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The Upside of Down: Catastrophic & Creative Change
Unlike most business writers who use up-to-date stories to develop theories and strategies on managing change, the winner of the latest Canadian Business Book Award has made his argument based on the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. Don’t let this put you off, though – this book is well worth taking on your summer vacation. Thomas Homer-Dixon*, a Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto, believes that we need to learn from the Roman story of collapse because we share its fatal characteristic –increasing complexity in society that ultimately leads to an inability to adapt and to catastrophic change. For Homer-Dixon, this is what destroyed Rome and it is happening to us now.
Evidence of Complexity
We first discussed the idea of complexity in our review of accidental radical change which told the story of how systemic interconnectedness can enable small changes to become amplified in unpredictable ways. Homer-Dixon argues that global stresses – population growth (quadrupled since 1900 from 1.65 to 6.5 billion people), scarcity of oil, environmental damage, climate change, the widening gap between rich and poor (in 2025, when the world’s population will be 8 billion, there will be nearly six poor people for every rich person) – are rapidly converging. This convergence stems from the ways in which global systems are rapidly and densely connecting us to one another, and consequently increasing our interdependence.
“Humankind is doing more things, faster, across a greater space than ever before, and this is producing changes of the size and speed never before seen. … Stupendous changes are converging simultaneously on our societies, on our leaders, and on every one of us – leading many people to feel things are out of control, and we’re going to crash”.
Global connectedness means that we have become much more vulnerable to small changes: small shifts can ripple through the entire system causing widespread breakdown. Whether it is diseases such as Avian Flu, the escalating power of destructive small groups, or computer viruses hatched in a hacker’s bedroom, what previously would have been local phenomena with small scale effects are transmitted rapidly around the system with widespread consequences. Homer-Dixon argues that these dynamics inevitably lead us to cross a threshold, a point of overload. And here, he argues, we need to turn back to Rome to understand the situation and perhaps see a way forward.
Rome & Diminishing Returns
According to Homer-Dixon the collapse of Rome was not a failure of leadership or military weakness, but a systemic problem caused by the Empire running out of energy. As the Empire grew in size, as it became increasingly connected to distant lands and peoples, it required ever more resources to sustain itself, to the point that more energy was expended in gaining the resources than the resources themselves provided. For Homer-Dixon, this sort of breakdown has a certain inevitability. Systems grow naturally but over time become more brittle. Their size and dense connectivity reduces the resilience of the system, so that it cannot adapt to a changing environment.
Responding to Connectedness and Complexity
Before you dash off to build the underground shelter, stock up on ready meals and purchase your generator, the story is not all bad, and perhaps even better than Homer-Dixon suggests. Homer-Dixon suggests that if we are going to break down, we need to make the best of it! Breakdowns can shatter the forces standing in the way of change and unleash tremendous creativity. But, these moments can be exploited and framed by those with malicious intent. Homer-Dixon argues that to counter-act this possibility, citizens need to develop a prospective mind – an attitude that engages uncertainty and risk: “One thing we do know about the future: surprise, instability and extraordinary change will be regular features of our lives.”
We think, however, that Homer-Dixon’s analysis underestimates the potentially positive effects of connection and complexity, particularly for those interested in affecting change in organizations and communities. For Homer-Dixon, the role of citizens to reverse the world’s stresses is minimal; our role seems more akin to learning how to ride this inevitable wave of change rather than influencing its direction and speed. Small changes and their large, ripple effects need not be negative however: alongside examples of 9/11 bombers, there must be room to consider the potential benefits of our greater connectivity, such as global collaborations on life-saving research, rapid and widespread exposing of human rights violations, and a greater awareness and tolerance of other cultures, to name just a few.
Whether you accentuate the positive or negative, the implications of Homer-Dixon’s analysis for change agents are huge. Most critical is the need to abandon any understanding of change as organizeable into large-scale, highly planned, linear programs. As we’ve seen before, connection and complexity shifts our understanding of change toward a continuous cycle of change, and the skills and resources necessary for change agents toward bricolage and improvisation.
*The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, creativity and the renewal of civilization by Thomas Homer-Dixon (Knopf Canada)
www.theupsideofdown.com – video and central argument of author.
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