There is a famous and crucial law in the theory of systems and complexity, called the Ashby law or Law of Requisite Variety.

In simple terms this law can be stated as follows: 

In order to deal properly with the diversity of problems the world throws at you, you need to have a repertoire of responses that are (at least) as nuanced as the problems you face.

The law is crucial because it refers to the capacity of a system to survive in a complex environment: a viable system is one that can handle the variability of its environment.

Or, as Ashby simply put it, only variety can absorb variety.

For you as an entrepreneur, the law clearly calls for high flexibility and richness of capacities and perspective to respond to your challenges. The more variable and fast-changing the environment, the more flexible your enterprise and its internal systems need to be.

It is more and more under our eyes that the complexity of our reality is increasing at a pace that has been never observed before. This means that also your modality and capacity to respond in a more flexible and diverse way need to go to the next level.

You may tend to play in a safe and controlled space by choosing variety reduction. This appears unfeasible and unsustainable in our new reality. Many organizations and social systems, that have grown so far by keeping lower levels of variety, are facing now extremely hard times. They turn to be rigid systems that have not developed the internal stretch to resiliently respond to the external variety. Conversely, it is interesting to know that another implication of the Law of Requisite Variety is that the part of the system with the higher flexibility will play like the queen in a game of chess: it will act as the catalytic element within that system for making the system respond properly and thrive.

Complex challenges are difficult because they require you and your team to change your ways, your mindset, and your behaviours. They are not just complicated technical problems, where your past ways of thinking, relating, and operating can help you fix the problem. They are “non-linear” problems, that cannot be solved by just downloading your proven approaches to problems.

How can you then move faster toward abundant flexibility of perspectives, practices, and tools, learn fast, and become capable to thrive in complex times?

The answer is: together, in circles of entrepreneurs.

“Together” means speed, diversity, richness, resilience, and superior intelligence.

Where do we find a truly new model for thriving together? We cannot be blind here toward the greatest model of all, Nature, always displayed magnificently in front of us.

Even a fast look at the rainforest can provide us with an immediate, easy grasp of the power of togetherness and true interconnectivity. The most diverse vegetation here ensures resilience, generativity, abundance, and anti-fragility to all the parts of the ecosystem, while simultaneously affirming the uniqueness and the fundamental/foundational contribution of each species enriching the soil for all the plants. Every plant shapes a form, a way, an exchange, a contribution, uniquely contributing not only to its own growth and flourishing but also to every other part of the ecosystem. It is the realm of synergies.

It is then crystal clear to us that in order to create multiple and flexible responses we need multiple intelligences, collective wisdom, and upskilled collaborative capacity.

It sounds obvious. Why then do we see entrepreneurs ending up going alone, over and over again, even now, trapped in the downfall of their “hero” mindset?

Often you as an entrepreneur do not see an alternative, a different collaborative approach, and a new leadership model. Fighting harder seems the only way. Taken away by your passion and commitment, trapped in your everyday endless to-do list, you find it easier to follow the known path of working harder and harder, downloading the usual ways of acting, and just throw yourself in the fight arena.

As we see so perfectly in the rainforest, however, another arena is possible, the synergetic arena. Here successful synergies can generate more resources, resilience, and fast response to challenges because of self-reinforcing circles that enhance mutual growth and evolution.

Stephen Covey says it very well: Synergy is everywhere in nature. If you plant two plants close together, the roots commingle and improve the quality of the soil so that both plants will grow better than if they were separated.

It is possible to create ecosystems of entrepreneurs that activate the collective entrepreneurial intelligence to support individual sustainable businesses in a more generative effort.

Circles of entrepreneurs empower each individual endeavour by offering multiple perspectives, expertise, awareness, and diverse competencies in a supportive and insightful environment.

Rosalind Armson, author of “Growing Wings on the Way”, and working with individuals and organizations facing complex and uncertain situations, says:

“While I bring requisite variety to the task of improving a messy situation, I find myself asking, ‘How can I be sure I am not contributing to the process that keeps the mess in place?’ ‘How can I be sure that some of my variety of actions, thinking, and emotions is not getting in the way of improving the situation?’

I am thinking here of my confusions, prejudices, preferences, entanglements, and blind spots.

These too are manifestations of my variety and, unless I can account for them in some way, they can make the situation even more difficult to understand than it was before.

I need awareness of how I interact with situations that I am trying to improve. This means I have to be aware of how I see the situation (my perspective); how I understand the situation; how I distinguish systems within it; how I communicate my understandings to other stakeholders; how I act in it; how I see and recognize the outcomes; and how I evaluate the outcomes.”

This crucial process of increasing awareness and accelerated learning can be held and powerfully facilitated in circles of entrepreneurs. Collective entrepreneurial intelligence helps us respond with increased flexibility and generative capacity to the complex environment we are living in.

In previous articles, we have talked about the importance of truly coming together to form an authentic village of trusted fellow entrepreneurs and tap into a deep level of entrepreneurial synergies. The greater the challenges, the bigger and the higher quality of support you need.

But why should you really do that? More specifically, how can you get a higher level of impact and performance, accelerated growth, and change by diving into the wisdom of a village of entrepreneurs?

The truth is that collective entrepreneurial intelligence will help illuminate your blind spots, that is, the places and the spaces you are operating from but are unaware of.

Why is it important to become aware of your blind spot?

Bill O’Brien, CEO of Hanover Insurance said: “The success of an intervention depends on the inner conditions of the intervener”. This place, your inner condition, is the key, as it determines your actions. Furthermore, it determines the success of your actions and your successful (or not) outcomes.

In that place, in the source of how you think and feel, lies also your key potential to overcome and transform obstacles.

But how is your blind spot connected to the obstacles you encounter?

Well, the inner space from where you operate is always a filter of reality, is always related to a perceptual position, to a point of view, to a specific perspective, a view of the world. Most often the obstacle challenges that point of view, revealing the limitation of the view. Therefore you may lack the resources to deal with it, solve it, or transform it unless you expand your horizon, embracing a much larger perspective.

To clarify this point, let’s take the example of your blind spot as a driver. One of the first things they teach you when you are learning to drive is the existence of the blind spot. When you drive, and you need to look in the rear-view mirror, you must be aware that you do not have complete vision. You know that you have to move and change your position or look into the other rear-view mirrors in your car, in order to see outside the blind spot.

The fact is that the rear-view mirror is a small angled mirror, although you have the impression that you see everything when looking through it.

This may happen also to your source of thinking and feeling. For certain obstacles and specific challenges, your view may have got a small angle and needs to be enlarged to be able to overcome them.

Becoming aware that you do have a blind spot in your leadership is essential.

When you are stuck in front of a challenge, you may often tend to insist on keeping your position, sticking to the same perspective, trying harder, and actually doing more of the same. As you simply don’t see, you may even tend to deny that something else exists outside what you see and perceive.

Being conscious of your blind spot as a leader and entrepreneur is therefore a primary knowledge and awareness. It keeps you alert in the first place to the fact that you may need to look for an enlarged horizon in front of your challenges. It reminds your attention to move out of your habitual angle and search in order to see what you don’t see.

Most often than not, the place you don’t see holds the resources you need to overcome your obstacles.

Interestingly and curiously enough, the resources, the answers, and a fresh way toward your challenges may come from the place outside your blind spot. Often the obstacles you encounter are an explicit invitation to search outside your blind spot, a true call to expand your view, and even your identity as a leader and entrepreneur.

The presence of other perspectives and perceptions on the same problem immediately opens up your vision, enlarges your horizon, and allows you to envision a new, unexpected way forward.

Therefore a group of trusted fellow entrepreneurs, what we call “a village of entrepreneurs” is a way to help illuminate your blind spot. A collective entrepreneurial intelligence offers indeed a vast span of different perspectives, experiences, and wisdom in a way that can wisely stretch the “small view angle” you may unconsciously have when facing your own challenges.

Basically, you are moved to or invited to another position by the others, the effect being the same as when you move position as a driver to see outside the blind spot or look in another roar-view mirror with a different angle.

A village of entrepreneurs is capable of enlarging the space of a problem in such a powerful way that reconnects you to the needed resources to solve it. By helping identify the core of the filters that do not serve you in dealing with your burning challenge.

In this way, collective entrepreneurial intelligence allows you to move in a much faster, substantially unimagined way toward a solution or a transformation of your obstacles.

As a female entrepreneur, you are probably already playing in the generative zone at the intersection between business self-interest and the common good.

You enjoy a large supportive network of fellow entrepreneurs, belong to several communities, and amplify positive effects coming from your business in the culture and your environment.

Sometimes however you may have the persistent, unsatisfactory feeling that any way you are alone in your endeavor.

Deeply inside, you may ask yourself: “Am I really getting the opportunity to be supported, confronted and inspired in a truly constructive way, in a caring yet non-complacent context?”

In a previous article, we talked about the importance of tapping into energy and the benefits of “the village” in your female generative enterprises. Embracing the village means for you going to deeper levels of female synergetic entrepreneurial efforts together with fellow entrepreneurs. The collective intelligence of female entrepreneurs is crucial for you not only to support and empower each other but also to open a space for generative solutions for your challenging endeavours.

However what you encounter most often in your networks and communities is a surface level of collective intelligence, which is in fact “collected intelligence”.

Think about a puzzle: different pieces come together to make an entire. Sometimes you may think in this way also when you want to bring diversity into your organization: matching different pieces to create a bigger whole.

“Collected intelligence” foresees a “match” of diverse capacities and competencies. It is only the first level of synergy, a surface level. In this scenario, 1+1 = 2

Although you may constantly work for it, this matching of support, competencies, expertise, and talents may lead you to levels of collaboration that result in the classical outcome of 1+1=2.

Making a truly “generative field” of relationships

However, for you to bring about excellence, accelerated growth, and resilience in your enterprise and environment, this may be not sufficient and gives you this unsatisfactory feeling of being alone anyway, although you are investing so much time, energy, and effort in your networking and community-building activities.

To play successfully in the zone of win-win at the intersection between self-interest and the common good with your enterprise, you may enter a generative field of relationships where 1+1 can be much more than 2. It is the space where the collective intelligence of female entrepreneurs is at true play.

As a metaphor for this collective intelligence, think about the molecule of water, H2O.

This molecule is made of two very different atoms, with their own very specific features. When they join to form the molecule, however, the molecule itself transcends the specific characteristics of the two atoms and forms something completely new, with incredible and unforeseen characteristics. We could say clearly here that 1+1 is much more than 2.

The incredible properties of water are made out of the special interaction of H and O atoms. An example where 1+1>2.

This is an image that allows you to imagine that a much deeper level of synergy and collaboration is possible. This can be then a fertile ground to bring innovating excellence, creativity, and anti-fragility to your businesses, with performances that could not be achieved alone. The outcome is indeed much more than just the sum of the parts.

Vital to this deeper level of collective intelligence is the creation of high-quality interactions among entrepreneurs, built on trust, mutual respect, and recognition of each other’s unique resources, capacities, and contributions.

Why is this deeper level of synergy so important for you?

Learning to access deeper levels of support, encouragement, and collaboration among fellow entrepreneurs is about upskilling yourselves for future complex challenges and playing a new level of leadership with your enterprise.

Belonging to a generative space is essential for you to realize your most authentic purpose by accessing a higher level of intelligence together with fellow entrepreneurs. It is about increasing your co-creation capacity and shaping together the future together with like-minded creators.

On the one hand, indeed this deep level of synergy creates the conditions for you to boost your potential beyond your usual capacity and imagination. On the other hand, it shapes and activates the true space of the common good, a space of more conscious interconnectedness, where diverse and innovative businesses cross and communicate for mutual benefit and sustainable growth.

Belonging to a generative space is deeply reconnecting you to your female creative capacity of maintaining a tissue together so as to create a much larger, beautiful social and entrepreneurial tapestry. 

As female entrepreneurs, we can make female entrepreneurship more collective, more conscious, and more co-creative, and unlock its full potential for a true impact on society.

An integrative journey towards generative entrepreneurship

Your journey as an entrepreneur can easily be associated with the image of a hero. The symbolic meaning of the hero myth is evident: you as an entrepreneur are courageous enough to go into the arena alone and fight fiercely and autonomously to defend and build your vision. Fundamentally, you show some essential, primary leadership features, the most important ones being the ardour and the capacity to stand up, get out of a fearful crowd, and accomplish a mission. You take full responsibility for creating your own life and give shape to your unique vision, not withholding the freedom to be independent and alone.

“Where there’s a will, there’s a way”

The Greek hero Theseus, fighting against the Minotaur in the Labyrinth in Figure 1, offers you a good view of messages and symbols that relate to the hero metaphor.

In this picture of the hero’s attitude and posture, you can easily recognize and read typical traits such as courage, strength, determination, commitment, muscular approach, fighting skills, technique and technology, competence, mastery, expertise, independence, and proof.

The “sense of I” is crucial here. The positive hero mindset is a healthy affirmation of the “I”, of your individuality, of the unique stand in your unique endeavour, of your distinctive contribution to the world.

The motto of a hero could be “Where there’s a will, there’s a way”.

The hero myth however does not come without its downfalls

Looking again at the picture of Theseus, you may recognize immediately that he has to constantly demonstrate his invincible strength. Wearing a mask and a shield, and holding a weapon, he is basically armoured. He cannot afford any vulnerability.

He can be fixated on a perennial fight, perceiving fight as the only way to be and to exist. 

His pride to be alone in the arena can turn easily into painful loneliness behind the scenes. His need to master everything every moment may lead him to live under constant stress and in the longer term, he may arrive to consider this as a normal part of the game.

For you as an entrepreneur, this may often translate into working harder and harder and staying routinely in the stress and anxiety zone of the fight in order to survive.

Another way

It may be no longer sustainable nor generative to always stay in places of a lonely heroic mindset and attitude. In fact, in the complex and ever-changing contexts we are living in, it has the opposite effect, as it may bring you unsustainable or short-term solutions. Often you may be driven by survival needs, instead of innovative and creative outcomes, driven by your higher vision.

When the level of your entrepreneurial challenge is not balanced with adequate supporting energy around you, the downfalls of the hero myth can keep you in the “Stress zone”. 

Figure 2. The challenge vs support graphic for entrepreneurs. The downfall of the hero myth can keep you trapped in the bottom-right quadrant of loneliness, unbalanced life, and “hard” work.

This is a region in the representation of support vs challenge in Figure 2 where you as an entrepreneur are not surrounded by an appropriate level of support while facing a high level of challenges. This is often the case, especially for pioneering ventures, sustainable scaling ups, and generative and regenerative endeavours. 

“It takes a village to raise a child”

A generative community of entrepreneurs goes much beyond the network that one could build. It is indeed about finding an alliance, a group, a community, a village of entrepreneurs, that grows and goes after each entrepreneurial dream, together. The village is a metaphor for synergetic energies and forces, of multiple perspectives, of enriching diversity and complementarities.

As Stephen Covey said: “Synergy is what happens when one plus one equals ten or a hundred or even a thousand! It is the profound results when two or more respectful human beings determine to go beyond their preconceived ideas to meet a great challenge.“

Figure 3. A circle of entrepreneurs. A humble synergy of diverse perspectives. The motto here could be “It takes a village to raise a child”.

In a trust-based village gathering of entrepreneurs, unimaginable resources can originate thanks to the care, deep listening, peer conversation, relational intelligence, emotional intelligence, collective wisdom, connection, and belonging. Shortly, thanks to a sense of “We”.

Finding the right village that helps sustain your own endeavour and vision is not easy. Often you may encounter difficulties in connecting to a sphere of influence that would offer the impact, the accountability, the resources, and the relationships you need to grow further.

More essentially, entering a village may require a serious moment of recognition of your own limitations, along with the reaffirmation of your unique strengths in front of the challenges ahead.

In this respect, we love to cite the following excerpt from the book “Leadership and the New Science” by Margaret Wheatley to conclude this article:

“If we take seriously the role of explorer and inventor, we will realize that we can’t do this alone. It is scary work, trying to find a new world, hoping we won’t die in the process. We live in a time of chaos, as rich in the potential for disaster as for new possibilities.

How will we navigate these times?

The answer is, together.

We need each other differently now.

We cannot hide behind our boundaries or hold onto the belief that we can survive alone.

We need each other to forgive us when we fail, to trust us with their dreams, to offer their hope when we have lost our own. (…).

We have each other’s curiosity, wisdom, and courage.

And we have Life, whose great ordering powers if we choose to work with them, will make us even more curious, wise and courageous.“