Lessons from ecology, in 3 min
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I found a paper from 1995 that I really enjoyed, it’s called From Balance of Nature to Hierarchical Patch Dynamics. As always I’ll drop specific references below.
So the paper starts with a view we had back in the 80s and 90s—that there’s some sort of inherent balance to be found in nature—and then completely throws that away. There is no balance and instead what we find in the study of ecology is that there are what this paper is calling ‘hierarchical patch dynamics’.
We’re going to talk about this phrase piece by piece. First up, a quick look at equilibrium. In a small, controlled system, you can have a single equilibrium but in any system of sufficient size or complexity, like let’s say your workplace, there are multiple locally stable equilibria. For a simplified, sort of experiential example: your org may have normed into a particular and stable way of working that is very different than what happens in the org your friend works for. There are multiple equilibria.
The ‘patch’ part of hierarchical patch dynamics refers to each of these different patches of local equilibrium. These patches inevitably impact each other, so we get patch dynamics.
Now the last piece we need to define before we can actually use this framework for change is the term hierarchy, because it means something different here. This isn’t a tangent, it’s directly relevant, but are you familiar with the concept of ‘pace layering’? This was coined by Stewart Brand back in 1999 and came from an ecological view, but apparently Gartner has turned it into a software application strategy now. In case you thought I was the only person making complexity relevant to tech.
Anyway, pace layering and hierarchy. So pace layering is the idea that some categories of stuff in our day-to-day lives, like commerce, change very quickly and other categories that impact our day-to-day lives, like governance, change much more slowly, but ultimately all categories are interconnected and impact each other. e.g. a change in governance could change what’s available in the world of commerce. In what’s called ‘hierarchy theory’ from the 1970s, the idea is basically the same. Changes in the slow-moving categories drive large scale change in the fast-moving categories.
So hierarchical patch dynamics is the idea that some of the patches of equilibrium might be slower moving, slower to change, and others might be faster moving and faster to change, but they impact each other and the slower moving ones have huge impact on the faster moving ones.
What this means for change is the following two things.
One: Whether we are part of a slow-moving patch that has huge impact or just in a little fast-moving patch, what we do in our local environment is connected to and influences lots of other patches. i.e., The world we are able to create and maintain around us has a bigger impact than what we can immediately see and feel. This may not feel satisfying to you if you want to control the world, but I think there’s something beautiful about inspiring change.
And then Two: We need to consider the pace and hierarchy of our local patch so we can set realistic expectations for how fast change can occur. For example when I redesigned the promotion process in a past job, it changed what success looked like, which changed the incentives for doing different kinds of work, and ultimately changed what work people were doing. It was change in a slow-moving part of the organization, HR, and the hierarchy was such that it made a huge difference in the fast-moving part, product design. And also, it all happened much more slowly than I would have liked because the change had to roll out from patch to patch to patch throughout the design org.
A thing I really like about the hierarchical patch dynamics perspective is how realistic it is about the nitty gritty of making change happen. Personally, I think we all need that kind of grounded view to be able to keep going. Thanks for listening.
Sources: https://jods.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/issue3-brand/release/2 and https://www.jstor.org/stable/3035824?origin=JSTOR-pdf (pdf available via Google Scholar)