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An Introduction

Before discussing God, creation, love, evil, and humanity’s role in the universe, I need to introduce several principles derived from my life’s work studying healthy and unhealthy systems.

Over decades of helping organizations, governments, hospitals, universities, and other human systems survive periods of intense change, I observed recurring patterns governing integration and disintegration.

Those same principles, I later realized, might also help explain creation itself.

The health of any organization—or any organic system—can be expressed in a formula:

Health = f {External Integration / Internal Disintegration}

Every system belongs to a larger system.

External integration measures how well the system serves the larger system to which it belongs.

In business, it may be reflected in market share as a measurement of customer acceptance. In personal life, it may be reflected in one’s ability to contribute meaningfully to society. On the national level, it may be reflected in the balance of trade or in how many people try to enter the country versus how many people leave—or wish they could leave.

Internal disintegration measures how much energy is wasted inside the system through mistrust, politics, confusion, rumors, duplication of effort, unresolved conflict, and loss of common direction.

Since energy is finite at any point in time, the more energy wasted internally, the less energy remains available to fulfill the purpose of the system externally.

What minimizes internal disintegration is Mutual Trust and Respect, concepts to be elaborated on in the following pages of this manuscript.

Change, however, continuously creates disintegration because different parts of every system change at different speeds.

Technology changes faster than organizational culture.
Economic systems change faster than legal systems.
Knowledge changes faster than institutions.

Life is change.
And change produces disintegration.

Thus, maintaining health requires ongoing reintegration, and integration is a function of Mutual Trust and Respect.

Why Mutual Trust and Respect?

Every system is composed of subsystems. Some focus on short-term effectiveness. Others on long-term effectiveness. Some focus on short-term efficiency. Others on long-term integration.[1]

Because these roles have different focuses, conflict is inevitable. Long-term orientation conflicts with short-term effectiveness, and efficiency conflicts with effectiveness.

Conflict itself, however, is not the problem.

Diversity is necessary for health, and conflict is normal and should be expected because of diversity.

If all subsystems were identical, there would be:

• no learning,
• no adaptation,
• no innovation,
• no creation,
• and ultimately no life.

The problem is not diversity.

The problem is destructive conflict caused by unregulated diversity.

For diversity to become constructive, there must first be Mutual Respect.

And for a system to survive as a whole, there must also be Mutual Trust.

Mutual Respect

Mutual Respect means recognizing and honoring the legitimacy of differences.

The philosopher Immanuel Kant described respect as recognizing the sovereignty of another human being—their undeniable right to be different.

Respect means acknowledging another person’s autonomy, including their right to hold views, values, judgments, priorities, and identities different from ours.

Respect means that each subsystem has the right to fulfill its own role without another subsystem trying to dominate, absorb, eliminate, colonize, or convert it.

When we respect differences, we become capable of learning from them.

We begin asking:

• Why does the other person think differently?
• What do they see that I do not see?
• What do they know that I do not know?

Differences expand knowledge.
Differences enrich options.
Differences provide information unavailable from our own perspective.

As Zen Buddhism says:
“If two people agree on everything, one of them is unnecessary.”

This learning occurs, however, only when differences are respected.

Respectful interaction among different perspectives creates something greater than the individual parts. It produces synergy.

Without Mutual Respect, diversity becomes destructive conflict.

Respecting Boundaries

Respect is not merely psychological or ethical.

It is structural.

All healthy systems depend on respected boundaries.

In physiology:

• the kidney functions as a kidney,
• the lungs breathe,
• the heart pumps blood,
• the liver detoxifies.

Each organ performs its own role without trying to perform the role of another organ.

When boundaries are violated, pathology emerges.

If liver cells migrate into the kidney and attempt to transform kidney cells, we call it cancer.

Cancer destroys life because it destroys differentiation.

The same principle applies to:

• societies,
• organizations,
• marriages,
• nations,
• religions,
• and civilizations.

Genesis itself describes creation through differentiation:

• separating light from darkness,
• separating water from land,
• separating the waters above from the waters below,
• differentiating day from night.

Creation required boundaries.

Bounded difference is the condition for creation.

Without boundaries, chaos rules. 

Mutual Trust

Respecting boundaries alone, however, is insufficient for life. Keeping subsystems separated merely prevents destructive conflict. It does not create a living system.

For life to emerge, subsystems must also cooperate and collaborate. The heart cannot survive without the lungs. The lungs cannot survive without the brain. The brain’s functionality depends on the heart functioning.

Each subsystem preserves its individuality yet contributes to the wellness of the whole. That requires Mutual Trust.

Mutual Trust means there is a perception of unity of interests. Each subsystem trusts that the others will fulfill their responsibilities for the benefit of the total system.

Trust creates cooperation.
Trust creates reciprocal contribution.
Trust creates constructive interdependence.

Complementary diversity operating with Mutual Trust produces symbiosis.

Respect and trust are often confused, but they are fundamentally different.

Synergy comes from respectful diversity.
Symbiosis comes from trusted interdependence.

Respect protects individuality. Trust creates community.

Respect says: “I will not violate your boundaries.”
Trust says: “I will contribute to our shared survival.”

Respect prevents colonization. Trust enables cooperation.

Respect allows diversity to exist. Trust integrates diversity into a functioning whole.

Respect without trust produces separation. Trust without respect produces domination.

Healthy systems require both simultaneously.

When Mutual Respect and Mutual Trust coexist, a symbiotic and synergetic system emerges.

I call that: Symbergy. A SYMBiotic and synERGETIC system.

Healthy systems are symbergetic systems. They preserve diversity while practicing unity.

Their parts remain different yet cooperate constructively for the health of the whole.

This applies not only to organizations, but to:

• families,
• societies,
• nations,
• ecosystems,
• and perhaps to the universe itself.

The Role of Leadership

The role of leadership is not merely to manage relationships between people to achieve organizational goals.

One of the critical roles of leadership is to build and nurture a system that sustains Mutual Trust and Respect.

The most important asset a company, a society, or a country can have does not appear on the balance sheet. We recognize its value, unfortunately, mostly through its absence—like health, love, and democracy.

We do not know the value of love until we have none, the value of health until we are sick, or the value of democracy until we live in a dictatorship.

A culture of Mutual Trust and Respect is critical. It reduces internal disintegration, which frees energy for external integration, where we measure the success of the organization.

Sustainable success does not come from heroic individuals. It comes from healthy, symbergetically integrated systems.

Leaders must lead change because the environment in which organizations operate is continuously changing—and today faster than ever in human history.

Leading change for external integration causes internal disintegration because subsystems do not change in unison. Eventually, internal disintegration may consume all the energy the system has and stop external integration altogether.

The role of leadership is therefore to lead change without the organization falling apart—to lead both external and internal integration—which calls for a complementary leadership team.[2]

The Bureaucratization of Systems

Organizations evolve over time.

Different functions develop and atrophy, creating organizational life cycles.

The entrepreneurial role usually develops first. It provides vision, direction, energy, and the willingness to create something new.

Later, the administrative role develops, bringing:

• rules,
• procedures,
• systems,
• structure,
• and controls.

Its purpose is positive: to institutionalize and stabilize what was created. But institutionalization carries danger.

Both the administrative function and the integration function integrate systems, but they integrate in fundamentally different ways.

Administration integrates mechanically through:

• procedures,
• controls,
• supervision,
• and externally imposed structure.

The integration function integrates organically through:

• shared values,
• emotional commitment,
• internalized purpose,
• culture,
• and identification with the whole.

The administrative function says:
“Follow the rules.”

The integration function says:
“Live up to your values and the values of society.”

Over time, however, the (A) function tends to expand and weaken the (I) function.

Rules replace values.
Compliance replaces commitment.
Fear replaces identification.
Bureaucracy replaces spirit.

People no longer ask:
“What is the purpose?”

They ask:
“What are the rules?”

The institution slowly becomes more important than the mission it was originally created to serve.

This process of the (A) function replacing the (I) function stems from the fact that all organic systems try to conserve the energy they have and therefore gravitate toward activities that require less effort. Rules are easier to develop and follow than values.

That, I believe, is what happened to many organized religions. The spirit became secondary to ritual. Values became secondary to commandments. Living truth became institutional obedience. Religion became bureaucratized. 

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[1] Ichak Adizes: The Power of Collaborative Leadership

[2] Ichak Adizes: Mastering Change

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