The Power of Synchronicity

The Power of Synchronicity

By
Prof. Arfah Salleh
Dean, Graduate School of Management 
UPM

On June 10, 2000, the day the Millennium Bridge – a steel foot bridge for pedestrians to cross the Thames - opened, 90,000 people crossed the bridge with up to 2,000 on the bridge at any one time. To their surprise and dismay, as they crossed the bridge, these pedestrians felt a wobbly motion. After limiting access to it for a while, the authorities closed the bridge for two years to fix the wobble.

The swaying motion was diagnosed as a 'positive feedback' phenomenon, or, in engineering parlance, Synchronous Lateral Excitation. The natural swaying motion of people walking caused sideways oscillations in the bridge. When the people swayed in step in response to the wobble, they further aggravated the oscillations. And the oscillations reinforced one another to intensify their effect.

Pedestrian traffic beyond a critical mass has set off similar vibrations in other foot bridges.  The greater the number of people, the greater the intensity of the vibrations (Wikipedia on Millennium Bridge). 

The same effect that occurred at the Millenium Bridge, when a sufficient number of people walked and swayed in tandem, can also occur in the implementation of any management effort.  ‘Positive feedback’ or ‘synchronous lateral excitation’ can help understand how management principles and practices have secured wide appeal.

Malcolm Gladwell, in his book “The Tipping Point” illustrates this principle of synchronicity with good effect. He argues that once an idea or sale of a product (as was the case of Hush Puppies, an example he quotes in his book) assumes a critical mass, changes can occur or spread so quickly as though it was a social epidemic. Indeed, Gladwell draws inspiration from epidemiology (the study of epidemics) to illustrate how one child who brings a virus soon infects the whole class.  Witness for example, exhorts Gladwell, how Sesame Street – the TV show for children – ‘infected’ them with the learning habit and caused a literacy epidemic among them.  Similarly, he asks why crime fell so dramatically in New York in the mid-1990s when previously the Big Apple was riddled with a high crime rate.  The answer, he concludes, is the power of synchronicity among the critical mass of people who wanted to make New York safer. 

All it takes is one, and then a few, to get the change effort in motion. In no time, the idea catches on so quickly that the change becomes pervasive in an organisation. As Margaret Mead once said, “Never underestimate the power of a few committed people to change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” 

As human beings we are so conditioned to think that change can only occur slowly albeit steadily.  However, change can, and often does happen all too fast. And little changes can trigger a chain reaction leading to a transformation.

Ideas, therefore, can be contagious. It can enthuse anyone who comes into contact with it.  

Human governance is an idea born at the Graduate School of Management. It is how we govern ourselves during decision making and arriving at judgments throughout our professional and personal lives guided from the inside out. It is about living our lives by our untainted conscience.  Human governance can infect the local business world and beyond if we – students and faculty at the Graduate School of Management and others convicted of its philosophy - live by it and spread it by word of mouth and deed. 

If we can combine our thoughts and actions around human governance what great impact we can make to our world by the synchronicity of our thoughts and actions. We can start an epidemic of our own.  We can infect the world where human governance fortifies the spiritual beliefs of individuals to make this world a better place and where businesses focus on the triple bottom-line – profit, planet and people. 

To start that epidemic, it only requires a little effort from all of us.  If we could spread the principles of human governance and the impact that human governance can make in our professional and personal lives by word of mouth, or through print, and walk the talk, we can be sure that the message of human governance will spread like wild fire. And, as the message gathers momentum, and the critical mass or the tipping point or the boiling point is reached,  human governance would touch as many as would care to reflect on its principles and consider them worthy of emulation. We would then have moved the world with just that little effort on everyone’s part. Shall we?

Posted in: GSM ARTICLE