Organizations are in balance when people have a power law of distances of relationships to collaborators.

· Bits and Bobs 8/17/26
  • Organizations are in balance when people have a power law of distances of relationships to collaborators.
    • That is, lots of relationships to random people near them in the org, and a few far-flung ties to people far away in the org.
    • Relationships help balance you and ground truth the pair of you.
    • When you have the right mix of relationships then the whole is naturally balanced.
    • The whole and the local pockets both work.
    • If you have connections that are all far flung, the whole is over-connected.
      • No local pockets of coherence can emerge.
      • It's just one big diffuse noisy average mess.
    • If you have all connections to local collaborators, then the local pocket disconnects from the whole.
      • It starts optimizing for what's good for the pocket, at the cost of what's good for the whole.

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