Every decade or two, a big idea in management thinking takes hold and becomes widely accepted. The next big idea must enable businesses to improve the hit rate of strategic initiatives and attain the level of renewal necessary for successful execution. Scientific research on complex adaptive systems has identified principles that apply to living things, from amoebae to organizations.
Equilibrium equals death.
The lure of equilibrium poses a constant danger to successful firms. In 1996, Shell was highly profitable, but fissures were forming below the surface. Downstream, Shell's oil products business faced grave competitive threats. Steve Miller, the business's group managing director and a student of complexity theory, recognized that to meet those threats, he would have to disturb equilibrium by bypassing the resistant bureaucracy and involving the front lines in renewal. Complex adaptive systems exhibit the capacity of self-organization and emergent complexity.