Adaptability as Function of Entropy and How Judo Can Help with Agile Adoption

"Emptiness". The last word of a legendary judo sensei Kyuzo Mifune that he wrote as a message for the next generations of judokas. As Agile already borrowed the Shu Ha Ri principle from martial arts, I want to dive a bit deeper into this idea and later call this 'emptiness' as 'openness'.

Entropy. There's no system in the universe that spontaneously decreases its entropy. Everything in the world is heading towards the state of maximum entropy. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. This came to my mind when I was thinking about why people love processes, rules and algorithms so much that they still tend to create new ones when those existing don't work in particular situation. Rules decreases entropy. Does the need of rules come form natural temptation to resit the fate?

What Is Entropy

Entropy is a measure of uncertainty. The more deterministic system is the lower entropy it has. System with zero entropy is totally predictable. Since I have some image processing background, let me explain on images. The blue rectangle is a zero entropy image and you can easily guess a color of randomly selected pixel because the image follows single and simple rule: all pixels are blue. Pretty boring.

Zero Entropy Image
 
Maximum Entropy Image
The maximum entropy image is nothing but a noise. Pixels are not organized in any structure or pattern and you cannot predict anything about randomly selected pixel's color because there are no rules. Pretty chaotic.

Adaptability

That's the thing that Agile should bring, isn't it? Adaptability is about ability to react on changes. And that leads us to the relationship between entropy and adaptability. Look at the blue rectangle again - what is your chance to change the the pixel in the middle to be green and keep the rules at the same time? Maximum predictability comes together with minimum adaptability. If we want to be agile and increase our adaptability we have to allow higher entropy. 

Judo

Judo has one great advantage among other martial arts - it is a full contact sport. It will give you a set of useful techniques but no drill can prepare you for a real fight. The more techniques you know and the more experienced you are the less you have to plan for executing particular movement. You become more and more comfortable in an environment with higher and higher entropy. This is going to be your ultimate advantage in case you have to defend yourself against somebody who doesn't practice these skills - in an environment of high adrenalin, fast heart beats and unpredictable movements you're still able to make conscious decisions. You'll not be able to negotiate additional rules with your competitor and no rules with an attacker. "The best tactic is no tactic" sensei Mifune said. 

Predictability vs Adaptability

The art of agility is the same as the art of judo. The success comes from the ability and courage to stay in the agile zone of the following entropy-adaptability chart. Predictability as well as agility are for sure important for successful and sustainable business but they don't come together. It is actually a trade-off. 



In the agile zone we're maximising the adaptability thru the approach of 'openness'. We don't address  problems by creating rules and tactics because we don't want to loose the ultimate advantage of ability to react on unexpected things. At the same time we must not fall into the doom of chaos. 

Challenge

The ultimate challenge for every agile coach is to help their organisations to move the whole chart to the right along the entropy axis - to push the limits of the agile zone.




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