Every leader today faces immense complexity in steering their organization. Rapid technological change, shifting customer needs, and evolving employee expectations mean that what worked yesterday may fail tomorrow. To navigate this complexity, leaders need a unifying framework for understanding how their organization functions as a system—and how to guide it toward its goals. This is where the discipline of cybernetics provides an invaluable perspective.

What is Cybernetics?

Cybernetics is the science of communication and control in living and non-living systems. It emerged in the 1940s as scientists and thinkers from fields as diverse as mathematics, engineering, biology, and anthropology came together to understand the universal principles governing how complex systems operate, adapt, and evolve. At its core, cybernetics examines how information flows enable a system to regulate itself and achieve aims.

The classic example is a thermostat, which senses room temperature, compares it to a target, and triggers heating or cooling to keep the temperature steady. This involves three key elements:

1. A clear goal (the target temperature) 
2. Ability to sense the environment (thermometer)
3. Mechanisms to influence the environment and progress toward the goal (furnace, AC)

Linking Communication and Control

What cybernetics revealed is that “control” and “communication” are two sides of the same coin. You cannot effectively influence a system without understanding its current state and underlying dynamics. And the very act of communicating is an attempt to shape the receiver’s mind, an act of control, however subtle. Cybernetics treats communication and control as inseparable.

Implications for Organizations

Consider how an organization operates—or malfunctions. Teams need clear, compelling goals to unite around. They need ways to sense progress, like metrics and regular feedback. And they need levers to translate insights into coordinated action and results. Without all three, energy dissipates and entropy takes over.  

As a leader, some key questions to consider are:

• What shared goals unite and motivate our people?
• How quickly do we notice problems or opportunities?  
• How effectively do we respond when our environment shifts?
• Where are the breakdowns in translating insight to action?
• What feedback loops could make us more adaptive?

Whether you run software development, sales, or the boardroom, success depends on building systems to effectively sense, interpret, and act. Cybernetics provides the foundation for designing organizations as responsive, goal-seeking systems. Used well, it is a leader’s secret weapon for taming complexity and unlocking supple strength. The organizations that master it will be the ones that thrive in our age of upheaval. Will yours be one of them?

Learn more in the new book Flow Engineering: From Value Stream Mapping to Effective Action.

- About The Authors

Steve Pereira

Steve Pereira has spent over two decades improving the flow of work across organizations. He’s worked through tech support, IT management, build and release engineering, and as a founding CTO for enterprise SaaS. He serves as lead consultant for Visible Value Stream Consulting, as a board advisor to the Value Stream Management Consortium, Chair of the OASIS Value Stream Management Interoperability technical committee, and co-founder of the Flow Collective to bring flow-focused professionals together. Since 2017, he has been developing and facilitating Flow Engineering to make flow improvement in large organizations accessible, collaborative, and actionable.

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Andrew Davis

Andrew is Chief Product Officer at AutoRABIT, focused on the next generation of DevSecOps on the Salesforce platform. He is also the author of the leading book on the Salesforce development lifecycle, Mastering Salesforce DevOps. He was formerly Senior Director of Methodology and Training at Copado.

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