The key is early recognition of when things are beginning to unravel, then stepping up and fixing it. Without effective leadership at all levels, disorder will not only emerge, but grow at an exponential rate until focused energy is directed toward those areas to re-achieve order.
Those attributes come from one thing: leadership. Rather, it takes energy, effort, cooperation and mutual respect to synergistically combine efforts and skills into a highly effective, efficient and competent organization. Flights, squadrons, groups and wings don't accomplish great feats purely by chance.
Human workplaces, organizations and units are no different. I can only imagine what a large toy store would look like if I were to unleash the young Starr crew for an unsupervised sleepover at the unsuspecting (and otherwise very ordered) place of commerce. The phrases "kid in a candy store" and "bull in a china shop" come to mind.
#Entropy disorder full#
hotter coffee).įor a closer to home analogy - I spend countless hours helping my wife clean our children's toy room (dynamically ordered energy,) but it takes mere seconds for my children (when unobserved) to make the toy room look like the aftermath of a thermo-nuclear explosion (entropy in full effect.)Īnother factor to any system's entropy measurement is size - the larger the system or organization, the larger the possibility and probability of disorganization. A dynamically ordered state occurs when the coffee is placed in a microwave, but requires an ordered and energetic system to result in less entropy (i.e. Even though there is enough kinetic and thermal energy in a normal-sized living room to boil and evaporate a small cup of coffee, one will never observe convection of the total thermal energy in the 72 degree air molecules of a 1000-square foot room into an eight-fluid ounce cup of coffee, thus raising the temperature of the coffee to 212 degrees while slightly decreasing the air temperature in the room.
It also states that to return a system to its original state, it takes more energy than that which was required for disorder to happen."įor instance, a hot cup of coffee placed in the living room will always dissipate heat to the point where the coffee and ambient room temperature are equal. Today, this concept is known as the Theory of Entropy: ordered states are infinitely improbable, and every system in the universe will naturally be found either in the state of maximum disorder, or moving towards it.Īs defined by author and management consultant Peter Druker, "Entropy is a measure of disorder, and it is based on probabilities and the possible combinations in a given system. In the 1860s and 1870s, Austrian physicist and philosopher Ludwig Boltzmann and German physicist Rudolf Clausius radically challenged prevailing academic thought and gave birth to the Second Law of Thermodynamics.īoltzmann and Clausius' experiential research led to the revolutionary concept that everything in nature tends to flow from order to disorder, and requires focused energy to re-achieve order. 33rd Flying Training Squadron commander.