The System Always Kicks Back
LeChatelier dynamics in professional meetings
One of the interesting things that one learns when studying chemistry is LeChatelier’s principle. Named for its original formulator, the principle usually reads pretty drily, something like “if an equilibrium system is stressed, the system will experience a shift in response to the stress that re-establishes equilibrium¹.” One of the very cool things that I took from reading (and re-reading) Systemantics (Gall, 1977), was his observation that LeChatelier’s principle is not localized just to physical systems, it operates in all equilibrium systems. As ever, he formulates his more universal version with a bit more panache as “the system always kicks back.” Schools are many things, including equilibrium systems. It therefore follows that we should expect that the system of a school will always kick back when it is pushed in a particular direction.
A Recent Demonstration of the Principle
During the debrief at the end of a recent meeting (“glows and grows”), a participant observed that much of the content of the meeting was largely informational. They wondered out loud if information of the type that was being discussed might not be better handled via asynchronous communication, perhaps via a Loom and a slide deck, delivered via email? There did…
