Cyb3rSyn Labs Turns One!

Please join me in celebrating the first anniversary of Cyb3rSyn Labs. Reflecting on the past year fills me with a profound sense of gratitude.

I jumped into entrepreneurship last June after 23 years of being a corporate employee with a bet that mainstream management practices in Silicon Valley (and Tech. in general) is fundamentally flawed.

As I wrote in the About Page, my startup is a crusade against Taylorism, reductionism and our blind chasing of efficiency.

The dominant western management paradigm of seeking “solutions” instead of seeking understanding is broken. Most executives want to know what exactly they need to do (or copy via “best” practice)… They want something “actionable”.

So, they fall for the McKinseys of the world, who somehow have solutions for their problems... Or they fall one of the popular methods/frameworks - SAFe, Scrum, Spotify model, etc. - I usually call these prescriptions.

Traditional management consulting is outsourcing of thinking. I think the alternative approach is to change OUR model/worldview of the organization and that involves unlearning flawed ideas, learning new insights, thinking for yourself and experimenting with them for YOUR OWN unique context. Theory based practice - not “best” practice!

A small percentage of tech. practitioners, executives and entrepreneurs do realize that their map is not the territory. I aspire to help that small group to get better at making maps.

I would like to help accelerate the pivot from the current dominant mechanistic view of the organization to a socio-technical one.

These type of paradigm shifts typically take decades. But, I have this strange feeling that I’m actually too early and yet too late.

That’s because both are true… I’m early because this is not mainstream yet. The first principle that underpins DevOps is Systems Thinking. But, very few executives can explain what it is or how they apply it in practice. Most of us caught up in rituals without understanding the underlying principles.

At the same time, there have been so many other systems thinkers and cyberneticians that have thought and written about these ideas a long time ago. Also, many entrepreneurs are already successfully applying these ideas today (including some of my podcast guests, both current and future).

My learnings are from my own experiences - experimenting with these ideas as both a consultant and an employee. Looping between theory and practice - all at the intersection of software development and cybersecurity.

When I was a security consultant, I was intrigued with this phenomenon: I was working with some of the smartest security experts (at top global companies) individually. But, collectively somehow they were ineffective in achieving their security goals. The same vulnerabilities showed up, year after year!

Technically, the WHAT (to do to fix a particular vulnerability) was clear. But, the sustainable HOW was mysterious. Not that it didn’t involve technology, but the HOW was very much a social phenomenon. Different people use different words (Politics, turf war, emotions like fear, greed, etc.) to describe their understanding.

As part of my journey, I realized that there is tremendous value in spreading the insights from cybernetics (including second order cybernetics), systems thinking, complexity, etc. (underpinned by a coherent philosophy/worldview) and helping tech. practitioners/leaders apply them to their own unique context.

We can’t fix software security in isolation without fixing the underlying software development practices. And that in turn, depends on many things but a powerful factor is the underlying management systems in place. Changing those management systems can’t happen without the existing leaders changing their minds, unlearning and relearning new ways of working.

When I started out, consulting was my primary focus. This newsletter was just a side bet and a platform for my writings. But, your overwhelming support for the subscriptions and premium-tier content made me pivot. I was moved when I started seeing lifetime subscribers come from India - I thought I was setting the price for Silicon Valley.

This led me to spend more time on expanding my online offerings. The Cyb3rSyn Newsletter now has hundreds of subscribers and the top-tier subscription (Cyb3rSyn Community) alone now proudly boasts members from eight different countries, with a big percentage hailing from the USA.

At the end of the first year, here is my portfolio of bets:

The content library now has

📰 A year’s worth of multidisciplinary content as both free and premium-tier newsletter posts - My favorite is the Mistakes of Mainstream Management (MMM) Series.

📚 4 (out of 8) books published for the Cyb3rSyn Community

🎙️12 podcast episodes that challenge mainstream thinking (and more on the way after a short summer break)

✍🏾 Guest posts

📈 and growing

I hope to spend more time on the following during the rest of 2025:

I have no forecasts or predictions! I don’t know what’ll happen to AI, robotics or the economy in the next 1 year or 5 years… But, here are some of the long-term trends I’m hoping for:

🚀 Rise of Cybernetics and Systems Thinking in mainstream consciousness

🚀 Tremendous productivity improvements in the 21st century coming not just from innovations in technology, but also in psychology

🚀 Rise of Humanities (vs STEM)

🚀 Entrepreneurs and corporations pivoting from mechanistic to socio-technical paradigm

🚀 More small and human-centric businesses! More variety in our society!

I’d like to end today’s post with my notes of gratitude…

First up, thank you to all of my subscribers and customers! Your support, encouragement and feedback keeps me going!

Thank you from the bottom of my heart to my partners - Graham Berrisford, Harish Jose, Venkatesh Krishnamurthy, Mahmoud Rasmi and Daniel Schmidt. I can’t wait to see what emerges in the long-term from the interactions and cross-pollination of ideas in the community!

Finally, my thanks to all my well-wishers and podcast guests! Thank you for sharing your insights and journey!

When I announced my startup, I said, “As its founder, I hope to learn the most profound lessons about intervening in complex systems!”.

There’s lots to learn - I’m still learning…