Perhaps the biggest single factor in the recent past that has induced a change in the way we live our lives was the corona virus outbreak and the subsequent lockdowns that followed. From an organizational perspective the need to continue our daily business practices made us take to several new things.
Today 90% of the things which would have been done only physically before the outbreak like routine reviews, urgent meetings routine training have continued to be online despite all restrictions on movement being lifted. What’s even more interesting is that almost everyone has accepted this change and shifted their idea of stability accordingly.
Our general perception or expectation of any change like the above is that everything goes back to normal or the way it was before that event occurred. This brings us to the term homeostasis.
The words origin is from the Greek word homeos which means similar or same and stasis which means standing. This was first defined by the French physician Claude Bernad and is the tendency of living systems to resist change. As per this interpretation a system is in a stable state at point X some event disturbs this state and pushes the system to a state of Y. The system then puts all its efforts and its known measures to get back to its stable state of X as quickly as it can.
A good example would be when we become ill, we develop a higher temperature very often linked to the intensity of the infection. Multiple processes then work within our bodies to try and bring the temperature back to its normal level.
This feeling that we need to be in a stable state is one of the primary reasons why we as individuals or as organizations tend to resist change. Because of this long-standing bias that we have towards change we normally tend to respond in the following ways
- Attempts to avoid change even if external factors have changed totally.
- Refuse to acknowledge the change that has already happened.
- Resist the change that needs to be done urgently at times even if it is needed to stay afloat.
- Just go along with the flow without any plan or strategy.
- Continuously trying to get back to the default past or where we were.
But as we have seen in the example quoted at the beginning of the article linked to the Covid induced lockdown once the change has happened it doesn’t really go back to its original state but to a new state of stability which also incorporates some of the changes that have happened during the disorder period.
In the late 1980s Peter Sterling and Joseph Eyer coined the phrase allostasis which would broadly mean stability through change. They found that in most of such change situations almost all healthy systems do not rigidly resist change, but they try to adapt to the change. While everyone wants to have a stable situation, they are willing to achieve this stability at a new position considering the changes that have happened particularly when these changes are not in their control.
Actually, if we look at most of our scriptures, they are full of examples of allostasis. Considering that the opening of the Ram temple in Ayodhya is just a couple of days away if you look at Ramayana you will find this constant play of Order- Disorder and reorder being played out consistently. The same is true in all scriptures of all faiths.
I was reading the biography of Rahul Bajaj in this week and there is this small narrative that Bajaj quotes during his initial period in Harward as a young 25-year-old and I quote” Forget Teen Patti in the US its poker all the way I learned and adapted”.
I remember reading about similar adaptions in the biographies of Steve Jobs, Andrea Agassi, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. In fact, every species that is alive today has been successful in this unique skill which is why they are alive and around today.
While we are flooded every day with messages of how we are resistant to change and how we need to be open for change etc., we often forget that each one of us is a living specimen of our capability of change through the method of Order- Disorder and Reorder.
While the capabilities of rates of adaptation can vary from individual to individual this is something with which we are inherently born. As we navigate the unpredictable currents of chaos and seek the comforting shores of structure, we find that within the chaos lies the potential for transformation. It is in the moments of reorder that we witness the emergence of resilience and evolution.
My mind goes back to the unheard-of heroes during the Kerala floods captured wonderfully in the movie 2018, but that will be on another day as part of another post. To continue getting more insights on these order, disorder and reorder methods and how we can improve our effectiveness in this continuous process do subscribe to my LinkedIn page, Rejo’s Business Bytes, or my website, rejofrancis.com.
