Organizational Development: A Manual for Managers and ... - FPDL

Let’s assume that this centre of balance is moving in a specific and regular direction, like in Picture
15.
Picture 15. Drift
What does it mean? The movement remains stochastic on the micro-level, when observing
changes within a short period of time, but demonstrates a clear direction on the macro-level, when
enlarging the scale of observation. This kind of movement is called drift. Chaos is trapped not by
the point any longer, but by the line. Drift has a direction, and this direction should have certain
cause, otherwise there would be no definite direction and drift would become just another random
Brownian motion, only on the bigger scale. Clients come in to the shop accidentally. There may be
more or less clients in this particular hour or day without any special reason. The number may rise
a bit or fall at a certain moment – this says nothing about how things are actually going. But when
the average number is falling steadily from month to month – that means something is wrong. If
there is a drift, there should be a reason - not necessarily only one. There may be a
superimposition of factors (or force field) that together generates a sum vector, which determines
the direction of a drift. See Picture 16.
Picture 16. Determination of a drift by a force field
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