We live in a world of volatile and rapid change, complex, uncertain and ambiguous. These extreme conditions require high agility and the ability to absorb shocks.
The pressure is mounting to do more in less time. Job security is uncertain. The wind of change keeps changes direction and this is quite stressing.
What leaders can do? The normal response is for people, in general, to choke and get panic under pressure. This question reminded me of materials and crystal lattices that oddly enough expand and not shrink under extreme pressures. They change their bonding and acquire unique emerging properties. Just like ice expands out its structure.
Recent research revealed several materials that expand on pressure. They are just like road networks in that the optimal flow through a network is determined by its structure. However, adding edges to the network can move the system away from this optimal state, while removing edges can move it closer.
The same network concept is extensible to some newly discovered materials such as a new translucent crystal, made from gold, zinc, and cyanide does something very few materials do: Instead of shrinking under pressure, it expands. This crystal expands under pressure because of a helical, spring-like arrangement of gold atoms. As the springs compress, the crystal grows longer, increasing its length by as much as 10 percent.
Amazing is the ordinary table salt that we consume almost daily. Research found this salt behaves unpredictably under extreme conditions by forming new structures that even make this salt act as an insulator instead of a conductor. The resulting structures are responsible for this behavior.
The behavior of materials under extreme conditions reminds me of elastic springs help tiny animals stay fast and strong. New work is finding what size critters must be to benefit from the springs.
The above are few examples of new behaviors that result from forming new spring-like structures under extreme pressures. This leads me to ask if great leaders of today should be able to develop new thinking structures and models to act like springs and expand under pressure rather than shrink.
The thoughts of these leaders are like the road networks that upon removal of some old thinking expand on their thinking and produce.
Please share your views.
As the needs increase the speed of time and it’s effects increase too , which gives us thought of expansive trend of needs and compression of elastic time – it’s just a thought that I’m arguing within to extract the value of elastic spa e of productivity , resulting into new properties of the Structural Changes wich if worked upon OTP Conditions , which would bring New Results of the process of Crystalization . Best example is Quartz Crystals ,Diamonds , helical structure of Gold . Change as per Time ( Cosmic or Physical) ,Space and Environment ( Physical or Psychological) with useful longlasting aesthetics does require modelling of thoughts with continuity of valuable Evolutionary intelligence, Logical Structures and Energy Levels arranged with binding forces of Goodness to expand with plastic medium of brain energy . Modelling each process in highly congested time does require a balanced platform to watch, control or uncontrollable the processes of change which is a Stable Synergistic New Platform where thinking and implementing the thought process would be easily carried out without rise of temperature or pressure ….
Somehow your brilliant comment Vishwas Asolkar reminds me of sportsmen immersing their bodies in liquified nitrogen under pressure to reach -80 centigrade. How could they do this? What structural changes happen in their minds?
Your idea of compressing elastic time reminded me of this.
The performance of a network depends on the structural nature of relations existing.
Research shows that materials which exhibit novel properties under extreme conditions do so because they change the bonding of their atoms resulting in spring-like structures as the full post cited.
Humans too, they need restructuring of their brains so that new ideas may emerge.
If we can achieve this at normal conditions that shall be phenomenal.