The Butterfly Affect

Based on this week's reading, reflect on complexity science and theory in organizations and the butterfly effect (p.66). 

Identify 2 examples where “small changes yield large results” in your organization.

What are the implication of complexity theory for you and your organization and how can you use this to drive improvements.

            It took me many times reading about the butterfly effect before it hit me, In just a matter of seconds it all made sense, it is complex yet it is something that happens so often. There was one sentence which stood out to me from our text (oblinsky, 2014). The sentence read “when a situation has a great sensitivity to initial conditions a small change can have a disproportionate affect”.  We see this happen all too often, one small event can lead to having a completely different world unfold in front of you. I am constantly thinking about “what if’s” in life, many times I am amazed that I am even in my current situation. The butterfly effect is a very complex and intricate frame of thought which leads to alternate universes where one incident could lead to a completely different world.

            Dealing with the different organizations that I have been in I have two separate examples where ne small change can lead to large results. One of my examples have to do with the way that my organization completely changed my life and the other example deals with how a small change can completely improve the efficiency of the company which I work for.

            My first example is one which I will never forget, it is how I met my wife, thanks to a small change done to me by my organization. During my time in the military, I can say that I was definitely the rebellious type, I was not very good at following orders. I recognized that the military life was not for me very early on in my career, because of this knowledge I decided that I was going to attend college on base and work on a degree.

After many semesters of college on base I decided that I wanted to be around different kind of people, so I joined a college in the local town which I was living in. I was all signed up for classes and getting ready to start my first day. My classes would be during working hours, the military gave me special permission to skip out on work and go to class. Unfortunately for me I had committed one of my rebellious acts and infuriated my boss. He was so upset that he told me that I would not be allowed to attend school.

            In my attempt to fight back and show that my boss would not stop me, I signed up for the only available class in the evening. I did not care that I was at work and school all day, as long as I did not let anyone stop me from my goals. It turns out that in this class which I spontaneously signed up for and was not supposed to be in, would be the class in which I would meet my wife, the mother of my child.

            So much has happened since then, some difficult times and also a lot of amazing points in my life; all this because of my rebellious behavior. If I would not have gotten into trouble that same day I would probably be living in another state or perhaps be a completely different person. That one incident changed my life completely, I am who I am today because of this incident.

 The butterfly Effect makes you think a lot about how small changes can have a big effect in your life. Aside from my personal life, I have seen how the butterfly effect works in many ways at my organization. As a rail traffic controller for BNSF Railroad, I am in charge of the safe and expeditious flow of railroad traffic across the United States. I have to control where I will crossover trains, where to stop them, and how to get them to their destination as fast as possible. For people in my profession we always teach people how to plan many hours in advance, one small move that you make many hours in advance can affect how good or bad your shift will be.

I can recall many times when I was learning how to do my job, there were many discrepancies which I would encounter due to bad planning. There was one time when I delayed a train for a small amount of time to let maintenance workers correct a deficiency on the track. At first I thought it was not a big deal, but many hours later because of this delay my train crew run out of working hours, this crew was not allowed to touch this train because of my bad time management skills. This was the butterfly effect in full force, when one small mistakes ends up growing into something completely different, one small decision could have changed the whole situation.  For me to improve at my job I have to learn from mistakes like this and use the experience to make me the most effective rail traffic controller I could possibly be.

Reference:

Obolensky, N. (2014). Complex Adaptive Leadership: Embracing Paradox and Uncertainty. Farnham, Surrey: Gower.