The Synthetic Network

Why the difference between Institutional Knowledge and Synthetic Knowledge matters.

There are two kinds of knowledge in the world today.

There is institutional knowledge. This is the understanding of how a particular business or industry works. I learned the power of institutional knowledge when I worked with a team to integrate the manufacturing process of a hosiery mill. Seventeen steps from the material entering the system to when the socks were shipped to customers. The mill had operated the same way for sixty years. Their business was failing. The founder, the president, and the sales director could not see that the problem had many expressions. The operations head did see it and called for change. But they didn’t change enough because they thought that they knew what they needed to know. It worked in the past. Why shouldn’t work in the future? Eighteen months after we finished our project, the company closed.

Institutional knowledge is practical and limited.

I was recently talking to a young engineer who works in a global manufacturing company. I asked him whether he knew about two different approaches to organizing companies.

One is Eliyahu Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints model.

The other is called Rendanheyi.

He had never heard of either. I don’t fault him for not knowing. This is the way institutional knowledge functions. It is a closed system of understanding. When change is necessary, plans may be drawn up, but implementation is often lacking.

There is synthetic knowledge. This other kind is open and is a synthetization of a wide range of categories of knowledge. It is open and available online. It comes from many different sources so it requires all the various strands of knowledge to be woven together into a coherent, synthetic form.

This is the goal of my learning. I want to synthesize my access to a wide range of people and perspectives to help me better engage and communicate with people. I don’t want to know just enough to ask intelligent questions. Instead, I want to be able to link together the knowledge of different fields in order to have a more holistic understanding of a particular context.

If I was introduced to the managers and executives of the company of my young engineer friend, I’d ask a lot of questions to get a deep understanding of the real difficulties that they are having within today’s business climate. The other day we talked about supply chain issues and plans the company had for regionalizing its access to materials. It was clear that it is one thing to know that you have a problem and understand how that problem affects your company. It is a very different thing to know how to change. If we were to use Goldratt’s model, we’d ask three questions.

What to Change?

To What To Change?

How To Cause The Change?

A synthetic approach to knowledge means that we are doing more than identifying problems and suggesting the potential solution. Instead, and this is the core purpose of my model, Circle of Impact, we want to know what the ultimate impact of the change should be. This perspective requires that we see far beyond the boundaries of the institutions. My experience is that this is rarely done. Institutions are trapped in the belief that they know just enough to solve their problems, and not too much that it will cause chaos from having too many possibilities on the table.

What is Synthesis?

Synthesis is a function of nature. Photosynthesis helps plants turn sunlight into nourishment. Our bodies synthesize air, water, and food into nourishment to sustain life and immunize against disease. Reading broadly, watching podcasts of people in fields of knowledge that have no direct relevance to your field of work, and writing down your own thoughts and reflections are steps in the direction toward synthesis. But it is not synthesis.

This is a kind of synthesis that is most widely known as the Hegelian model of thesis/antithesis/synthesis. I find that form of synthesizing archaic and narrow. In its basic form, it sees the world through a binary lens. You can see how this form of thinking exists at the center of politics. There are good guys and bad guys. One has to be destroyed to create a synthesis. This isn’t Hegel’s intention, but it is how we operate in the world.

Today, knowledge is growing exponentially, and synthesizing valuable principles for living requires intention and discipline. It requires more than what I call “book knowledge”. We need people knowledge to really understand the world we are in.

Scientific Synthesis

I’ve always been fascinated with scientists. I never saw myself becoming one. But how they learn is interesting to me. In my short book, Solving Problems: A Guide To Being A Person of Impact, I write about those who early in the last century were awarded the Nobel Prize in physics, chemistry, and mathematics. I write:

This picture is of twenty-nine scientists who attended the Solvay Conference on Physics in Brussels, Belgium in 1927. Seventeen of them would become Nobel prize winners. Think of them as the Physics Hall of Fame of the 20th century. In their circle is Albert Einstein (first row, fifth from the left), Madame Marie Curie (the only woman participant), Niels Bohr (second row, farthest to the right), Max Planck (first row, seated at Madame Curie’s right), Paul Dirac (second row, fifth from the left), Werner Heisenberg (third row, ninth from the left), and Erwin Shrödinger (third row, sixth from the left). There are links to their bios (in their names above) ... Every one of these scientists were problem solvers. They are the scientists who developed quantum theory that open to us the nuclear age.

We know them today because of the solutions that they brought to their fields of science. They didn’t begin as the great men and women of science. They were people working in obscurity. Through their research, they became aware of the problems of knowledge and science. They labored hard. Many with insufficient support until their discoveries brought them recognition and honor.

Einstein wrote his three most important papers on the physics of relativity while working at the Swiss patent office. Madame Curie, a Polish émigré to France, earliest laboratory was nothing more than a small shack. She also had to overcome cultural obstacles to become the first woman to receive a Nobel prize. Look again at that picture. Seventeen Nobel prize winners.

Marie Curie is the only one awarded twice, and for two different fields, physics and chemistry. None of them started out as Nobel laureates. They were like all of us. People seeking answers to questions that we have. They are our predecessors in problem-solving.

Just a few years after the conference where this picture was taken, Kurt Gödel, brought his perspective on knowledge to the scientific world. From Solving Problems.

In the early 1930s, Austrian physicist Kurt Gödel discovered a principle in the field of mathematics that he called the “incompleteness” theory. He found that certain mathematical problems could be solved, but not consistently. His discovery shook the world of mathematics because scientists believed that consistency was “the sole criterion” determining the proof of a mathematical theory.

From my amateur perspective, this tells me that the world before us is always open to new ways of understanding. This idea is one of the reasons that I speak about transition so much. Life is not static. No answer to a problem is ever the final answer. There is always some new information emerging to cause us to rethink or respond to what we have seen before. It is why my Circle of Impact model incorporates questioning into the process.

When I refer to synthesizing what we learn, I am really pointing to the reality that the world is constantly open to us, waiting for our inquiries, our discoveries, and the advancement of knowledge. We don’t do this by ourselves.

The Power of Networked Knowledge

In our institutional environment today, what you know matters less than who you know. You may not know about the Theory of Constraints or Rendanheyi. But you probably know someone who does. You may be an expert in your field, but the range of fields that impact your work is broad and extensive. This points to the reality that expertise doesn’t carry the same value as it once did. Knowing where to go to find the information needed to make effective decisions is totally dependent on first, acknowledging that you don’t know what you need to know, and second, having a robust network of relationships of people you can call upon for knowledge, insight, and skills.

A decade ago I attended a presentation by Manuel Lima about The Power of Networks. Already I had been engaged for a decade in the science of networks through the thought of Ronald Burt and Albert-László Barabási. Lima provided a perspective on how knowledge is expanding and with that the importance of having an extensive network of relationships that can provide access to information and knowledge that cannot simply be found in a book or by Googling a question. Here’s the latest version of the presentation that I saw.

Organizational structures act as boundaries and barriers to knowledge acquisition. Institutions resist the intrusion of new ideas and people who are not caretakers of the same perspective. This is important to understand. Organizational structure resists openness to outside influence. It seeks stasis. The effect upon many people within the institutions is that they also seek stasis, security, and safety. They end up trusting people who are poorly informed and yet, well-placed to influence the company, and even a broad spectrum of society.

The Question of Transition

This would be fine if we lived in a static world of no change. But we don’t. The world is complex with chaos and changes as its normal functioning mode. As Lima illustrates, the world is a complex system of networks. The chaos that is found in the system is disruptive and can lead to growth. My principle that “We are all in transition. Every one of us. All the time.” is an affirmation that the chaos that we experience is either healthy or troubling based upon our perception of the world. The more you grasp that our networks are the dynamic of human interaction within the context of institutions, we can come to see the value that our networks have.  

The purpose of networks is to create a dynamic synthesis between people, knowledge, and resources. If your non-profit needs more financial resources, a place to begin is to recognize that no one at the board table has the relationship network already established to make that happen. If you don’t assume that you do, then you can rationalize the adoption of a strategy of network expansion by simply asking, “who do you know that we should know because they have access to wealth that none of us have.” This is not a recognition of failure. It is rather the realization that institutional knowledge is always narrow and parochial. It is never enough to remedy the current and future problems of the organization.

A Strategy for Synthesis of Knowledge and Practice

To synthesize you must begin by expanding your range of knowledge.

You cannot know what you do not know at the beginning of this process. You must open yourself up to people, perspectives, and intellectual resources that will be made relevant through the process of synthesis.

Do not accept anything as the default understanding of your situation. There is no such thing. At some point, you will begin to put pieces together, like a large puzzle. A picture of understanding will emerge. Based on my experience of operating this way all my life, no one’s perspective should rule yours. Borrow, clip, glue, staple, cut-and-paste, and over time, you’ll have a bandwidth of knowledge that will be synthesized for application throughout every part of your life.

When the Circle of Impact was created two decades ago, I spent fifteen years testing it to see if it held up. I am not suggesting that you do something like that. Rather, I want you to see that synthesizing is how we make sense of what we learn. We are always asking, “Does this makes sense? How will this work?”

Think of every perspective, model, or design as simply tools for synthesis.

Is this model appropriate for this situation?

Does her perspective fit with what we are seeing? These are the kind of questions we should ask.

My Challenge and Offer to You

Many of you are finding what I write here helpful. It is so because it is synthesizing a wide range of knowledge into a form that makes sense and leads to changes in perspective and behavior. The chat function here in Substack is going to be where we can practice synthesizing together. We do so as mutual mentors to one another. So, I encourage you to pay the nominal fee of $7 per month to gain access to development that could easily cost you hundreds or thousands of dollars otherwise.

• Don’t be a passive receptor.

• Be an active engager.

• Participate.

• Contribute.

• Learn.

• Change.

• Grow.

• Surprise yourself.

• Surprise your loved ones.

• Don’t settle for the institutional knowledge that you have already mastered.

• Develop curiosity.

• Make observations.

• Start Writing.

• Read really hard stuff.

• Synthesize what you see with what you read, with what you believe, and with the unacknowledged assumptions that have guided your response to the world.

If you set a goal to be able to point to something that answers each one of those bullet points, then you will have distinguished yourself as a person of impact.

Let’s do this together!