Let There be Chaos

A typical Delhi resident has a daily tryst and triumph on traffic. Dropping your kid to school and reaching office is a kind of war. None follows the lanes on roads and everyone is in more hurry than other. Cars move in zig zag motion changing lanes frequently.

What you do to manage your way through this chaos is only partly under your control. How a driver (whom perhaps you will never see) some 20 cars head negotiates traffic defines how you will negotiate traffic. His sudden change of lane can lead you to bang your break, accelerate or change lane. If you can make it to your office in time is dependent upon how swiftly the traffic police clears the car which turned turtle an hour ago. You can’t control most of it.

Same happens at our office and home. A random event happening beyond your control defines your further course of action. How your worthy colleague interprets, spices it up and reports to your boss a random gesture of yours in a meeting is beyond your control but it impacts you. A random event of you getting a seat with someone unknown in a metro ride can trigger a lifelong friendship.

We all have mastered the art of making sense out of totally chaotic world. We can’t make this world systematic, then why the fuss of standardising everything.

I have worked with an organisation where chaos is deliberately infused. People had and have to mandatorily change departments every 6-9 months, and none would know which department he will get next. Rapid innovation at an individual level and at organisational level spiced it up, paving way to new ideas and strategic advantage.

Problems at home or office are iridescent, having as many hues as the number of people trying to resolve them. There are no constants in life, only infinities exist, thus we should allow infinite solutions to same problem when different people face same problem at different space and time. For example, we at times tend to standardise sales process across organisation. Practically it can’t be done and should not be done. It cannot be done, one, because everyone has his own perspective and two, people do things better when they have belief in what they are doing. Standardised process does not guarantee alignment and belief.

Exponential growth comes only in chaotic environment, incremental growth can be achieved in less competitive and more systematic environment. Competition induces chaos, all look for ways and means to capture maximum market share in smallest length of time, or else someone else will do so. This leads to rapid chain reactions of new problems and new solutions to those problems. Problems don’t arise that your process was faulty, they arise that the competitor did something which forces you to change course of your action. Constant innovation comes into action. More flexible and more fluid you are, better off you will be.

At home also, don’t have many rules, do new things, and do old things in new manner. Let your kid explore new ways of doing things. Take a new way to your office every day. Do everything which makes even little sense, you will learn to innovate more rapidly.

Let there be chaos. Let there be light.