Every living creature, every ecosystem, is a ‘whole system’. So are organisations. Whole systems have remarkable properties.

Think about a car/automobile. You can take it to bits. That reverses what happens when you assemble it. Something special happens in each case. When it's assembled there is a working car, but when you disassemble it you just have a pile of pieces. That is why systems thinking is so important – it recognises how the whole is greater than and different from its parts. 

But with an automobile, each of the parts does not contain the whole. In a hologram, the whole picture is in every single part of it. If you break the hologram image up, each part will have the whole image, but in a lower resolution. The fact that it's in a lower resolution makes the part inferior to the whole but there isn't the kind of difference that there is in the system of an automobile. Something similar happens with fractals.

But now think about what happens with a living organism, a fish or a human being. Each of them begins with a single cell and develops into a multicelled choose one. It's not like an automobile and it's not like a hologram. The whole is greater than its parts, but the whole is also in each of its parts and this whole is the identity of the organism. It appears in the very first cell and it defines the first cell and every single cell in the body is simply a modification adjusted to play a particular role. There is a fundamental difference between screw in a gearbox and a valve in the heart.

So far, so interesting. But what about organisations?

Well it turns out that organisations are very like organisms. All hearts have something in common just as all finance departments or marketing departments have something in common. But each heart is unique and belonging to its own unique and individual organism. It's the same with finance and marketing departments when they're working at their best.

A key part of the research that led to the development of Stellar is understanding this relationship between uniqueness and identity on the one side and performance. It turns out that the best way to understand the uniqueness of any organisation is to look at it when it at its best. Maybe not so surprising: it's true of any performer, whether in the field of sports, the arts, or enterprise.

Whole systems like this also have a property that is called emergence and belong to a class that is called complex systems. These have more fascinating properties, which had been brought together in the most simple and practical way in Stellar.

Integrating the best of the best new science thinking and business experience, no other management system provides such capability to manage the unique, complex, dynamic organisations that operate in today‘s global economic ecosystem. No other business practice technology so beautifully harmonises the soul of the organisation and its financial dynamic, or so elegantly couples its strategic thrust to customer insight.

On this site we will be sharing insights about Stellar and also results from our research. We hope you can contribute to it.