The Cyb3rSyn Kaleidoscope - Episode 10

This edition of the Cyb3rSyn Kaleidoscope is all about human interactions… Some one-on-one conversations that triggered thoughts and some group conversations that demand reflection like the Tech Leaders Salon.

Most Silicon Valley practitioners & executives are STEM majors. They are trained analytical thinkers and use the approaches of science to solve their problems - reductionism, quantification, etc.

Let’s take a radical (Latin: root) look at the word “science” and trace its etymology:

The word science comes from the Latin “scientia”, which in turn has the Indo-European root “skei”, and refers to activities such as “separate”, “distinguish”, “take apart". From “skei” came words like “schism” or “schizophrenia”. Similarly, “shit” is what we want to separate ourselves from 🤣

A complimentary approach to this is to “unify”, “identify”, “put things together”. Those words have roots in the Greek word for one, “hen”, and out of that word comes “syn”, as in “symphony”, “synthesis”, “synergy” and also “system”.

In his latest book, Dr Mike C Jackson traces the dominance of the 'scientific method' back to Descartes and Newton, noting its incredible success in the physical world.

However, he argues that it fails when dealing with 'organized complexity' and human freedom.

If you want to understand why the scientific method is blind without Systems Thinking, checkout my podcast with him and grab a copy of his book:

Part 1: https://youtu.be/CUEhT7cf41I

Part 2: https://youtu.be/YnhUuwCFnYc

Blind chasing of:

What you get in the short term is NOT what you get in the long term - the arrogance and ignorance of mainstream management!

Most Silicon Valley executives have no clue how work actually gets done (or how value is created) in their own organizations. Here is an example of local efficiencies not leading to global effectiveness...

The Developer Productivity team will celebrate saving 5 minutes on the build time while the Information Security team launched a new "review" process that added an average of one week to every project's schedule.

Both organizations will promote and reward the leaders that rolled out the respective projects.

Please reply to the email and tell me things like don't happen in your organization...

In Dec 2024, I attended a terrific workshop with the above title delivered by Barry O'Reilly and hosted by Mahmoud Rasmi.

It was a breath of fresh air to see Barry take a theory-based approach to his practice including the underpinning philosophy, rather than just copying the linear/reductionistic mainstream approaches.

I then invited Barry to the Cyb3rSyn Labs Podcast in which we discussed further about Residuality.

Now, I'm super excited to have him join the Tech Leaders Salon - a year-long reading and discussion series for technology executives and practitioners.

We will be discussing his book, The Architect's Paradox on Saturday, Apr 25.

The session is free for all Cyb3rSyn Community-tier members.

Other subscribers and external attendees can join the series here (use code SPRING26 for 25% off): https://www.cyb3rsyn.com/products/the-tech-leaders-salon

Grab a copy of Barry's book here: https://leanpub.com/architectsparadox

Mahmoud Rasmi has been documenting his reflections and takeaways on the first three months of the Tech. Leader Salon.

Please give them a read and while you are there checkout other programs and services to get a healthy dose of philosophy in your life and work.

As usual, we schedule for 1 hour and end up going over by 30+ minutes - you do lose track of time in the middle of awesome conversations 😀

Here is the March video for premium-tier subscribers (Cyb3rSyn Community members can also access this and join the conversation there from the Event Recordings space).