Organisational Partnership · for senior leaders
It’s just rarely written down. You’ll find it in what gets measured, who gets trusted, what counts as evidence, and what happens when a principle gets inconvenient.
We help you examine it. Start with the words in the drawers.
Every drawer holds two cards: what two people in the same organisation mean by the same word.
Trust.
A director
“Show me you’ll deliver, and I’ll trust you.”
Filed underchecking
A new manager
“Trust me first, so I can deliver.”
Filed underlatitude
We help your leaders examine these tensions, understand the reasons behind them and consider what should change.
At a glance
Why it matters
It can grow their judgement, or teach them to wait for permission.
Lab notebook · specimen no. 1
Two ways to help it grow. Try both.
The starting point
Everyone starts here. It gives your people a shared language for how they see, know and value things, and for disagreeing well.
Ontology
What you believe about how the world, and the people in it, work. Machines or living things? Fixed, or always changing?
Epistemology
How you decide what to believe. Numbers, experience, the people you trust, the feeling in your stomach.
Axiology
What you think is worth pursuing, and what you’d give up for it.
What we mean by syntropic
That’s the syntropic test: whether what you achieve now leaves people more able to contribute next time, or less.
Three questions about your own team. Nobody’s watching.
Planting notes
Answer all three, and we’ll tell you which one to bring to your next leadership meeting.
We bring philosophical ideas into these conversations and explore what they mean for how you work.
How we work together
In 1829 a London doctor, Nathaniel Ward, found a fern growing in a sealed jar. His glass cases went on to carry living plants safely across oceans. An organisation is more like the fern than a machine: you tend the conditions, not the parts.
Three ways in. Try each one.
Private conversations with one leader about the questions they carry, kept up over months rather than squeezed into an away day.
Small groups, often from different corners of the organisation, reading and thinking together over time. They tend to grow towards each other.
A leadership team examining a question it faces together, including the assumptions behind each person’s view, and the climate that creates for everyone else.
Most of it happens online, with time together in person when it helps. The case travels. What’s inside stays alive.
Terms of partnership
Scope, rhythm and fee are agreed with you, so everyone knows what’s included.
From the cabinet
Five objects live in this room. Bring one to your next leadership meeting.
Agenda
Leadership team · any Tuesday
Provenance
Our work spans elite sport, energy, technology and education.
Notes left on the board
Questions
When things move fast, the assumptions behind a good decision stop holding, and speed carries them further before anyone checks.
AI can supply analysis. It can’t tell your leaders what’s worth pursuing, or take responsibility for the call.
Philosophy gives them a way to check the thinking.
Private viewings by appointment
Tell us what’s on your mind. The first conversation costs nothing, and you don’t need to prepare a thing.
Or write to hello@syntropise.com
Ask yourself
That’s the whole collection examined, every room. Now imagine doing this with your own life, for a year. That’s membership.