The concept of Co-evolution is simple to understand yet profound to any organization. With co-evolution, elements in a system can change based on their interactions with one another and with the environment. Additionally, patterns of behavior can change over time (MIT – http://web.mit.edu/esd.83/www/notebook/Complex%20Adaptive%20Systems.pdf).
In organization element of the system are people and groups they are forming. Therefore people and team and their behavior can change over time. Pretty simple and straightforward so far. In any hierarchical organization, teams are engineered by managers. Engineered structure expects to gain managers control and influence on the team and individuals in the group. Side by side with the engineered teams there is another set of naturally created teams, the non-formal structure. This informal structure has a more significant influence on the organization than the formal structure as this structure is coevolving all the time with substantial yet uncontrolled influence on the formal structure.
Deterministic approach ignores the informal structure and it unforeseen coevolving nature. Non-Deterministic approaches take away the engineered structure and leverage the natural structure as the only formal structure. Non-deterministic approaches enabling the idea of natural coevolving by requiring each group to be self-organized. Once you have one coevolving system, you can use coevolving to introduce changes. You won’t be able to predict how a change will turn out after co-evolution, but you simplified your organization by focusing on the system and co-evolution that
