MANAGEMENT BY FRACTAL - INTRODUCTION

Contemporary definition of organizations is based on an arbitrary cutting up of reality so that on the horizontal or action-plane an isolated vision, mission, or strategy, or organizational processes, departments, or functions, often comes to define organizations. On the vertical or reference-plane organizations have again been separated from the individuals who comprise them, and from the systems of which they are a part. While this may be a beginning, the inaccurate nature of the starting-point does not allow an organization to exercise adequate dynamic command over itself or its environment.

For this to happen, the very structures with which we define, study, and manage organizations needs to be modified. These structures tend to be static, isolated, and discontinuous, whereas organizational objects ranging from individuals to whole systems, and organizational action, are on the contrary dynamic, connected, and continuous. This dichotomy is responsible for management’s lack of ability to unleash the tremendous creative force resident in any organization.

The situation is akin to the difference between Euclidean and Fractal Geometry. In Euclidean Geometry reality is arbitrarily cut into neat shapes that do not exist. Consequently the command Euclidean Geometry exercises over its environment is inadequate. Fractal Geometry, on the other hand, starts with a far more accurate rendering of reality with its irregular, varying scale, self-repeating shapes. This starting point allows it to exercise a far greater command over the environment, in terms of understanding, predicting, replicating, and even manipulating objects and phenomena.

This story is about identifying the fundamental organizational-fractal, which similarly, would allow for a much greater understanding, definition, and management of organizations, and would similarly, through its use, prove to be far more powerful than conventional management approaches. Further, while state-of-the-art Fractal Geometry works with objects, flows, and processes in the physical world, the concept of fractal that follows is itself being extended into the behavioral realms, to therefore include a vaster range of phenomena.