Inertia and Entropy

Entropy makes it necessary for leaders  to constantly work on maintaining an organization's purpose, form, and methods even if there are not changes in strategy or competition.

Even with its engines on hard reverse, a supertanker can take one mile to come to a stop.  This property of mass-resistance to a change in motion--is inertia.  In business, inertia is an organization's unwillingness or inability to adapt to changing circumstances.  Even with change programs running at full throttle, it can take many years to alter a large company's basic functioning.

Were organizational inertia the whole story, a well-adapted corporation would remain healthy and efficient as long as the outside world remained unchanged.  But, another force, entropy, is also at work.  In science, entropy measures a physical system's degree of disorder, and the second law of thermodynamics states that entropy always increases in an isolated physical system.  Similarly, weakly managed organizations tend to become less organized and focused.  Entropy makes it necessary for leaders  to constantly work on maintaining an organization's purpose, form, and methods even if there are not changes in strategy or competition.

ACTION POINT: Stay focused on your organizations purpose, form and methods to avoid entropy and inertia.