Creating Conditions for Emergence: Lessons from Murakami
In his book Novelist as Vocation, Haruki Murakami writes about how daydreaming and imagination have always been a part of his way of being. He writes, "...a novelist is a person who steadily fills his head with a world of his own.” Murakami also shares how he didn’t like school growing up and worries now, as an adult, about the school system’s (sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit) goal of preparing students for tests as opposed to providing “...an environment in which each person’s individuality can thrive.” He says,
“This isn’t to say that I hope school education simply ‘enriches children’s imagination.’ ...When all is said and done, the ones who will enrich children’s imaginations are children themselves. ...If ‘Let’s enrich children’s imagination’ becomes a set goal, though, then things will go bad all over again.”
This captures a fundamental insight from complexity science: for complex challenges, where cause-and-effect relationships are only knowable retroactively and solutions emerge through interaction, setting rigid goals can backfire.
Education is a complex system that is shaped by countless interactions, influences, and emergent properties. Setting a goal like “increase students’ imagination by 10% by the end of the year” wouldn’t just oversimplify the issue; it would distort the actual work. It shifts focus from creating conditions where imagination can flourish to chasing an artificial metric.
The same principle can be applied to organizational settings. For example, organizational culture is an emergent property, not something that can be predictably influenced by a step-by-step “culture improvement checklist.” Setting a goal to “improve culture” often undermines the very thing it aims to enhance. Complexity science offers a different approach; one rooted in experimentation, learning, and adaptation:
Understand the present. What stories already exist in the organization that we want more of?
Conduct small experiments designed to generate more of those stories.
Respond to what we learn and return to step one.
In our example of fostering imagination in schools, we might:
Explore what’s already working. Ask students when they feel most creative. Talk to teachers. Observe classrooms. Perhaps students talk about a math teacher using detective stories to teach probability or an art teacher shares how doing a 5-minute drawing prompt at the beginning of class generates creative energy.
Design small experiments. Try prompts in other classes, like short writing prompts at the start of English class. Or, try drawing exercises in non-art subjects like physics or biology. Try using scenarios in other classes - like a Time Traveler adventure to explain the theory of relativity in physics class.
Pay attention. What shifts? What do students say and do? What patterns emerge?
Keep what works, discard what doesn’t. If an experiment sparks imagination, keep it. If it falls flat, stop and try something else. Stay flexible. Keep adapting.
Instead of setting predetermined goals, we create conditions for emergence. Small experiments, responsive adaptation, and curiosity drive real change, whether in schools, organizations, or beyond.
How might you apply these concepts in your work?
