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complexity of functioning is also reinforced by comparisons between human and animal brains. For example, elephants have much larger brains than humans, but they are by no means so richly joined. An interesting aspect of his connectivity rests in the fact it creates a much greater degree of cross-connection and exchange than may be needed at any given time. However, this redundancy is crucial for creating holographic potential and for ensuring flexibility in operation. The redundancy allows the brain to operate in a probabilistic rather than a deterministic manner, allows considerable room to accommodate random error, and creates an excess capacity that allows new activities and functions to develop. In other words, it facilitates the process of self-organization whereby internal structure and functioning can evolve along with changing circumstances. This self-organizing capacity has been demonstrated in numerous ways. For example, when brain damage occurs it is not uncommon for different areas of the brain to take on the functions which have been impaired. The brain has this amazing capacity to organize and reorganize itself to deal with the contingencies it faces. Experiments have shown that the more we engage in a specific activity, e.g. playing tennis, typing, or reading, the more the brain adjusts itself to facilitate the kind of functioning required. The simple idea that “practice makes perfect” is underwritten by a complex capacity for self-organization whereby the brain forges or revises patterns of neuronic activity. For example, experiments where monkeys were trained to use a finger to press a lever thousands of times a day showed that the areas of the brain controlling that finger increased in size and changed in organization. Our awareness leads us to see the brain as a system which, in no small measure, has played an important role in designing itself in the course of evolution. Now, to our basic problem: how can we use these insights about the holographic character of the brain to create organizations that are able to learn and self-organize in the manner of a brain? Our discussion provides many clues. For example, it suggests that by building patterns of rich connectivity between similar parts we can create systems that are both specialized and generalized, and that are capable of reorganizing internal structure and function as they learn to meet the challenges posed by new demands. The holographic principle has a great deal running in its favor. For the capacities of the brain are already distributed throughout modern organizations. All the employees have brains, and computers are in essence simulated brains. In this sense, important aspects of the whole are already embodied in the parts. The development of more holographic, brainlike forms of organization thus rests in the realization of a potential that already exists. III. Facilitating Self-Organization: Principles of Holographic Design Get the whole into the parts. Create connectivity and redundancy. Create simultaneous specialization and generalization. Create a capacity to self-organize. These are things that have to be done to create holographic organization. Our task now is to examine the means. Much can be learned from the way the brain is organized, and much can be learned from cybernetic principles. Four interacting principles (see chart) The principle of redundant function shows a means of building wholes into parts by creating redundancy, connectivity, and simultaneous specialization and generalization. The principle of requisite variety helps to provide practical guidelines for the design of part-whole relations by showing exactly how much of the whole needs to be built into a given part. And the principles of learning to learn and minimum critical specification show how we can enhance capacities for self-organization. Any system with an ability to self-organize must have an element of redundancy: a form of excess capacity which, appropriately designed and used, creates room for maneuver. Without such redundancy, a system has no real capacity to reflect on and question how it is operating, and hence to change its mode of functioning in constructive ways. In other words, it has no capacity for intelligence in the sense of being able to adjust action to take account of changes in the nature of relationships within which the action is set. Australian systems theorist Fred Emery has suggested that there are two methods for designing redundancy into a system. The first involves redundancy of parts, where each part is precisely designed to perform a specific function, special parts being added to the system for the purpose of control and to back up or replace operating parts whenever they fail. This design principle is mechanistic and the result is typically a hierarchical structure where one part is responsible for controlling another. If we look around the organizational world it is easy to see evidence of this kind of redundancy: the supervisor who spends his or her time ensuring that others are working; the maintenance team that “stands by” waiting for problems to arise; the employee idly passing time because there’s no work to do; employee X passing a request to colleague Y “because that’s his job not mine”; the quality controller searching for defects which, under a different system, could much more easily be rectified by those who produced them. Under this design principle the capacity for redesign and change of the system rests with the parts assigned this function; for example, production engineers, planning teams, and systems designers. Such systems are organized and can be reorganized, but they have little capacity to self-organize. The se

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