We have stated that there is a system-fractal behind market and system dynamics which if tapped into will place a higher market shaping power in the hands of an organization. We further stated that entering into relationship with this system-fractal requires an understanding of and entry into one’s own personal fractal. In this article we look at what it means to enter into relationship with one’s own fractal, and how and why this affects the larger system-fractal.

Perceiving the System-Fractal
The system-fractal, let us recall, is essentially a dynamic pattern that repeats itself on different scale. This dynamic pattern is pervasive in practical spheres such as markets, and repeats itself at various levels ranging from the individual to the team to the organization to the market itself. To tap into it is to leverage action, because more can then be done with less. This, I will argue, is the decisive key to moving ahead of any competition, because with the same resources it now allows the protagonist to accomplish much, and sometimes radically, more.

To begin to perceive the system-fractal implies first recognizing the ‘physical’, the ‘vital’ and the ‘mental’ dynamics and elements that comprise a market. This recognition will only come with practice, often working on the part of the system-fractal that we have easiest access to - ourselves. But then, in order to enter into the system-fractal we also have to begin to recognize the currents that connect the seemingly diverse elements or dynamics together. This is the art, because being able to see the lines that define the direction that a market or system may be moving in, implies connecting the ‘dots’ the right way to gain insight into the system behind the elements. And the ‘right’ way implies connecting the dots such that the implicit movement, or lack thereof, from a physical world-view to a vital world-view to a mental world-view more vividly comes into focus.

The easy thing to do is to not connect the dots together, but simply to replicate what is being done out there. The easy think to do is to tread the paths that have been defined by the often random jostling of the myriad physical, vital, and mental dynamics that exist out there – whether of price drops, acquisitions, or senseless product expansions, amongst others. The difficult thing to do is to see how these relate to one another, and what implicit story is trying to emerge. This is what creates advantage. This is what transforms organizations. This is what changes markets. This is the stuff of progress that in the fractal-dynamics view drives all systems.

Powering the Engine
We can imagine the physical, vital, and mental dynamics as existing like an all-encompassing sea around us. The currents from the sea move us where they want to. We are like floating vessels without an engine that move around in established physical or vital or mental currents. So long as where these currents are taking us is fine with us, there is no reason to resist. It is only when the currents seem to be taking us in endless circles around an obscure center, whereby for example we might continue producing what we have always produced even though customers are beginning to buy something else, or when these currents seem to be leading us down self-destructive whirlpools, whereby for example our only action seems to be a constant cycle of price-cutting, that we may feel compelled to alter our trajectories.

But to alter the trajectory is not simple. It implies allowing another current from within ourselves to not only become active, but to become stronger than the currents that swirl all around us. For this to happen, we have to first disconnect from the existing currents around us. We have to realize that the continual action, whether of price-cutting or of other unproductive production, is not who we are. The disconnection allows objectivity, and allows the ‘artistic’ perception to come into being, from which our own and the system-fractal can be rightly perceived and entered into relationship with. For the system-fractal is about moving from a status quo of an established ‘location’ or set of dynamics to another location or set of dynamics that allows the implicit ‘story’, the ‘meaning behind the meanings’, the ‘insight’ by which the playing-field is altered, to emerge more fully. We are talking here, about individuality, about true differentiation.

The differentiation is not the result of aiming in the dark and shooting out in many different directions, hoping that something will hit some target. The differentiation is what powers the engine. It is the result of moving behind the established and often sub-optimal ways of doing things, whether of conducting business, or of running organizations, to allow that which is unique, that which is creative, to come out, because that is what the movement of both the individual and the system-fractal demands. It is this that spells progress and it is this that seeks to express itself through the play of each of the levels in a system.

Achieving System Focus
When this power becomes active it makes of casual circumstances and events a pathway toward an Everest. And when the peak has been scaled, the view from the top reveals the birth of a new organization, or market, or system, with entirely new horizons defining common goals.

To say Yes in the face of No, to say No to the common ‘yes’, to feel that the common physical, vital, and mental dynamics are but the stuff and draping of the present that have to be rearranged to allow the vision in the heart to materialize, is what entry into one’s own fractal is about. It is a place where possibility resides, a place where one steps away from the trees to see the forest, and a place where virgin paths to new goals can be more easily envisioned.

When one has the wherewithal to recognize the physical movements, whether of inertia, doubt, stability, strength, the vital movements, whether of energy, risk, adventure, mis-adventure, egoism, assertiveness, the mental movements, whether of narrowness, myopia, holism, synthesis, in oneself, then one is perhaps in a position to begin to surf the fractal currents.

For it is only so that one can consciously choose which elements and dynamics even in spheres larger than oneself, which belong to the other levels of the system-fractal, should be cast aside or kept in the rearrangement of a future more in tune with what the witness at the center of the fractal demands.
The power of the fractal-view lies in being able to change the shape of the larger system through small changes to the fractal-pattern at the local level. To leverage the mathematics of the system-fractal means to isolate the base-denominator, the pattern that captures the essence of each subsequent level, and alter it so that the whole is changed through decisive changes of that base-denominator part.

For instance, rather than seeing through a lens characterized by a physical-element of doubt, if one begins to see through a lens characterized by a vital-element of adventure, or even through a lens characterized by a mental-element of synthesis, means to alter the interpretation of circumstance, and the consequent play of possibilities. Market dynamics are perceived anew.

The art itself implies the implicit intention to move in such a manner that is consistent with the fractal-pattern – a movement from a physical world-view to a vital world-view to a mental world-view.

In such movement the narrow is made broad, disconnected efforts are often connected, and meaning is given to isolated attempts. The System, hence, behind the apparent madness more easily comes into focus, and new, bold and more productive