A practical guide · Benjamin P Taylor
Watch, listen, and read
The presentations, conversations, and adjoining work behind the four dynamics.
The extended StretchCon material
This guide draws primarily on my long presentation, Cadenced culture: the key to high-performing teams based on trust, prepared for StretchCon at Compass Tech Summit, 6 October 2023. The main sequence develops the four dynamics, diagnosis, prescription, and rituals. The extended material includes systemic positions, power and love, VSM, essential balances, boundaries, and facilitation.
Watch the 2023 StretchCon talk
About 38 minutes. The recorded conference talk covers the core account; the longer slide material extends beyond what could be covered on stage.
Read the extended StretchCon presentation
The full teaching material, including diagnosis, practices, case illustrations, and theory annexes. Keep the attribution and copyright notices with the original slides.
Presentations on the four dynamics
Introduction to four dynamics
2023 · 20 pages. A compact teaching account, including diagnosis and practices.
Positive dynamics of differentiation and integration
2024 · ISSS mini-symposium · 96 pages. The developed account, including Janoff and Agazarian, Oshry, VSM, and further connections.
Power, systems, and the Viable System Model
2023 · Metaphorum. Connections between human dynamics and management cybernetics.
There’s a core tension in human organisation
31 October 2023. The four dynamics, identities, and imbalance in a short written account.
Conversations and related videos
Differentiation, integration, and four dynamics of groups
10,000 Swamp Leaders, episode 70 · 5 February 2025. Audio and full transcript. At about 6 minutes: the four dynamics; 12 minutes: direct, vertical, and diagonal relationships; 19 minutes: diagnosis; 27 minutes: sources and connections. The transcript also discusses enantiodromia near the beginning.
Five core practices for effective organisation
Stretch Conference, 2022 · about 45 minutes. Related everyday practices that help make a change in the dynamics sustainable. Slides and further material.
Organising for human needs
A short conversation with Ben Mosior for the Yak Collective. Accompanying article.
Management cybernetics and the Force in organisational life
Conversation with Pierre Neis, 2020. Organisational dynamics, culture, and management cybernetics.
Introduction to the Viable System Model
SCiO, 2017. The functional model behind the related discussion of autonomy, cohesion, adaptation, and stability.
Oshry’s systemic positions
Power + Systems’ short videos about tops, middles, bottoms, customers, and partnership.
Functional subgrouping
SCTRI’s demonstration of the core Systems-Centered method. A further video on Agazarian’s work.
Sources and scope
The terms segment, blend, empower, and harmonise are my practical rendering of a pattern developed through Oshry’s work, read alongside Beer’s management cybernetics and group-process work. The connections page distinguishes the sources and links to their own accounts.
The diagnosis table, weight and rhythm maps, practices, and attention to rebounds come from the 2023 StretchCon material. The six relationship examples and the experiment form develop that material into a working aid. They’re propositions to test with the people involved. They don’t supply a validated score, a fixed ideal profile, or evidence that a named intervention will produce a particular outcome.
The source deck labels its case illustrations ‘confabulated, anonymised’. This guide uses illustrative examples on that basis and doesn’t treat them as documented client outcomes. Human-needs connections in the teaching material are ways of considering experience, rather than a claim that every person shares one exhaustively established list of needs.
Library collection · Suggest a correction or a missing resource · Discuss using the material