience. Internalizing this sense also gives an intimate feel for what built our company — the sweat, the tears, the love — and it is not uncommon for participants to experience a far greater sense of humility and appreciation for always striving to serve customers, thereby further emptying the cup.
But these examples give only a way in which that essential core that defines both organizations can be experienced. Equally important is the dynamic aspect that rounds out the nature of the day-to-day operations required to function as a complex adaptive system.
For the Marine Corps, this has traditionally been achieved through the internalization of a set of operating principles. When in battle, for example, goals and strategy constantly shift depending on dynamic, real-time change. However, the principles required to face any situation always remain the same and become the means by which each Marine operates. At Zappos, we have values that similarly function as anchors for action. No matter what the action is, all core values are upheld. While there is one value that may lead the action, this does not compromise any of the others.
Such a balance between these two attributes is essential for an organization to become a CAS, and there has to be an emphasis and balance between these in every action taken by an organization. In fact, the secret of the empty-cup experience that creates the stable core is that it allows dynamism by virtue of its emptiness. The secret of the principles or core values that allow dynamism is that the dynamism is an unpredictable emergence of this stability. So it is the interaction of the stable dynamism and the dynamic stability that creates CAS.
In future articles, we will further explore the theme of morphing an organization into a functioning CAS through looking at cultivating such a balance between stability and dynamism.
