If we carefully observe a system, we may see the following three characteristics: adaptability, self-organization and hierarchy.
First, adaptability
For a system, adaptability refers to the ability of the system to maintain its existence and operation in a changeable environment. The opposite of adaptability is fragility or rigidity.
For example, in a tropical rain forest system, whether in dry season or rainy season, the temperature is high or low, and all the elements in the system interact with each other through their own behaviors to form an overall balance. The system will not crash due to changes in the external environment.
In the dry season, herbivores such as wildebeests and antelopes will migrate to places with grass because of food shortage. On the other hand, plants will reduce the evaporation of water to deal with it. When the rain comes, everything will get wet again, grass will start to grow again, and animals will migrate back.
The reason why the system is adaptive is that there are many interactive feedback loops in the system. It is the mutual support of these circuits that can restore the system to its original state in many different ways even when the system is greatly disturbed.
When we ride a bike, people and cars form a system. Facing all kinds of road conditions, such as cement road, gravel road, uphill and downhill road, big turn and so on. According to different situations, the system will use acceleration and deceleration, straight turning, idling or getting up and pedaling to maintain the balance and continuous operation of people and vehicles.
Adaptability is limited, and the adaptive system may be constantly changing dynamically, rather than always unchanged.
For the human body, many chronic diseases, such as cancer and heart disease, are caused by the collapse of some adaptive mechanisms.
We can't just pay attention to the productivity or stability of the system and ignore the adaptability of the system, that is, the ability to repair or reset itself. In this case, the adaptability of the system may be weakened.
For example, injecting transgenic growth delay hormone into dairy cows can increase milk production. However, this hormone converts part of the metabolic energy of dairy cows into milk production, at the cost of reducing the adaptability of dairy cows, making their health worse and shortening their life span. This is the game of efficiency and adaptability brought by technology.
Second, self-organization.
The ability of a system to make its structure more complex is called self-organization. Self-organization will produce heterogeneity and unpredictability: the system may evolve into a brand-new structure and develop a brand-new behavior model.
Self-organization is a very common feature of organic systems. For example, human beings started from a fertilized egg and eventually evolved into a person with complex organization and function. For an external observer, one of the most obvious properties of self-organizing system is high order.
In nature, through some simple organization principles, we can produce very diverse and complex self-organization structures, such as fractal theory.
The figure below shows the peano curve proposed by mathematician piano in 1890, which is to connect the midpoints of the opposite sides of a unit square to form four squares, and then make a broken line to pass through the centers of the four squares in turn. Repeat the above steps, and the curve finally formed by these broken lines is peano curve.
Systems usually have the characteristics of self-organization, and have the ability to shape their own institutions, produce new structures, learn, diversify and complicate. Even very complex forms of self-organization may be generated by relatively simple rules.
Third, the hierarchy.
We generally believe that a large system often contains many subsystems, and there are smaller subsystems below, just like our common group company model: there are subsidiaries under the head office, Sun Company under the subsidiaries, business divisions under the company, departments under the business divisions, and so on. The relationship between systems and subsystems is called hierarchy.
Generally speaking, the hierarchy has evolved from the bottom, from the local to the whole, from cells to organs, from organs to organisms, and from individuals to teams.
Layering makes the system more stable and adaptable, reduces the amount of information, and makes all parts of the system easier to be recorded and tracked.
The purpose of layering is to help each subsystem run better. However, the higher or lower the hierarchy, the more likely it is to have hierarchical dysfunction.
Just like in the hierarchical system of a company, the more levels there are, the top manager may often be the last person to know that the company has closed down because of the loss and delay of information.
When the goal of a subsystem, rather than the goal of the whole system, prevails and the goal of the subsystem is achieved at the expense of the running cost of the whole system, the result of such behavior is called "suboptimal".
This is often encountered in the company's organizational structure, departments or branches. In order to achieve their own goals, they ignore the overall goals of the company. The evolution of enterprise organizational structure, from linear functional system to matrix organization, hopes to solve this phenomenon by increasing management axis and power distribution.
In order to make the system run effectively, the hierarchy must balance the rights, freedoms and responsibilities of the whole system and subsystems. This means that there must be enough central control to effectively coordinate the realization of the goals of the whole system. At the same time, the subsystem should have enough autonomy to maintain its vitality. Therefore, centralization and authorization are a pair of feedback loops in the company organization.
When we observe the system, whether we can see more levels of the system and understand the relationship between levels is one of the important differences between experts and novices.
Fourth, summary.
Adaptability, self-organization and hierarchy are three characteristics of the system and three reasons for its effective operation. Only by understanding these three characteristics can we not lose the internal driving force and law of system operation because of the pursuit of superficial efficiency and ability. But by managing and strengthening these three characteristics, we can enhance the ability of the system to run effectively for a long time.