garden/Nine Laws of God.md

The Nine Laws of God are a concept introduced by Kevin Kelly, a founder of Wired magazine, in his book *Out of Control*.[^1] They describe rules for how systems organize themselves and come to grow. Susan Komives adapted these rules for organizations:

+ **Distribute being:** The essence of the organization exists in all of its members.
+ **Control from the bottom up:** Empower members at all levels of the organization.
+ **Cultivate increasing returns:** Focus on what your organization does well and do it even better.
+ **Grow by chunking:** Organizations grow, not one piece at a time, but in bunches.
+ **Maximize the fringes:** Honor your creative members and their ideas, even if they're really "out there."
+ **Honor your errors:** It is only through trial and error that learning happens.
+ **Pursue no optima, have multiple goals:** There is no one "right" answer to complex problems, there are only many partial solutions.
+ **Seek persistent disequilibrium:** Disequilibrium brings energy into the organization.
+ **Change changes itself:** Change leads to more change, which changes the initial change.[^2]

[^1]: Kevin Kelly, _Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World_ (New York, New York: Basic Books, 2003).
[^2]: _Reproduced from_ Susan R Komives, Nance Lucas, and Timothy R McMahon, _Exploring Leadership: For College Students Who Want to Make a Difference_ (San Francisco, California: Jossey-Bass, 2009), 251-252.