Synthesis-related jobs or roles

We've conceived of a variety of roles or jobs that Type N people could do, including:

• Bridge - a Bridge is a person who works primarily within a specialty, but whose learning style or inclinations suit him or her to spend time where possible learning about what others are doing around them, making observations, connections, etc.
• Synthesist - A Synthesist is a person who no longer has a material "home" specialty (or perhaps who never had one), and who spends all his or her time learning about what others are doing around them, making observations, connections, etc.
• Gate-keeper - A Gate-keeper is a person who personally collects information about what others around them are doing, saying, learning, being expert at etc., and who provides that knowledge to others as needed.
• Ordinologist - An Ordinologist is a person who spends his or her time collecting and organizing information and knowledge (including multidisciplinary connections) from other people, and saving that information and knowledge in a structured, retreivable form so that others can get at them. In other words, an Ordinologist is sort of a super-librarian of ideas.

Psycho-neurological thoughts about Synthesis

We've put a lot of time and thought into why some people are most comfortable as specialists, while others (like the "bridges" at SRI I described a few days ago) seem less comfortable in a specialist role. One theory I have, which is call the Type M/N theory, is based on the basic belief that people get a brain-reward from learning (we wouldn't make it to adulthood otherwise!). However, the intensity of the reward is based on the type of learning.

I believe that most people get the biggest boost from learning that increases their mastery of their chosen field; I call these people Type M for Mastery (by the way, I'm hoping I can come up with a better name - any ideas out there?). These (Type M) people tend today, and in fact have always tended for thousands of years) to specialize and to become more and more comfortable in their specialties; while today they may become astrophysicists or tort lawyers, in earlier days they may have become archers or barrel-makers.

Another, much smaller group of people get the biggest boost from learning that's new (i.e., that broadens their knowledge, not deepens it); I call these people Type N for New (again, I could use better names!). These (Type N) people tend today to become unhappy specialists (as there just aren't very many jobs for generalists), often with a lot of hobbies to exercise their love of new learning. In earlier times Type N people may have become tinkers (masters of many trades) or shamans/druids (loosely, thinkers and learners for a tribe of people who don't have time to spend thinking and learning in their subsistence economy).

Obviously, there is no solid line between Type M and Type N characteristics; we all have some of each. However, I would stipulate that perhaps 95% of all people are predominantly Type M by the time their adults (and can be very comfortable because the need for specialization is such that we can use their Type M characteristics to advance those specialties). The other 5% are predominantly Type N, and (as I mentioned before) either less happily in a specialist role or, if they are very lucky, have found a niche where they can comfortably do work as a generalist or at least a specialist whose work demands more-frequent new learning.

(If it's not obvious, I count myself as a Type N. For most of my career, I've been a specialist; by dint of some effort, I found work for the last several years in parts of the IT world - which itself tends to require more "new" learning than most fields by virtue of rapid technological change - that required me to learn completely new skills and knowledge on a relatively frequent basis.)

Original and current incarnations of the Synthesis Institute

In 1992, I and a few friends and acquaintences decided to start Synthesis Institute as an educational not-for-profit (501(c)(3)) corporation. We did so in early 1993, and in fact gained an international list of charter members of over 100 people and published volume 1 of The Synthesist, our journal. However, unfortunately, almost immediately all core participants took jobs (me with a startup) that took nearly all our free time. For about a year or so, we limped along with occasional board meetings and planning sessions, but had no time to execute the thoughtful plans we made. By 1996, we'd lost all momentum, and Synthesis Institute mostly lay fallow until this year (2008); we took just enough time to keep our records and not-for-profit status intact.

In 2008, two of the principals, David Gilliam and myself, suddenly found ourselves with enough free time to both start a for-profit partnership exploiting synthesis principles (SynOvation Solutions, http://www.synovationsolutions.com/) and to countenance revitalizing Synthesis Institute. As part of that revitalization, we are starting this blog, re-contacting original members, dusting off some old writing for publication elsewhere, starting a list of "synthesis principles" that help to define this meta-science, and more.

Connection to Technorati

This blog is now available to Technorati, using this link: Technorati Profile

Further on my discussion with Joe MacPherson at SRI

I asked Joe what his (SRI) management did with the information he gave them. He said that they had a quiet word with the project managers (to stop black-balling "bridges"). I asked, is that all? He said yes, that was all.

I got very excited and perturbed by what Joe said. In my view, SRI was faced with a circumstance where someone (the "bridge") whose time was worth $4o/hour (remember, this was the early '80s) 95% of the time when they were behaving themselves, and ten times that (because what they were doing was somehow ensuring project success) during the 5% of their time they weren't behaving themselves, and their reaction to this circumstance was, "I guess that's OK"? Why weren't they trying to leverage that 5%.

Just think, if a person, a respected PhD-level professional, is "misbehaving" 5% of the time against both management and peer pressure, this person is pretty motivated (I'd call it "driven") to do what he or she is doing. If you simply limited the management pressure alone, you'd likely get 10% or more of this "misbehavior" - which means you could address some of that excess time and energy to other projects without a "bridge". And, remember, any benefits you get are purely serendipitous at this point. What if you tackled whatever was happening with "bridges" as an art and science, not just a happy accident?

It was at this point that I decided to somehow, sometime, personally work to move whatever this was to be both an art and a science, and maybe do this type of work myself.

More tomorrow on what happened next.

More on Synthesis Institute origins

My conversation with Joe MacPherson (described in yesterday's post) discussed the context of Joe's research into "bridges" and why he'd done that research. As he related it, SRI management had found a slight decrease in their success rate for projects at a time when they'd expected a steady increase in successes. Nobody could figure out why, so they asked Joe to quietly look into it. After a few weeks, he came back and (in short) described how some assigned specialists (i.e., those later called "bridges") had unilaterally "jumped the fence" and found everyone else's work more interesting, asking other specialists basic questions, et cetera. Both project managers (because the bridges didn't stick to their knitting) and other specialists (because the bridges wasted their time answering uninteresting questions) frequently found the bridges annoying. Joe had determined, as I hinted in yesterday's post, that existence of one or more bridges on a project was a near-guarantee of success (and vice-versa).

The SRI managers asked Joe what he thought was going on; he said (I paraphrase) that in effect the bridges were the yeast that caused the dough to rise. The SRI managers asked Joe why their success rate had decreased (remember, this was his original assignment), and he said it looked like the project managers had gotten better organized and started black-balling bridges (because they were annoying). If you can imagine a conversation between a project manager (Jake) for an about-to-start project and another project manager (Mary):

Jake: "Mary, I have a couple of candidates for the Biology component of my new project, Ted and Nancy. I've never worked before with either; do you know either of them?"

Mary: "I've worked with both of them. Ted's a good solid guy; not as creative as some but gets his work done dependably. Nancy's a lot smarter and more creative, but she doesn't always get her work done because she gets distracted by what other people on the project are doing; in fact, I've gotten a few very-discrete complaints from some people that she wastes their time with basic questions."

Jake: "Thanks, I'll see if Ted's available."

More on my conversation with Joe tomorrow - stay tuned!