About “Adaptable”

When it comes to basic survival, adaptability is the single most important emergent for any living system. A sphere that is well connected and dynamically self-organizing continually adjusts and reinvents itself in harmony with the prevailing speed, obstacles and conditions. People, organizations and societies with robust spherical integrity adapt more rapidly and more appropriately. Systems with low spherical integrity struggle or fail to adapt.

The Sphere is a unifying visualization and adaptive vocabulary designed to help us understand the world and one another. The Sphere communicates across disciplines, backgrounds, cultures, education and life experience. With The Sphere and the SMT, history makes more sense to non-historians; psychology makes more sense to non-psychologists; politics makes more sense to non-politicians; economics makes more sense to non-economists; business makes more sense to non-business people; and so on.

Self-organization and tensegrity are the natural processes that let people and organizations (all systems) dynamically adjust and adapt to changes in the speed, obstacles and conditions of their environments.

When The Sphere of an organization is formed and supported by the contributions of people who have strong field energies and robust spherical integrity, the organization manifests the unique blending of those qualities. Such an organization becomes more aware of the environment in which it operates and more aware of its own internal dynamics. It responds more creatively, is open to new ideas and adapts well to change. It also becomes more attractive to customers, new members, donors, employees, investors, shareholders and so on.

The ability to adapt is essential to the success of every dynamic system, whether of a person, a species, a business or a nation. When a system experiences sudden or gradual changes in its environment, if it cannot adapt it faces obsolescence or extinction.

From a spherical perspective, when the sphere of any system fails to adapt to the speed, obstacles or conditions, it suffers a loss of integrity. It deforms. If the changes are extreme, it experiences a collapse.

If we look carefully at the spheres of our lives over a period of time, we see that from the moment of birth and even before, we adapt to our environment. As very young children we take up the language of our parents. As we leave school we adapt our attitudes to the requirements of a career. As elders we adapt our lifestyles to accommodate our aging bodies.

Personal adaptation is possible only when the fields of our personal spheres interact with the fields of other spheres. Through this process we acquire new traits, new skills, new ideas and new ways of doing things. We know from life experience that highly aware, nascent and attractive individuals adapt more rapidly, easily and effectively to changing conditions.

For example, during times of economic recession, business failures and restructuring, workers are forced to adapt to the new conditions or face the loss of their livelihood. The workers that are most aware, nascent and attractive adapt the fastest and most effectively.

The same patterns occur when the introduction of new technologies, such as the steam engine or the personal computer, disrupt traditional business models and economic structures. The people and organizations with the most robust field energies adapt best to the new conditions. The same principles apply to social transitions, such as the shift from an agricultural economy to an industrial economy, which require individuals, institutions and governments to adapt themselves to the current realities.

In the 21st century, we are once again experiencing just such a major shift. The realities of the New-millennium Consilience require that we adapt our spheres and transition our worldview or face the prospect of obsolescence, irrelevance or worse.

As we develop greater personal spherical integrity, we become more at ease and more fulfilled. We adapt and respond more easily to changes in speed, obstacles and conditions.