Leadership in Chaordic Organizations

Beverly Gay McCarter is an award-winning architect of immersive virtual environments whose company, Human Mosaic Systems (www.HumanMosiacSystems.com), is located in Cary, North Carolina (Research Triangle Park). She received her MS degree in counseling psychology and human systems from Florida State University and her MFA in studio art from the Memphis College of Art. She is also certified in the areas of facilitating self-organizing systems for complex environments (the Center for Self-Organizing Leadership) and the design and architecture of virtual worlds (University of Washington). While working as an independent contractor at the National Defense University in Washington, DC, she instructed faculty and Pentagon leadership in the navigation and use of virtual worlds, in addition to coordinating and executing the efforts of the Federal Consortium for Virtual Worlds to bring the federal government into virtual worlds. McCarter is an architect/designer of 3D immersive virtual environments focusing on the psychology of the avatar and virtual worlds, the inherent complex dynamics involved, as well as the impact of the aesthetics of 3D immersive environments on complex human systems. She has advised the Pentagon virtual simulation teams, a solution provider for Linden Labs' Second Life virtual world, and currently works in a variety of other immersive virtual platforms. As a facilitator, McCarter has worked with the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, among others, facilitating group discussions untangling the wicked problems of social interactions that overwhelm today's organizational structures.McCarter is an award-winning artist, focusing on human dynamics and the inherent effects of complexity and the edge-of-chaos on human consciousness. Her work emphasizes the ability to see multiple perspectives and the complexity of who we are, and our relationships with others.Through the int

For this book, Beverly Gay McCarter, and Brian E. White have gathered, organized, and interpreted an immense amount of information. They bring together the thinking from chaos and complexity theory, psychology, neuro-linguistic programming, and neuroscience, helping readers better understand the nature and challenges of leadership … . —Richard N. Knowles, Principal and Organizational Anthropologist, Richard N. Knowles & Associates, Inc., Youngstown, New York

• Foreword, Foreword, Preface, Acknowledgments, Authors, 1 Definition of Complexity and Its Impact on Organizations, Definition of Complexity, Complex System Behaviors, Surprising Emergence, Evolves on Its Own as a Whole, Acts Robustly, Thrives on Diversity, Many Factors at Play, Stimulates Different Perspectives, Ever Changing, Informs the Observer, Performs Openly, Internal and External Relationships Are Key, Self-Organized, Sensitive to Small Effects, Exhibits Tight and Loose Couplings, Complex Systems Engineering Principles, Bring Humility, Follow Holism, Achieve Balance, Utilize Trans-Disciplines, Embrace POET (Political, Operational, Economic, and Technical) Aspects, Nurture Discussions, Pursue Opportunities, Formulate Heuristics, Foster Trust, Create an Interactive Environment, Stimulate Self-Organization, Seek Simple Elements, Enforce Layered Architecture, Human Behavior, Impact on Organizations, Overarching Fragility Concern, Recognize That Complex Systems Can Do Better than We Can, 2 The Nature of Being Human, Mind and the Brain: An Overview, Basics of the Brain, Mind, Body, and Environment Interaction, The Mind and Emergence, Images and Knowledge: What Is Reality?, Innate Dispositions for Survival, Beyond the Non-Conscious, Emotions, Reason and Decision Making, Synopsis, 3 How to Build Trust, Perspectives on Trust, World Politics, Religions, and Fear, Biases of Individuals, Groups, and Organizations, Learning in Organizations, Storytelling, Perceptions of Reality and Power, Applying Laws of Power and Getting Inside, Types of Trust, Persistent Trust, How Your Emotions May Affect Your Trust, Interpersonal Trust When Not Face to Face, Trust and Inter-Reality Systems, Trust in Mental Health, Trusting with Limited Interpersonal Contact, Implications for Leadership, Recapitulation, 4 Collective Group Dynamics: A New View of High-Performance Teams, Introduction, Characteristics of Traditional Teams, Enneagram©, Cynefin Framework, Examples and Level of Commitment, Behaviors, Distributed Team Models, Serious Games/Virtual Worlds for Training, Difficulties in Distributed Environments, X-Teams, Exploration of Dissenting Individual Mindsets, Program/Project Management, Information Sharing, Guilds, Organizational Learning, Implications for Leadership in Chaordic Organizations, Summary, Takeaways, 5 Application of Theory, Complex Adaptive Systems: A Reprise of Previous Chapters, Conflict, Process Enneagram©, Change, How to Facilitate Change in Organizations, Counseling Skills and Techniques, Specific Techniques, Core Values, Ground Rules, Evaluating Group Processes, Social Systems, The Individual, Changing Our Behaviors, Views of Reality, Human Systems:—What Makes Them Complex, Today’s Problems Come from Yesterday’s Solutions, The Harder You Push, the Harder the System Pushes Back, Behavior Grows Better before It Gets Worse, The Easy Way Out Usually Leads Back In, Faster Is Slower, Cause and Effect Are Not Closely Related in Time and Space, Small Changes Can Produce Big Results, but the Areas of Highest Leverage Are Often the Least Obvious, Dividing an Elephant in Half Does Not Produce Two Elephants, There Is No Blame, Summary, 6 Wicked Problems and MUVEs: Understanding Human Interactions through Multiuser Virtual Environments, Dynamics of Living Human Systems at Work, Psychology of Virtual Worlds, Next Level of Interaction and Learning, Narrative Structures and the Underlying Psychological Dynamics, Appendix A, Mini-Lexicon of Selected Terms, Appendix B, INCOSE Working Group Sidebar on Complex Systems, Appendix C, Quotations from The 48 Laws of Power, Appendix D, Research for Virtual Worlds’ Promotion of Oxytocin, Appendix E, On the Information Explosion, Appendix F, On the Deeper Impact of Virtual Worlds, Appendix G, Web Collaboration, Workspace, Blog Platforms, References, Bibliography, Index