on symmathesy
The Overlap #31
The Overlap is back at it, baby.
If this is your first time here, hello. The Overlap is a newsletter somewhere between product development and organizational development. It comes out every other Wednesday.
This one’s on symmathesy, coherence, and autonomy. A buzzword salad. Keep reading.
Do you know the feeling of finding one word that describes an experience you’ve felt across multiple contexts?
I know you do.
I felt this way when I found out about the word symmathesy (sym-math-a-see):
Symmathesy: An entity composed by contextual mutual learning through interaction.
I interpret symmathesy as learning together.
I first found out about symmathesy through this essay by Nora Bateson.
Nora needed a new word for the word “system.” One that refers to systems as living, interdependent, and evolving (rather than mechanical, arranged, and engineered).
The existing word, “system”, while useful for discussion of many kinds of systems, does not communicate contextual fields of simultaneous learning as is necessary for life. The inclusion of mutual learning in the terminology is specifically meant to preclude the models of engineering and mechanism that are implicit in much systems theorizing today.
I see symmathesy in areas of my own life:
Hydraulics, XXIX, and Sanctuary have been constantly learning together since becoming one org in January 2020.
Improving as a rock climber involves learning with other people. You’re working on difficult problems with others. You’re sharing and receiving feedback all the time. You protect others from dangerous falls, and trust others to do the same for you.
The freestyle dance community is all about learning with other people. Classes. Workshops. Freestyle circles (cyphers).
Symmathesy in real life
Anyone who reads this newsletter is familiar with the metaphor of organizations as living systems. From listen, inquire, and take a next step:
Organizations aren’t machines we can control. Organizations are gardens that we tend to, care for, and bring into being.
What’s beautiful about symmathesy is that we can see it beyond organizations.
We can look to nature. Forests, oceans, and gardens are entities that contain mutual learning through relationships. Your snake plant depends on appropriate soil, water, and sun.
But what would it look like to conceive symmathesy in our cities? Our economy? Our politics? Our education?
This is where it gets fascinating. Nora writes:
In this sense our institutions function very much like a forest or an ocean. The infrastructures of our institutions reinforce and balance each other, and our socio-economic system develops in patterns that fit the characteristics of any ecology. Are we not, in that case, contributing perfectly to an ecology that we live within?
Hell, even going through a global pandemic together (as one city, state, country, world) is a form of symmathesy. We’re all observing, orienting, and acting in a situation that no one has been through.
Does individual autonomy miss the point?
Although I love the idea of symmathesy, I’ll be honest. I’m struggling with this point Nora makes:
If we perceive that the functions of living ecologies are the effect of processes taking place between parts and wholes we become prone to assigning agency to “parts”. We divide the ecology in order to label it and specify the “functions” of the processes that give the ecology life. The drawback with this approach is that the focus centers on the bits and their ‘roles’ while losing sight of the contextual integrity.
It’s not that I’m not struggling with her point philosophically. I’ve written before that the downside of a highly autonomous organization is low cohesion. Organizations should prioritize cohesion before autonomy.
I’m more struggling with her point personally.
With teams I’ve worked with, I’ve always practiced fostering autonomy at the individual (parts) level.
I encourage others to radiate their intent rather than ask for permission.
I often say “80% of decisions in a highly autonomous company should be made with individual decision rights.”
I’m not sure if Nora is arguing that I don’t do this. I think what they’re saying is that it’s okay to clarify our individual autonomy, as long as we’re clear on a) our team’s purpose and b) our organization’s purpose. After all, symmathesy is fractal:
This process of interaction and mutual learning takes place in living entities at larger or smaller scales of symmathesy.
Mutual learning is simultaneously occurring at larger (team, team of teams, organization) and smaller (individual) scales. So it’s okay to design for individual autonomy so long that it’s designed toward a broader purpose.
What we don’t want to do is lose sight of our shared purpose and context. Otherwise, no one will be clear on:
what other teams are working on
which teams own what parts of the system
the organization’s strategy
This is why I suggest that organizations focus on coherence before autonomy. It’s way easier to focus on autonomy, so let’s counteract that tendency.
Symmathesy in your context
I’m beginning to scratch the surface of what symmathesy could mean for my work. What would symmathesy look like with my team? My organization?
Of course, there are plenty of practices to help your team engage in disciplined, shared learning. You know about retrospectives, co-editing roles, internal experiments.
But I encourage you to reflect on the same questions I am.
What has symmathesy looked like for your team/client/organization?
What would you want it to look like?
Let me know as an email reply or in the comments. I’ll read and respond.
What I’m Reading
Sociotechnical theorists argue that we should pay more attention to creating autonomy at the team level rather than the individual level. This is what they call responsible autonomy. This is similar to Nora’s point above about how focusing on autonomy at the individual level isn’t helpful — we’ll lose sight of our contextual integrity.
APIs for the rest of us. A nice explainer on APIs for non-developers.
Agile as trauma. “Many of the substantive ideas associated with Agile predate it by between about 20 and 30 years. This is not an accusation of plagiarism; rather it is an assertion that there are idiosyncrasies of software development that are invariant even as technique and technology improves...”
See you in two weeks,
–tim