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

Landscape
If the factors that create a force field are permanent in their strength and direction – the sum vector
will always be the same. That means the drift will go in the same direction, along a straight line,
and with the same speed. But this assumption is an abstract exercise only. Real forces that
influence real organisms are always changing: weather, currency rates, the price of oil, legislation,
political circumstances, and so on. Everything is changing - in a regular or irregular manner,
predictably or not, to the good or to the bad. Therefore, the actual line that would determine the
direction of change will instead be a curve (see Picture 17).
Picture 17. Changing direction of drift
In fact, we just added a coordinate of time along the curve to demonstrate how forces are
changing. This changing force field, revealed over time, represents the idea of a landscape (from
Dutch ‘landschap’). The term is widely used in management literature to illustrate the influence of
different factors to the actual direction of development (see, for example, a great book by Richard
Norman, ‘Reframing Business: How the Map Changes Landscape’).
In general, landscape is a surface in the multi-dimensional space of all external and internal
parameters. The shape of the surface determines a ravine. The shape of a ravine determines the
direction of drift. The actual drift, unpredictable in small detail, will not deviate too far from the line
along the bed of the ravine that somehow attracts any real trajectory or drift. This basin of
attraction was called creod. It determines the path of development. This concept was first
introduced by K. Uoddington and R. Tom, at the First Congress on Theoretical Biology, 1969, in
connection with the development of embryos.
One could say – ‘who knows the creod, knows the future’ – but one would be wrong. Numeric
forces that create landscape are always in change, and some changes depend on unpredictable
and uncontrollable factors. So, no creod can be really predictable in the long run. At some points,
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