Catalytic Mechanisms: Effortless Ways to Inspire Teamwork

There is no CEO in a flock of birds and there’s no bird organization chart! And yet hundreds of birds fly together in complex patterns. Complex outcomes need not be the result of complicated processes, or tight-fisted control. Catalytic mechanisms, devices, processes, policies, or structures that encourage, evoke, or even force a desired behavior, work far better. Explore how to apply this intriguing concept in your organization to make positive changes easily, permanently, and nearly effortlessly.

A catalytic mechanism is a device, process, policy or structure that encourages, evokes, or even forces, a desired behavior. A simple example is an entrance gate at a parking garage. The gate won’t let you drive into the garage until you take the parking ticket. Although you could get a buddy to manually force the gate up, or boldly crash through the gate, it’s much easier to just take the ticket, and it’ll make your exit far simpler as well. This is an important point about catalytic mechanisms – they make the desired behavior far easier than the undesirable behavior, in this case driving into the parking garage without remembering to take your parking ticket. Explore how to apply this intriguing concept in your organization to make positive changes almost effortless.

Takeaways:
● Alternatives to Command-and-Control
● Examples of self-organizing systems in nature
● Everyday examples of self-organizing systems
● Designing systems that produce the results you desire, easily and effortlessly