A633.2.3.RB_DellElceCamila

A633.2.3.RB – Butterfly Effect

            The Butterfly Effect is something I heard about many years ago. I didn’t really understand what it meant other than it was part of a chaos theory in that if a butterfly flaps its wings in Hawaii there will be an earth quake in South America or something similar to this. There was also a movie called The Butterfly Effect (2004) where the main character Eric has the ability to change things by focusing his mind he could go back to a time period and make subtle changes. When something bad happens to his friend he tries to go back to change just that one thing but instead it changes everything. Each time he goes back to fix what he messed up he made things worse. The premise of the movie is, change one thing change everything. In this case, the take away is that small choices can have the biggest impact in anybody’s life.

         Under the concept of chaos theory, attractors are “plots of movement in phased space” and “most have a specific and easily understandable pattern” (Obolensky, 2010, p. 69). An attractor that does not follow such a pattern is known as the butterfly effect. In the 1960s, Edward Lorenz, a meteorologist attempting to develop a comprehensive computer model of global weather, discovered that insignificant changes in temperature, pressure, and wind speed resulted in significant differences in the outcomes of the simulation. When he graphed his findings, they resembled the wings of a butterfly and the butterfly effect was born (Obolensky, 2014).  When you apply this effect to organizations it reminds us “small changes can yield large results” (Obolensky, 2014, p.71). Such changes can be positive or negative.

            So unlike the movie where one small change caused more chaos, making a small change within your organization can yield very big results. A prime example of this is when my organization decided to go with a call center to answer all patient and non-patients calls about six months ago. By simply routing our calls to one central location that was open 24/7 our new patient’s visits went up, customer satisfaction went up, and a substantial amount of money was earned, which in turn, made upper management very happy. Just one change created vast improvement within the whole organization because the issue of not being able to keep up with the call volume, we were losing patients, and ultimately, the staff was overworked and stress for no reason.

            Another example; I recall when Facebook started to become popular; everyone was posting personal things about themselves online. When our human resources personnel were considering an applicant for employment, they started checking out the candidate’s Facebook pages before they would offer permanent positions. It is absolutely amazing what people post for the world to see. By implementing this new way to vet potential employees, many candidates lost their opportunity to work in our organization. This small change resulted in a whole new tool for recruiting (or not). After many years, our human resource department continues to utilize Facebook as a tool to do some “background check” on applicants.

            By implementing the complexity theory into our organization we can learn that we may not always have the same views and may even work independently of each other but the goal is still the same in the end. We can also use the Wu-Wei approach by observing without taking immediate action and actually learn a lot about our followers and our customers. It can also be used to show that it is ok to let go of certain control and the fear of chaos reigning will not be an issue in most of the cases. 

            We continue to make small changes to better improve our relationship with customers, in these case patients, and the organization as a whole towards a vastly changing future. By adapting and embracing change and understanding the complexity instead of being afraid of it we can propel ourselves to the next level. Right now there are many changes happening within our organization that will put into place a better strategy for the operation as a whole. Some changes may not make sense at first, especially to those who have a hard time embracing change but as it is being implemented, everyone will learn to adapt to change as well. Progress is inevitable and cannot be stopped. It will happen with or without us.

References

Obolensky, N. (2010). Complex adaptive leadership. (2^nd Edition). London, UK: Gower/Ashgate.