Convergence/Divergence Model in Large System Interventions

Enabling a large system to undergo the necessary shift demands alternating between small and large group processes. The idea of combining such processes is to empower the organisation to meet its own internal and external challenges. While the organisation leverages the power of microcosms that exist within it, uniting these multiple perspectives and realities and creating a paradigm shift is imperative to the organisation's vision for the future and how the change is being facilitated real-time. Among other models like the Action Learning Model and DVF Formula that help guide organisations, the convergence/Divergence model encompasses the true idea of exploring and uniting the microcosms in the large system.

Large system changes are about not letting the value of the whole undermine the value of individual wisdom. The participation of the individuals/parts is integral to the divergence that is explored within small groups. Divergence occurs when differences in attitudes and behaviours resulting from organizational segmentation make way for specialized knowledge and mental processes. Convergence is realised when collaboration emerges among departments that are required to achieve unity of effort by the demands of the organisation’s need. The whole system expands its database to diverge into all Business units, functions, levels, personalities and further converges to combine the multiple realities produced as an outcome to this divergence. While large system interventions divulge into multitudes of possibilities, it also drives the system-wide decisions that are made for the whole. It brings together the critical mass of what people have been learning from their individual and small-group efforts into a big picture frame.

The wisdom to know when to diverge and when to shift from divergence to convergence is important because the moment of maximum differentiation is the point to start converging towards the whole. To diverge further beyond that point might be disastrous for the change and can potentially tear down the entire effort by disintegrating the individuals and parts from each other. The moment when integration occurs, differentiation immediately follows again, and the whole cycle repeats. The whole cycle of reiterating and learning in the loop in reinforced through this model.

In Large scale interventions, the Convergence/Divergence model is quintessential to how an organization can unleash and combine its wisdom by creating that productive differentiation which brings out the “whole” by productive integration.