Harmonic business

In one of my recent blogs, Things I would like to understand, I raised a phenomenon that was taxing my brain.  What is happening is that users contact our ICT Service Desk with problems and we log things that have gone wrong as calls on the software.  These are then fixed and the calls closed.  I have been monitoring the rate at which calls have been opened and closed for many months now and while the overall rate has fallen (which is good) the rate at which we fix things is almost identical to the rate at which we log them.  The more calls we log the more we fix and the less we log etc.   It’s as if you can predict how many calls will be fixed when you know the number that has been logged. 

I was still somewhat perplexed by this but I realised that perhaps I had already given myself the answer in an earlier blog The role of physics in local government 3. We live in a chaotic system and any system which has more than two variables is chaotic and is impossible to predict any more accurately than with a degree of probability.   Our world is chaotic but one of the features of such systems is that patterns will emerge.  Waves crash against the shore in almost parallel lines and with metronomic frequency.  Clouds appear with similar shapes, storms are formed and whirlwinds appear. 

How can this be when any slight variance in any of the variables should lead to widely differing results whereas what we are seeing is an apparent predictability and consistency of results, what goes in determines what goes out?  Is this one of those chaotic patterns or is it something else?

Perhaps (and this is a long shot) every business or service has its own harmonic, a set of notes that reverberate throughout every time it is bowed or plucked or blown.  Perhaps the way that we have set up our business means that, no matter in which way we try to affect it, it is the same chord that is played over and over again.  Our fingers are stuck on the fret board and though we strum away as hard as we can it is the same notes that we hear and the same outcomes that we see.

What comes out isn’t just determined by what goes in but the myriad of processes that it has to go through in between.  The way the machine is set will define the output.  We can tinker with it, tweak it and oil it to ease its way but ultimately if we want a different outcome we need a different machine or a different set of processes.  If we want to hear a different set of notes then we are going to have to play a different chord.  We have to change the harmonic of the business.