You will have often
seen the two dimensional growth curve. It is a cycle of increase and decline that
happens to all complex biological systems as part of their life path. Understanding
this cycle and how it applies to organizations and social systems was a large
leap forward in the management of businesses and growing communities. There are
still many things to learn. 
We now understand that organizations have natural stages in their development
and without conscious management will reach natural limits in their attempt to
sustain growth. The cycles of growth and decline happen with great regularity.
We will try very hard not to see this unconscious and apparently inevitable curve.
It will happen to our own organizations without us needing to even think about
it. We often hope to sustain the unsustainable. Becoming consicous of this
was the first step in the management of growth. We now know how to manage the
stages in this 2D growth cycle. But is that enough ... ? Every now and
then there is a breakthrough in the way we think about an established field. These
breakthroughs usually occur when we incorporate all that has been understood before
- and extend from this to a new level. When organizations seek sustainable
growth they become ready to make a leap, from two dimensional management in
a flatland of separate dynamics attempting to sustain growth, to a more comprehensive
and dynamic 3D picture of sustainable growth. It is a much more
interesting world. 
This begins at the point where organizations escape the Sigmoid Curve of unconscious
growth and enter a new domain of thinking . Making the jump to this new domain
involves four thresholds, which we find very useful in explaining this
process. Read more ... | 
