Entropy

Photo by Giuseppe Murabito on Unsplash

I often think of the concept of entropy and how it applies to organisations.

If it’s been a while, entropy is the idea that all systems will lose energy over time and revert to chaos, unless the system is kept in balance. In short, you can address entropy in three ways: (1) add small amounts of energy constantly to maintain equilibrium; (2) use massive amounts of energy at longer intervals to return to equilibrium; or (3) do nothing and just let the chaos happen.

We’re so often focused on keeping the entropy at bay, we’re not even thinking of the energy required to transform, which is a whole other level. How do you address entropy, where do you get the excess energy from and what’s to be said for the cool new things that chaos might bring?