In emergent behaviour the components of a system work together the create the behaviour of the whole system. The outcome of individual interactions creates an organisation's culture - not the total sum of their actions. This explains why you can have common purpose and random actions within the same system. The difference is the quality of the interactions which take place through conversations.

Emergent behaviours appear to have a life of their own with their own rules or laws, unobservable in the lower level components that created them. See Self-Organisation. It explains how and why the behaviour of a whole group may have coherence because of shared values and a shared vision, while the behaviour of individuals may appear to be random.

Simple rules can result in complex behaviour
For example, flocking happens when three simple rules are applied by each agent through their local interactions.

Rule 1: maintaining a minimum distance from other objects and other birds in the environment.
Rule 2: matching velocities with other birds in the vicinity
Rule 3: moving towards the perceived centre of mass of birds in its vicinity

Notice that there is no rule that says "form a flock". The rules are applied to their interactive behaviour - what it could see and do in its own local vicinity. So, their is no compliance to the will of a top-down source of energy or information, the behaviour emerges from the bottom-up. See Steve Trivett's Dynmic Change Model.

When two people exchange ideas, they can generate new thoughts that were not predictable in advance, yet have formed through the interaction and combination of their thoughts. Creativity can therefore be seen as an emergent phenomenon. When seemingly unwilling clients suddenly find the will to change their behaviour after conversations with a coach, this resulting unpredictable behaviour can be viewed as emergent.

Facilitating Emergence One of the key lessons for leaders and coaches from complex systems theory is how to facilitate emergence so that the overall effect of individual actions is a coherent whole - just like flowers blooming in a bouquet.

The term was first used by the nineteenth century philosopher G.H.Lewes and came into greater currency in the scientific and philosophical movement known as Emergent Evolutionism in the 1920’s and 1930’s. The work connected the Santa Fe Institute and similar facilities in investigating emergent phenomena. Emergent phenomena happen ubiquitously yet their significance can be downplayed by control mechanisms and machine thinking found in traditional sciences.

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