"When a system is in turbulence, the turbulence is not just out there in the environment, but is a part of the organization or organism that you are looking at"
About this Quote
Turbulence, Kevin Kelly suggests, is less a weather report than a medical scan. The line flips a comforting assumption: that disorder is an external force battering an otherwise stable institution. Kelly’s intent is diagnostic. If you’re staring at chaos, you’re not merely witnessing a hostile environment; you’re observing a system whose internal feedback loops have started to oscillate, amplify, and misfire. The “out there” vs. “in here” distinction is the lie we tell ourselves to protect the mythology of control.
As an editor and systems-thinker, Kelly is also quietly scolding a familiar managerial reflex: treat volatility like a PR crisis, a market anomaly, a “black swan,” anything that lets leadership remain unchanged. His framing makes turbulence a property of the whole, not a villain with a mailing address. That’s why the phrase “part of the organization or organism” matters; it drags corporations down from the realm of neat, top-down machines into the messier world of living systems, where stress reveals hidden dependencies and weak joints. Turbulence becomes information.
The subtext is accountability without moralism. It’s not “you caused this,” it’s “you’re participating in this.” That matters culturally right now because institutions love to narrate their problems as external: polarization, algorithms, supply chains, “uncertain times.” Kelly’s line cuts through that alibi. If the organization is shaking, it’s also resonating. The task isn’t to curse the storm; it’s to understand why your structure turns wind into collapse.
As an editor and systems-thinker, Kelly is also quietly scolding a familiar managerial reflex: treat volatility like a PR crisis, a market anomaly, a “black swan,” anything that lets leadership remain unchanged. His framing makes turbulence a property of the whole, not a villain with a mailing address. That’s why the phrase “part of the organization or organism” matters; it drags corporations down from the realm of neat, top-down machines into the messier world of living systems, where stress reveals hidden dependencies and weak joints. Turbulence becomes information.
The subtext is accountability without moralism. It’s not “you caused this,” it’s “you’re participating in this.” That matters culturally right now because institutions love to narrate their problems as external: polarization, algorithms, supply chains, “uncertain times.” Kelly’s line cuts through that alibi. If the organization is shaking, it’s also resonating. The task isn’t to curse the storm; it’s to understand why your structure turns wind into collapse.
Quote Details
| Topic | Deep |
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