The necessity of the adaptive cycle
Nothing lasts forever. But you can make change a positive force in your organisation instead of something to be resisted.
The idea that organised structures go through natural periods of change and renewal recurs across a wide range of disciplines and thinkers: economics (Schumpeter), sociology and political economy (Marx), business and innovation studies (Perez), dual-phase evolution in ecology (Green), evolutionary biology (Gould), systems thinking and complexity science (Meadows and Prigogine), and management theory (Marshall and Moore).
CS Holling and his theory of the adaptive cycle and of panarchy provide a useful general framework for all of these discussions.
Panarchy is the concept that systems are nested from smaller to bigger units, each of which may be in their own stage of the adaptive cycle. Importantly, panarchy specifies cross-linkages at the various levels of system nesting, with larger-scale systems “remembering” and providing structural support as smaller-scale systems go through renewal, and small-scale systems promoting “revolt” in larger-scale systems that would otherwise remain in stasis.
Holling further describes the natural adaptive cycle as consisting of four phases, designated as exploitation (r), conservation (K), release (Ω) and reorganisation (α). Over time, the cycle ordinarily traces a path across each of these phases across three descriptive dimensions:
Capital / potential — High when the organisational unit has available and discretionary access to surplus money / resources / expertise.
Connectedness / standardisation — High when the organisational unit has tightly coupled relationships, rigid hierarchies, and high standardisation of processes and rules.
Robustness / influence — High when the organisational unit can resist outside forces or can enforce its own will and preferences in its surroundings.
[Note: Hollings uses “resilience” as the third dimension of his system descriptors. Here we use “robustness” instead since in my nomenclature, resilience refers to the ability to adapt in the face of outside forces rather than to resist them.]
In an organisational context, each of the phases typically leads to characteristic activities that are associated with their combination of dimensional attributes:
The adaptive cycle phases can then be further described in terms of healthy and maladaptive behaviours:
From a management perspective, there are two key and potentially fatal behaviours to avoid: poverty traps and rigidity traps.
A poverty trap occurs when insufficient resources are available after a release phase to support necessary reorganisation. This is a critical stage where the “remembering” function of the larger organisation can lean in to support transition and rebuilding.
A rigidity trap, on the other hand, occurs when an organisation uses the surplus accumulated during the conservation phase to try and defer necessary release and renewal as the previously domainant practices become increasingly unfit for purpose. Holding back change too long can burn precious resources needed for renewal while steepening the pace of decline once a release is unable to be prevented, sometimes catastrophically.
Sometimes, a group stuck in a poverty trap receives just enough support to avoid complete collapse but at the cost of ongoing low quality and productivity in delivery, which can create a broader environment of resentment and low performance from those often fingered as “lazy”. Similarly, groups in a rigidity trap may superficially appear to be delivering strong results, even while they are sowing the seeds for their own collapse.
Regardless, either of these traps can be eventually fatal without recognition and an active management response. If you are a manager, diagnostic tools can help in understanding your current phase and planning a safe exit when at risk of entering a trap situation.