Book review: Surfing the Edge of Chaos
Consumer-driven healthcare. Overseas surgery. Freestanding surgery centers, mini-clinics and other new provider models. It’s not a stretch to say that hospitals and healthcare systems are competing in a more chaotic environment. Surfing the Edge of Chaos: The Laws of Nature and the New Laws of Business, written in 2000 by Richard Pascale, Mark Millemann and Linda Gioja, offers a nice primer for how businesses should embrace chaos as a way to innovate and compete.
The book uses the premise of evolution in nature; how species evolve not just gradually, but can make dramatic jumps when faced with radically changing situations. The result is that those species that adapt easiest and fastest leap forward, while others die off. The authors apply this philosophy to business, noting that when businesses face cataclysmic changes in their environments, those who are best positioned to innovate and adapt will thrive, and the rest face extinction. (The book uses the science of Complex Adaptive Systems to delve deeper into this concept.)
The authors use four laws of nature related to evolution and adaptation to make their points:
1) Equilibrium is a precursor to death. That is, those entities that are content in their current state and are not open to change are at maximum risk when chaos enters the market. The idea here is to be always looking toward the future, and to innovate constantly.
2) The edge of chaos is the sweet spot. Using examples in nature, the authors show how the most successful adaptations (i.e., innovations) occur at the edge of an environment, where entities are pushed to experiment as they bump up against the chaotic “outside.� The key here is to proactively push your organization to that edge to inspire innovation and change, but not to fall into the chaos that reigns beyond.
3) Self-organization and emergence are the distinguishing features of all living things. In this section, the authors argue that the best way to innovate is to turn your entity loose at the edge of chaos, with some direction, but little control. The entity (e.g., bee colony, hospital organization) will self-organize and emerge in better shape than if it were given detailed plans on where to go. The quote that best captures this in the book is one by General George S. Patton, “Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.�
4) Unintended consequences are an inescapable byproduct of surfing the edge of chaos. That is, when you turn an entity loose with minimal direction to innovate, unforeseen consequences are unavoidable. Instead of trying to control inevitabilities, the idea is to prepare your organization to be flexible in dealing with whatever comes its way.
This book is full of theories and anecdotes that can easily be applied to the current state of provider-directed healthcare, and offers many ideas for the healthcare marketer in approaching the growing chaos in the market. For example:
How can you as a marketing leader help move your organization away from equilibrium to embrace change?
How do you identify the sweet spots in your market, seeking to not only keep up with your competitors, but also pass them by?
Your organization spends enormous energy and resources on quality, efficiency and patient satisfaction, yet according to the book, “optimization seldom leads to radical breakthroughs.� How do you incorporate innovation while still meeting the optimization goals that are necessary to survive in healthcare?
Healthcare providers may be facing chaos in their market, but with chaos often comes opportunity. Many who read this book may assume that the ideas are too radical for the heavily regulated, deeply traditional business of providing healthcare. But Surfing the Edge of Chaos will push you to think about the changes that are buffeting your industry, and how you can help your organization respond and compete more effectively.