OCI #32: Variety is the Soul of Synergy

Using our differences as an asset, not a liability

Photo: Linda Hoopes

If you have ever worked on a project in which the results far exceeded what anyone involved could have created alone, or been in a relationship that inspired and lifted you toward being the best version of yourself, you have experienced synergy in action. There’s a special magic that happens when varied ideas and perspectives come together in unique and powerful ways. This is true in sports teams, artistic partnerships, great marriages, politics—any place people collaborate to bring their best to the world.

Variety

The heart and soul of synergy is the varied and potentially conflicting set of perspectives that people bring to the table to address a particular need, challenge, or goal. The available range of perceptions, knowledge, and experiences gives teams a great potential advantage over what individuals can do alone. Differences can also create friction and conflict; this, too, is essential to the process of synergy.¹ The other elements of the synergy model help collaborators manage and leverage this creative tension to deliver productive results.

Variety ignites curiosity, creates tension, opens horizons, and increases the difficulty of the work. Without it, creative breakthroughs are impossible.

The specific kind of variety that is most critical for our work will differ across situations. We need to ensure that the range of inputs and perspectives available in the collaborative process gives us the fuel we need to spark ideas, generate insightful questions, raise the level of creative exchange, and deliver high-quality results without unnecessarily increasing the complexity of communication.

Requisite Variety

The idea of requisite variety is helpful in understanding how much and what kind of variety we need. W. Ross Ashby, an early systems theorist and cybernetics pioneer, asserted that for a system to deal successfully with the challenges its environment produces, it needs to have a range of responses at least as complex as the problems arising in the environment. Here are some examples:

• If you are trying to keep the temperature of your house within a particular range, the thermostat only needs to have two basic responses: heat or cool.

• If you are a driver trying to stay safe in traffic while making progress toward your destination, you need to have a set of responses that include braking, accelerating, changing lanes, and responding to traffic signals and road signs.

• If you are the head of a clothing manufacturing firm trying to maintain profitability, you need to be able to respond to changing styles, supply chain disruptions, shifts in the labor market, and other more complex systemic challenges.

The more complex the system, the wider the range of inputs needed to create effective responses. The specific types of input you need depend on the particular goals you are trying to achieve and the environment you are working in.

• A leadership team seeking to create transformational change in an organization will need to consider the various stakeholders inside and outside the organization. They may invite change agents, managers, individual contributors, and key external parties into discussion.

• In an artistic collaboration, musicians may seek others who play different instruments and have varying types of experience and training that will contribute to the sound they desire.

• A community seeking to plan for its future might call on a range of voices that represent its various neighborhoods, schools, organizations, and businesses.

• A couple seeking to solve difficult conflicts in their relationship may invite a counselor into the conversation to bring a thoughtful and challenging perspective.

• Political leaders taking on a critical issue such as poverty, gun violence, or disaster response may seek to include a broad range of perspectives from various parties as well as from scientists, businesspeople, ordinary citizens, and people whose lives have been affected by the issue of concern.

Not Enough Variety

When a group doesn’t include enough—or the right kinds—of variety to deal with its challenges, it runs the risk of missing important information and oversimplifying its understanding of the situation. People are likely to hear ideas that reinforce their existing ways of thinking rather than challenging them. They may fail to explore alternatives, recognize blind spots, or try new ways to approach a problem. They may also avoid conflict and fail to speak up when they see an issue. In some situations this can also lead them to make more extreme or riskier decisions than they would do if they were acting alone. The result is that the responses the group produces are insufficient to meet the demands of the situation.

One of the places where insufficient variety often shows up is in change implementation. It’s very common for planning and design teams to work in relative isolation to develop solutions and approaches that seem sensible and logical, only to find that they have not fully considered the real-world constraints faced by the people who will need to use the new systems or the long-term implications of their plans.

Too Much Variety

There are also situations where paying too much attention to variety can lead to wasted time and energy. When a challenge is relatively simple or common, or there are many solutions that would produce adequate results, it’s inefficient to bring too many voices into the mix—discussions take longer than they need to, too many options are considered, and people overcomplicate things.

When we face more complicated situations, we sometimes try to include many perspectives to make sure we don’t miss anything. However, the complexity of interaction increases exponentially as group size grows. This can lead to subdivision, with a small group of people becoming the core players and others moving into more peripheral roles, or to fatigue and “checking out,” as the mechanics of conducting discussions become more and more laborious.

This means that teams and working groups that aspire to operate synergistically need to be both varied and lean. Each participant needs to bring specific value. And although it can be tempting to include people because they are politically important, or to give the appearance of representation, this can often backfire.

When I was a college professor, there were times when I was asked to serve on a committee because they needed to include a woman, without regard to how I might add unique value to the discussion. At the same time, there was often little effort made to include people who might bring in controversial or challenging perspectives to enrich the conversation.

Incidental Variety

While we seek specific types of variety to accomplish our goals, it’s important to recognize that people bring many other types of variability with them as part of the human package. Differences in language, communication styles, information-processing needs and preferences, cultural backgrounds, and more are also part of the mix. These may not be directly relevant to the content of our work, but we need to pay attention to them in designing the process—we want to honor and value the uniqueness of each person so we can draw out their greatest strengths. We’ll pay more attention to this issue as we move into the additional building blocks of the synergistic process.

Finding a Balance

To best manage the element of variety, here are some steps we can take:

1. Understand the objective and the challenge. We need to clearly understand what we are trying to do, how success will be measured, and what complications and challenges are involved in achieving our goals.
   For example, implementing new technology in a global organization surfaces different challenges than designing a marketing campaign for a new youth-oriented clothing line or creating a local network of mental health volunteers.

2. Identify key perspectives and inputs. Once we understand the dimensions of a challenge, we can articulate the most important areas of knowledge, skill, experience, and perspective to be included.
   For example, if we are seeking to launch a new product, we will likely need to include perspectives from design, production, marketing, sales, and customers. If we are designing programs in a social service setting, we need to include the voices of those we seek to serve.²

3. Assess current resources/perspectives. Once we are clear about the inputs needed to achieve our objectives, we can match them against what is available within or outside the group.
   While this would appear to be straightforward, it’s often a challenge to help a team see its own blind spots and weaknesses, or to understand the value a missing perspective would bring. For example, in a highly polarized environment it’s often difficult for people on one side of an issue to recognize the value they might gain from people who have an opposing view; yet a sustainable resolution to the issue is unlikely without including the full range of views.

4. Recruit additional resources. Once we identify a gap, we can determine whether it’s best to add members to the group, bring in temporary resources, and/or build connections with external resources.
   If, for example, we identify a stakeholder group whose voice is important to our work, we may convene a one-time focus group to gather opinions, invite a representative from that group to join the team, or hold periodic conversations with one or more group members.

5. Monitor and adjust. Over time, we may recognize that additional perspectives are needed, or determine that certain resources are less critical to the task. We can adjust the people involved in our process as needed.
   For example, if the scope of a project changes to include fewer stakeholders, we will likely want to restructure the team accordingly; if we recognize a gap in our view of a situation, we can figure out how to include that perspective.

EXERCISE: Apply the concept of variety to a system or team you are familiar with.

• What outcome are you seeking?

• How will success be measured?

• What is the nature of the challenge?

• What level of complexity are you facing?

• What types of variety are most relevant to the situation?

• What perspectives, mindsets, experiences, and qualities do you need at the table

• Which of these do you already have?

• How might you close any gaps?

What Comes Next?

Requisite variety is the first step in creating synergistic outcomes. From there we need to do two things: construct a “container” to hold the creative energy and tension, and apply a process to systematically bring the varied perspectives together into new and better options. We’ll look at each of these pieces in future articles.

1. Here’s a post I wrote several years ago that lays out a framework for synergy. It draws on the work of Daryl Conner, along with colleague Charlie Palmgren and theologian Henry Nelson Weiman.

2. In addition to making sure we clearly understand the needs and wishes of those we want to help, this also honors the core principle of “nothing about us without us.”