The Cyb3rSyn Kaleidoscope - Episode 13

This edition of the Cyb3rSyn Kaleidoscope brings short posts and a podcast on a variety of topics.

It was such a delight to sit down and have a conversation with John Willis - meandering through various topics but centered on Second Order Cybernetics. This is my third time appearing on his show and I learn a lot every time I have a chat with him. Check out the episode here:

Eli Goldratt was the originator of the Theory of Constraints and the author of several bestselling books, including 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐆𝐨𝐚𝐥 — one of three books Jeff Bezos had all his top execs at Amazon read.

Here's the thing: The Goal isn't a traditional non-fiction business book — it's actually a novel.

Goldratt knew his audience well. Many managers and leaders don't read business books. But if they read anything, it is novels.

So that's exactly what he wrote: business lessons disguised as fiction.

Goldratt was onto something. Most executives don't read much — and many aren't even aware of how much they need to unlearn and relearn about leadership. There's no substitute for curiosity and epistemic humility.

That reminds me of something the systems thinker Russell Ackoff once said:

If you belong to the minority of leaders who read, what is your favorite business book?

If you can’t loop in the human element, your strategy is doomed to fail! Don’t ignore the magic by falling for logic!

In his recent post, Mahmoud Rasmi reflects on last month’s Tech Leaders Salon discussion of Scott Hartley's The Fuzzy and the Techie, pushing past the familiar call to bridge STEM and the liberal arts.

He argues that the real obstacle isn't which degree someone holds but a deeper ‘physics envy’ — a cultural bias toward quantifying everything, from hiring decisions to academic promotions, that has crept in since the scientific revolution.

Drawing on Plato's vision of a holistic education and Pope Leo's recent encyclical on AI and knowledge, the piece makes the case for building a genuinely human-centered future in the age of AI.

Checkout his full post here.

Here is the full video of the TLS group discussion for our premium-tier members…