The phrase refers to the idea that a butterfly's wings might create tiny changes in the atmosphere that ultimately cause a tornado to appear (or prevent a tornado from appearing). The flapping wing represents a small change in the initial condition of the system, which causes a chain of events leading to large-scale phenomena. Had the butterfly not flapped its wings, the trajectory of the system might have been vastly different.

Another example is if a ball is placed at the crest of a hill it might roll into any of several valleys depending on slight differences in initial position.
(From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia).

"Does the flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?" meteorologist Edward Lorenz once asked in postulating the "butterfly effect," the idea that the flapping of fragile wings could start a chain reaction in the atmosphere. In today's world of the Internet the question might be rephrased: Can a single e-mail from Brazil set off a torrent of action in Texas?

The Butterfly Effect in the Service and Support Center

What if you used this theory in your help desk or contact centers to effect change?  A program could be developed called "Influencing Service Using The Butterfly Effect" or something along those lines. An effect that you want to spread across your company, agency or customer base could be started in your help desk or contact center. When the desired effect is realized, something with a butterfly on it could represent the recognition award.

A butterfly represents transformation: Our path of transformation can be likened to that of the butterfly's. Generally, when we embrace transformation, we only want to think of the end result. We don't want to think about the work that goes into it, or the sacrifices we'll have to make to be able to soar. We can think about how to transform ourselves, our peers, our business and so much more. The Butterfly Effect is one of the ways you can spread the power of transformation with others.

Ideas for Applying The Butterfly Effect

• Start a corporate focus group to influence a culture change and use the Butterfly Effect to get people involved in the effort.
• Bring your team together and identify an innovative way to improve service, reduce calls, etc. and use the Butterfly Effective to drive transformation through the group and neighboring business units.
• Use the BE approach to increase the number of prospects in your database. (Think of applications like LinkedIn, Jigsaw, etc.)
• Manage down stress by managing your own stress. Propose ideas how individuals can identify stress in the group or an individual and how they can suppress the impact of it on others. If stress is permitted to foster, the Butterfly Effect could be that others in the group feel the negative stress and they transfer the attitudes and tension to the customers. This is a reverse use of the BE that results in a negative outcome.
• Give everyone you pass in the hall a smile and answer every call with a smile on your face. The effect should be a smile passed along will pass along other smiles and many people will have a much better day. This ripple effect can be initiated by one individual and change the day of hundreds.

It looks like I wasn't the only one thinking along these lines of effecting change. When the words "butterfly effect in business" and "butterfly effect in service" were Googled, I came up with all sorts of articles. Here are a few to get you started.

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