What is a Ratchet Effect?

When we consider the organization of any context, the configuration of the extended and embedded world of tools, architectural environments, institutional habits and practices, daily job requirements, the divisions of labor, reporting structures, and feedback loops produces a very powerful set of directly experienced action-intuitions and system-wide propensity that act like a “ratchet effect” to move a system far more in one direction than in others.

The concept of “ratchet effect” is critical to understanding how propensities for action (affordances) play out in concrete organizational contexts.

A ratchet is a type of gear that only moves in one direction– as the wheel turns, the arm moves to allow the forward movement but braces against the cogs of the wheel to stop it from going backwards:

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And a “ratchet effect” refers to how, in many organizational contexts, because of how they are configured, no matter the input, only certain outcomes can ever be developed. In short, the system almost always moves in one direction.

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What is a Ratchet Effect?

Perhaps the most oft cited example of the ratchet effect in the American context is one of political organization: if there is a two party system in which one party (the “left”) tends to be the party of “moderation” and centrist in their orientation such that they always marginalize their extremes – and the other party (the “right”) tends to push towards their core which is inherently right of center – then the system can only move to the right – such that “moderation” and the “center” are on the whole ever rightward moving propensities.

Now our interest is not in deconstructing the systemic failings of any political system – these are already well documented in great detail. Rather, we wish to bring attention to an ecosystemic quality of organizations: organizations and their practices are not simply path dependent (what has been done in the past is more likely to repeat in the future). They are also organized in ways that most often, no matter what the inputs, certain outcomes are far more likely than others. We could, in relation to creativity, term this type of ratchet effect: “stable negative enabling configurations” (or what our colleague in WorldMakers, Mark Stolow, terms “disabling constraints”).

Now it does not take radical and extreme configurational conditions to produce such ratchet effects: We see the ratchet effect of negative enabling conditions for creativity in organizations when (for example):

• New initiatives are introduced into a system where everyone is working at or over capacity
• There is little flexibility in job roles
• There is little or no horizontal sharing of information
• Creative initiatives are conceived of as ideational activities (pursued via boardrooms, sticky notes, and pitch decks).
• Teams cannot spontaneously form and mutate
• The boundaries between inside and outside an organization are strongly enforced
• When reports and metrics are short-term
• When most lines of communication (regarding feedback) move vertically

This is by no means intended to be a complete list. Rather, we present these examples to highlight the ubiquitous nature of these highly directed negative propensities (in regards to creative outcomes). It takes very little to have a ratchet effect move propensities in this manner.

When we ask in an organizational context, how should we prepare to engage with creative experiments? – If we do not begin by experimentally disclosing and coming to terms with ecosystemic ratchet-like effects of certain organizational configurations, creative possibilities will simply never materialize as anything more than a cultural aspiration.

See Also: Configurations, Propensities, Feedforward

Further Reading: Volume 220