Fractals and teams
Within organisations, teams have the possibility of being fractals - miniature versions of the larger system. Photo by USGS on Unsplash
The Disney movie, Frozen (which courtesy of my daughter’s age meant that I became very familiar with from 2014 to 2017!) introduced me to the idea of fractals. At one point in the central song of the movie, ‘Let it Go’, Elsa sings about “frozen fractals”. I have to admit that I didn’t really know what they were. To be honest, I didn’t pay much attention to it (I tried to ignore Frozen as much as I could). In 2018, I saw Eddie Woo (Maths Teacher, extraordinaire) present at TEDx in Sydney. Fractals showed up again. As he described it, fractals involved a recursive pattern - where each segment of a whole is made up of smaller versions of the same shape.
Here is a part of what he said:
“There's a mathematical reality woven into the fabric of the universe that you share with winding rivers, towering trees, and raging storms. These shapes are examples of what we call "fractals," as mathematicians. Fractals get their name from the same place as fractions and fractures - it's a reference to the broken and shattered shapes we find around us in nature. Now, once you have a sense for fractals, you really do start to see them everywhere: a head of broccoli, the leaves of a fern, even clouds in the sky.”
He made a very well constructed and considered the case for this. How eloquent is this line?
“There's a mathematical reality woven into the fabric of the universe that you share with winding rivers, towering trees, and raging storms.”
My high school maths teachers Miss Bush and Mr McCauliffe were lovely people, but they were nowhere near as poetic as Mr Woo! I don’t care if it’s true, it’s beautiful!
What if we could apply this fractal thinking to teams and organisations as well? Turns out that we can. At the 2020 Evidence-Based Coaching Conference, I heard Dr Michael Cavanagh present something in this vein. In essence, he suggested that coaching was the process of facilitating different perspectives to be shared, heard and acknowledged to function in a way that is useful for the situation. When it got really interesting was when he suggested that it is the same for individuals, teams and organisations:
Individuals are working with different perspectives internally - perhaps conflicting values or a shift in personal priorities
Teams are working with the diverse perspectives of multiple individuals
Organisations are working with the interaction of perspectives representative of different teams
Fractals again! The same process at different levels.
While this is a very simplistic view of an incredibly complex phenomenon, there is something in it. What it means is that the ability to facilitate different perspectives to be shared, heard and acknowledged in order to function in a way that is useful for the situation is something that can scale up to an organisational level (and beyond). It can also go the other way and can apply for individuals. Working at team level offers an opportunity to make the team members and the organisations function better.
Some questions for you to consider in your teams:
In what way does the ability to operate as a team help individuals operate better?
What are the parallels between working well inside the team and working well beyond the team?