Mismatched socks: standalone part two DRAFT

To give a concrete example of the standalone complex, I’ll use an example from daily life. A while ago I was doing laundry with my girlfriend, and on that particular day she found herself with no matching socks. I saw it as the perfect opportunity to illustrate the difference between a rigid and a flexible system. In a rigid system, in this example a system where all socks need to be matched in order to do work, if you have any sort of failure, such as the lack of a matching sock then your system relies on redundancies to cope. That works for a small amount of failure, but in the case of a complete dearth of matched socks, for instance, you will end up sockless until next laundry day. On the other hand is a flexible and dynamic system that uses a modular units that can be interchangeable catch up with such failures, that is for example if you change your mind about match matching pair of socks is. If you redefine a matching pair of socks to that which you can wear to go out and then do your business, then the system is becomes much more flexible. All it takes is a shift in your perspective and how you react to changes in situations. In that sense I’m trying to create it in organization that can operate as a drawer full of mismatched socks. Just like in the drawer, the socks themselves do not change, rather it is the person wearing the socks that changes . The organization is the one that changes. The members of the organization, the people involved don’t change, only in how you use them.