Building a Syntropic Foundation

Foundations are what provide the structure to be creative, agentic, do great things, and endure.

The Stone Masons understood the importance of foundations when they built Cathedrals designed to last thousands of years.

We marvel at the Notre Dame and the Sagrada Familia, at the Alhambra in Granada.

The hard work, the patient work, is in the foundation design, preparation and build.

Be it preparing the soil to grow a forest, or designing the foundations of a Cathedral.

Or, indeed, cementing the critical ingredients in a partnership for life or business.

In this article, I walk you through some of the defining stages of a Syntropic Enterprise, team, community group or partnership. Please note that all stages build upon each other, taking the best of each early stage as we move to a higher stage or order.

Stages of Foundation Building and the Syntropic Tools we use at each stage

Stage One

First – ensure we handle survival.

Do we have the money, resources and people we need to take the next step? Not the second, third or tenth step, just the next step?

Do we have the courage to act, even if we doubt?

Are we working with the ​Laws of Synergy​? If we are working alone, then the answer is no.

Is everyone on the team able to give attention to what we are designing or building as the next step, or are they caught in troubles of money, relationship, or time?

Syntropic Tools for Stage One

• ​In Syntropic World, we use the Synergistic Accounting tool​ to ensure we know what we have in plenty and what we need, as individuals and the whole.
• We invite participation, and we refuse exploitation.
• ​We apply the Law of Synergy​.
• ​We use the Clean Communication Tool​.
• ​We manage expectations​.

Stage Two

Second – we honour the greater patterns of Universe, its laws and lore. We honour ​Kairos time​ – the clock of the heavens. Right time. Seasons and cycles.

We practice awe daily. The reminder, in all actions, of our significance and insignificance. Of the magnificent design and coordination of our Mother Nature.

We speak the language of the sacred. ​Reverence – a deep and abiding respect​. Understanding the ​difference between a wish, promise, commitment, vow and covenant.​ We do this out of self-respect – to trust our word, and respect for others.

We speak the language of the sacred to remind us that there is a greater force, a Syntropic Force, that we can but sense in moments of awe.

That our lives have meaning and purpose, and the work we are gathered to do has meaning and purpose. Our relationships with each other and the quality of those relationships, matter.

Syntropic Tools for Stage Two

• ​Kairos time ​– synchronous time. The clock of the heavens. Right time.
• ​A clear transcendent Evolutionary Purpose​. The North Star. Something that has us look up, beyond the mire of our small ego.
• Comfort with the language of the sacred, with the language of the mythic. With ritual and ceremony that honours that which we need to remember.

Stage Three

We invite the agentic, whole self to participate. Synergy only happens when we start with the whole. Not just the skill of spreadsheets, but all the other skills and experiences anyone who has mastered spreadsheets has.

We allow people to debate robustly and respectfully. We invite disagreement.

We allow people to be creative and make mistakes. And we ensure mistakes become powerful lessons towards innovation and evolution.

We include emotions in the mix. Bounded by respect for others. Give me your passion. Give me your fierce. Give me your heartache. All of it is needed, not as an override permission slip to do whatever the hell you like, but as an embodied expression of truth in this moment, not requiring saving, fixing or shaming.

Syntropic Tools for Stage Three

• ​The Synergistic Audit​ allows people to nominate what they have the capacity, willingness and desire to bring and what they expect in return. It also invited personal evolution and growth.
• ​Clean Communication​​, Conversation for Understanding​​, Managing Expectations​​ and the 7 Step Process to Speak the Truth​ are required to enable the agentic sense of self to not dominate our ability to work collaboratively.
• ​Understanding the Law, Unity is Plural At Minimum Two​, is essential to understand and work with polarity and difference.

Stage Four

Setting good, strong, clear boundaries and threshold crossings.

There must be rules, agreements and codes. Not too tight, not too loose.

People are invited to participate only after they have been made aware and understand the rules, agreements and codes. If the codes and rules we work with are not coherent with the codes of someone, then we are not right for them.

The threshold crossing boundaries are clear and unambiguous. More importantly, they are lived in all actions. Stage Four builds the structure of our relationship. When it works well, people have an enormous amount of autonomy to participate, yet are held by the boundary they have agreed to.

Syntropic Tools for Stage Four

• ​The Trust Manifesto​ is essential for Stage Four. This is a Trust Agreement, designed to create ecologies of Trust. It is a living document, like all things in Syntropic World. People not only agree to the Trust Manifesto by signing it, the whole team lives its application in all things.
• The​ Pattern Integrity of the Source Idea​, and the Source Idea itself, is key to the design of the Trust Manifesto. The essential non-negotiable rules or agreements that we hold ourselves as individuals and as the collective to.
• ​The Trust Manifesto is paired with the Synergistic Audit​, and both are backed by the tools of communication, as covered in the Dare to Care Workshop.

Stage Five

This is the stage of reason, measurement, consistency, science, and sense-making. We get results, good or bad. We use the results to determine next steps. In this stage, we test, edit, and redo. We make significant strides and might taste success in some areas. There is a sense of achievement or failure. We gather case studies, models, and examples. We build a story that tells itself.

Syntropic Tools for Stage Five

• If our work is Syntropic, then all actors and participants will increase their well-being in all domains. The Synergistic Accounting tool helps to record this, individually and as a group.
• ​We use other tools like the Integrity Bank Account​ to ensure our success is held to the Pattern Integrity of our individual and collective selves.
• All of the personal development tools become more critical the higher the stages we go. The Dare to Care Workshop is not optional.

Stage Six

This is the stage of creativity, innovation, diversity, inclusion, and emotional range. This is where we demonstrate, in all activities, that we hold the sacredness of life as central to everything we do. It will not stabilise as a stage unless and until we have anchored reason, and consistency from Stage Five. It needs some form of hierarchy to ensure the Pattern Integrity of that which we are stewarding through our activities is never violated or debased.

It is where everyone on the team, no matter their ethnicity or worldview, can feel safe and valued.

It is where we feel and live the fullness of Synergy.

Syntropic Tools for Stage Six

If we do not have all of the previous tools from all of the previous stages in place, we will not get synergy – where we are exponentially better working together than we could be working alone.

Synergy is the greatest exponential tool available, period. People working together synergistically.

​The Steward Leader​ lives and practises at stage six. Their stewardship enables diverse people to work together synergistically, because they have applied all of the previous tools mentioned in this article.

They:

• live the ​Trust Manifesto ​and the Synergistic Audit
• practice ​Kairos​ as well as Chronos time
• are clear on the purpose, the idea to bring the purpose to life, and the ​Pattern Integrity​ of the idea
• insist on and live ​Clean Communication​ and ​Managing expectations​
• hold others to account and are held to account themselves
• take responsibility
• are comfortable making mistakes, not knowing, living on the edge of emergence and being vulnerable
• adapt the structure – the Trust Manifesto and its lived practice – when the ecology of the team is too polarised and drifting from well-being
• allow flow, chart resistance and move in Kairos time
• have their own ​Integrity Council​ – a team of people who will keep them in integrity, at all time

What happens after Stage Six?

A Syntropic Enterprise is a living enterprise. Always emergent, always growing in emergence and wisdom. Stasis is entropic.

Life is Syntropic.

Our adaptation is within a context of a rapidly changing and increasingly complex world.

Sensemaking skills are necessary. The ability to hold the tension within increasing complexity is required and is always developing.

PS. The Next Dare to Care Workshop is OPEN for registration. Here. ​https://syntropic.world/dare-to-care/​

The Final Syntropic Masterclass, where we cover all the elements mentioned in this article, is also OPEN. Here. ​https://syntropic.world/masterclass/​