The Five-Part Framework for Synthesizing Across Domains

“Mere change is not growth. Growth is a synthesis of change and continuity, and where there is no continuity there is no growth.” – C.S. Lewis

I often think of this quote when considering the concept of growth within a business and how you must have continuity to achieve any form of scaling. That may seem obvious on the surface – continuity must exist between departments and within systems and processes. Without it, chaos reigns, and it’s within the heart of chaos that a business goes to perish.

However, it’s not just the continuity of the tangible in our businesses with which we must concern ourselves. It is also the continuity of ideas – both our own and those we discover from others – across various domains that impact who we are as business leaders and how we operate in the context of our companies.

This concept brings to mind some questions.

What do you learn about strategy when you study art? What does your reading of literature tell you about how wars – both militaristic and in the metaphorical business sense – should progress? What does your study of science tell you about how philosophy should operate within the various domains of your business that you need to synthesize?

Your Ideas Must Attach to a Central Framework

My point in all of this is that every idea you have, along with all that you absorb, is data that you must attach to a centralizing governing framework. Without that attachment, the ideas mean nothing – they are the proverbial grains of sand in the wind being spread all over without ever converging into something meaningful for your business.

Thus, we come to the purpose of this article.

As a well-read person – I assume – you will have come across many of the great works of art, literature, and science in your quest for ideas. You may have explored theology, philosophy, and even the most pivotal works of literature, all of which are wellsprings of ideas that gush into your head. Your challenge, as was mine, is to figure out how to incorporate all that you’ve learned, as well as the concepts that spring from that learning into your reality.

What does it mean for you? For your business?

I aim to help you discover the answers to those questions by delivering a five-step model designed to help you synthesize your ideas across various domains. Through that synthesis, you can create a central governing framework within which you achieve growth, both business and personal.

“We’re looking for areas of overlap, areas of overlay, and areas of intersection through which various ideas and concepts can be woven together into a fabric of understanding of the reality you wish to perceive.”

Together, let’s create the reality that you believe should exist for your company.

Heraclitus and His Stream

Perhaps the concept of the synthesis of ideas across domains feels alien. Or, at least, it’s somewhat intangible to your mind as it isn’t immediately apparent how the works of great philosophers and artists might influence your business decisions. Those works have value to you, of course, but perhaps more in the sense of the philosophical than the logic that seems like it should underpin business.

So, allow me to provide you with an example.

It was the great philosopher Heraclitus who said:

“No man steps in the same stream twice.”

For context, Heraclitus died in the fifth century B.C. – around 2,500 years ago. What on Earth could a philosopher from millennia ago, and one who came out with such an esoteric claim, have to tell you about running a business in the 21st century? Even the above quote seems esoteric to the logically minded. You could step into a stream today, step back out, and then step right back in. The stream doesn’t disappear. Its name won’t change. You have literally stepped into the same stream twice.

Here we see the folly of the literal.

What Heraclitus is really saying is that there is growth between the two steps. Think about it like this – a man steps into a stream and feels the water lap around his feet. He steps out, perhaps dries his feet, and then steps into the stream again. Though the action is the same, the water flowing over his feet and between his toes is not the same water that flowed mere moments ago. That previous water has passed. It has continued its journey and is likely many yards away from the man even if the time between his two steps is a matter of minutes.

The man has stepped into an entirely new situation.

It goes deeper.

The man himself is not the same man who stepped into the stream the first time around. He has changed. He has grown or decayed – been subject to the passage of time – even if only a minuscule amount. In this sense, we see that Heraclitus’s statement is true on two ends. Not only is the stream no longer the same one in which the man stepped, as it couldn’t possibly be, but even if it somehow was, the man himself is not the same as he was when he first stepped into the stream.

Stay with me here, as there is a point to all of this.

The stream is changed. The man is changed. And it’s that change that you will observe in every aspect of your business. The circumstances of your environment are subject to the passage of time, just as are you and the stream. Your desk is not the same as it was yesterday. Neither is your chair, your room, yourself. Everything is changing all of the time, and it’s in understanding how the world around you is always in flux that you begin to see how a seemingly intangible concept can be synthesized into the business domain:

“Heraclitus’s statement does have implications for how to deal with partners, with enemies, and with combatants. It has to do with the change in the field of play, and how that field is always in flux.”

So, we see how the philosophical transcends the boundaries of the subject and encroaches on the domain of your business. Growth occurs, whether you realize it or not, in yourself and your business. It is through harnessing that which is already happening that you direct your business down the road on which you want to head.

Ray Dalio and Triangulation

Heraclitus and his stream are far from the only examples I can provide for synthesizing across domains. I introduce Ray Dalio into the conversation. His idea of triangulation – in which you get the three smartest people you know into a room, give them the problem you’re trying to solve, and then get their thoughts – is another great example.
Or, as Dalio himself puts it:

“The best way to make great decisions is to know how to triangulate with other, more knowledgeable people.”

I would extend this concept further.

Following the initial gathering of thoughts, your role is to push back a little. Give those three people some “food for thought” based on your own ideas, all in service of further opening a dialog in real time that delivers valuable insights into a very specific topic.

Then, simply sit back and observe.

The Koch brothers – of Koch Industries fame – use a similar idea to inform their meeting structures. They favor “confrontational” meetings in which they take an idea and “beat it up.” In other words, they batter a concept with logic and questioning, all to see how well that concept stands up. If it does not crumble under the weight of their arguments, it is a solid idea that is worth exploring in the context of their business.

In both cases, we see the convergence of pre-held ideas used to test new concepts. An attack, of sorts, using what is already known to stress test something new. Perhaps that could be another arrow to add to your business bow, and one that will only get stronger – the more you learn, the better able you are to attack new ideas.

The Five-Step Framework

By now, you hopefully understand the concept of synthesizing your ideas across various domains. Still, you may not be sure exactly how to do it, and the examples above don’t offer direct guidance.

I will.

Synthesis can be achieved with five steps converging into a single model, starting with…

Step One – Be a Reader

You must gather ideas before you can synthesize them, the best way to do that is to become a student of the many great thought systems that have existed throughout time. But more than that, you must read with the intent of organizing your sources – both in context and domain – by their themes and thought systems.

For instance, imagine that you are reading a piece written by Francis Bacon.

Bacon sits within a very specific time and thought system, neither of which you may immediately see as relevant to your business. Therefore, what he writes has implications for him and how he sees things in the context of the time his piece was written. Similarly, if you are to read “Dante’s Inferno,” you learn of the art of eternity and how it impacts the world through the eyes of Virgil.

To understand what you learn, you must know who Virgil was and the thought system that influenced his decisions in the story. So, you must know that he pre-dated Jesus Christ and that his thinking would have been most directly impacted by philosophers like Aristotle and Plato. Christ, Muhammed, and many of the great thinkers of the last two millennia didn’t exist, and thus couldn’t impact his journey.

This does not mean that Virgil’s journey is irrelevant in a post-Christ world.

Instead, I share this example to demonstrate the vitality of contextualizing what you read so you can think about it within the proper framework and context. Are you reading poetry? Narrative? Is the work fiction or non-fiction, casual or technical? These things matter and will influence how you categorize your sources so you understand how the ideas gleaned from literature impact your decisions.

I’ll leave this step of the framework with a final thought:

Read very old books.

“If you are not reading books that are at least 1,000 or 2,000 years old for at least a third to 50% of your reading, you are probably reading trash.”

Harsh, perhaps, but the reasoning is that older books still exist in the collective consciousness for a reason. They’ve stood the test of time. You can’t know that a book written 10 years ago is going to achieve the same. That’s not to say newer books can’t be sources of great truth and wisdom. Neither the old or the new should be completely excluded in favor of the other. But when you’re selecting your sources, think about the timelessness (or otherwise) of the information and from whom that information came.

Step Two – Outline Your Structure

Your structure refers to how you’re thinking about whatever you’re reading.

Let’s revisit our earlier discussion on Heraclitus to explain what this means. The great philosopher introduced us to the concept that not only do men always change, but the very environment around them is in a constant state of change, too. A fairly straightforward concept, and one to which we must bring a structural outline to see how we can synthesize it across domains.

In this instance, I’d look at the idea from two vantage points – the first is that of the man and the water, with the second being that of the instance of the latter man and water. The future versions, so to speak. These two vantage points exist on a spectrum, with one at either end and everything between being various properties related to man and water across time. Add to that various environmental influences that can appear during this time separation and you start to see the period between the two vantages as a matrix or framework.

You have your outline of the structure.

From there, you can take and apply any mental models you use to the structure.

You are not done.

Not only must you outline the structure, but you must do so in a way that allows you to connect ideas. This brings us to our next step in developing your framework…

Step Three – Make Inferences on Your Data

Perhaps the most important aspect of building this framework is to learn how to make inferences on your data points to consider how they apply to other domains and whether your thesis is right. What is your thesis? Simple:

You have a thesis that your idea – whatever it may be – has an intersection somewhere.

Your task is to prove the thesis true or false. For instance, you may theorize that you see overlap symmetry for inversion, which is perhaps the most common form – how do two ideas from two great thinkers or authors intersect or invert?

I like to get visual as I explore this step. I will map out the idea I wish to explore and draw symbols – such as arrows – between it and other ideas to figure out how they may intersect or, in some cases, determine if there is any relationship at all. Often, you’ll see that the idea you’re exploring is simply a reprisal of an idea that has been shared previously (hence why I recommend reading so many older books). Those ideas repeat because they stand the test of time, but they also repeat because they can be built upon.

However, at the same time, you must understand that the concept of inversion may be in play. We see this in religious texts. In the Bible, 1 Samuel 4 details the defeat of the Jews by the Philistines, only for that defeat to be inverted – the Jews defeat the Philistines – three chapters later. Each nuance of the latter story is an inversion of the prior, revealing that we can find continuity even in situations that appear diametrically opposed to one another.

Ultimately, you are trying to find growth. To do so, understand that growth comes in more than one potential form:

“Growth requires continuity and continuity may come in a variety of flavors; inversion and straight-line corroboration being the two primary flavors of how reality works.”

Making inferences on your data allows you to test your thesis with regards to which form you believe you have, as well as map out a representation of your idea in terms of how it impacts – or is impacted by – other trains of thought.

Step Four – Defend and Reverse Engineer the Thesis

Next up – the deconstruction of your thesis to see if it’s applicable in other domains and thought systems. There are several ways to do this, though the one I favor is to read into the background of something.

Take Mahler’s Fifth Symphony as an example.

That symphony has a great opening line from the trumpet that’s reminiscent of a bomb, with this tonality being both implicit in the German composer of the piece and in the idea of a singular leader guiding their troops into battle. That opening trumpet line is thus the clarion call that the entire orchestral movement will follow.

Beautiful, of course, though we are left with an obvious question:

How does the leader of that great symphony – the soloist – impact your business?
Consider how that soloist and their role reflects so many other stories of great leaders in history. The Jewish historian Nashon, for instance, was the first of his people to step into the waters of the Red Sea. He fought against the Ancient Egyptians by stepping away in faith, putting his life at risk for his people in the process. Explore up to Plato and you see the concept of it being necessary for a man to communicate with the divine through a logos – a cosmic mediator. But to do so, the logos must step out first.

Perhaps you are starting to see the connective tissue that binds these concepts:

A leader must step up through the chaos to bring that chaos to order.

The thesis is defended as you find continuity between seemingly disparate ideas. It is also deconstructed, as you now understand what your original idea delivers in terms of its impact on your business. You must be the calm voice within the chaos. The leader who is willing to take the first step and guide all who follow.

With your idea deconstructed, you have only one more thing to do.

Step Five – Connecting These Ideas into a Larger Framework

You have the concept of inversion or the idea of continuity, but you have yet to connect those ideas into a larger and grander framework for use in your business. For this, you’ll approach your idea through the scientific method:

“How reality really works in your framework is one of science where you must be able to observe something happening. If you can observe it, then you can attach a truth to it.”

In other words, your singular idea must be attachable to everything you learn, whether that be about art, history, philosophy, science, religion, math, music, or any of the other sources of conceptualization that influence how you think. Collectively, all of these things combine into an enormous meta-narrative – or, perhaps more accurately – a framework that exists to inform your decision-making.

Think of it akin to joining the dots.

The path from dot to dot may not always be clear, which is why Steps Three and Four are so important, but they often exist. In finding those connections, you may encounter paradox more often than you anticipate, but you will also develop a meta framework to which you can attach all other concepts.

My favorite example of this is the seemingly antithetical ideas of order and chaos.

One is the opposite of the other, though in each we also find continuity with the other. The concept of the yin and yang, perhaps, or the Taoist concept of Tao itself as an overarching reality found at the intersection between order and chaos. Where they meet is where you find truth and wisdom. The ever-lasting battle of good and evil, the edge of which is where you find the most excitement.

The relationship between order and chaos is just one example of many meta frameworks to which you might attach your ideas.
Perhaps you can discover one of your own.