Growing with Superpartnerships

tl;dr? Jump straight to the key takeaways.

I’ve discovered that there are periods when I’m hyper-productive. My usual diligence gets me to my goal well: improved tools, approaches and skills pave this road. By contrast, hyper-productivity builds wormholes, moving me at seemingly infinite speed. Oddly, this has little to do with me and everything to do with my work partner. Not just a "typically good" partner, this specific person triggers a chain reaction in how I think and act, releasing an exponential amount of creativity in the process.

A superpartner is a specific person that triggers a chain reaction in how I think and act.

Engaging with a superpartner is tantamount to being part of a perpetual motion machine. The effort that I contribute to the partnership is amplified exponentially in both magnitude and precision. This positive feedback loop strikes deep at my core, encouraging me to lean in, contributing more for further amplification. The partnership is quick to identify and cull distractions, elevate standards, and inject psychological support, boosting my perseverance^{master-coaching}. My finite reserves of energy eventually leave me exhausted but energised by new insights and directions to pursue. Superpartnerships have challenged me to be the best version of myself without feeling challenging! Addicting.

I’ve experienced this thrice in my work career, and only now am I beginning to identify the symptoms and scratch away at the pathology. As I think about these superpartnerships, two aspects need care: frictions and accelerants. In keeping with our metaphor, frictions lose energy irrecoverably from our perpetual partnership machine. Accelerants are the opposite: they magnify or facilitate the transfer of effort into the partnership. Each of my superpartnerships require both, however, while I've never been able to overcome frictions (perhaps better considered blockers in this context), accelerants can be grown.

Frictions (a.k.a. Blockers)

Superpartners communicate and engage similarly to me. This style veers towards a lot of freeform discourse, is loosely structured and meandering yet directed. We have similar preferences in how and why we write, preferring to hash things out verbally at length and writing to clarify, introspect, strengthen and communicate. We also challenge each other using a similar approach and language that is never threatening. We’re not facsimiles of each other! Yet we are predictable in action - we reasonably know how (not what) the other will respond, and act appropriately^{understanding}. This deep alignment unlocks deep delegation, a state where we find our individual efforts are invisibly aligned.

The underlying cornerstone for superpartnership is psychological safety. My superpartner and I can bootstrap, grow and sustain a safe space where we can fluidly critique and compliment whilst being psychologically supportive. Conversations are unconditionally helpful. Trust is free-flowing.

These frictions are table stakes for me. I believe they are widely applicable, but if not, the essential theme of being frictionless must. Our perpetual motion machine cannot suffer losses stealing away energy. By communicating and acting in predictable ways, we inhibit these alignment and intent losses. Trust and safety eliminate barriers to share and explore. Lapsing on any of these is a death knell; the partnership is affected immediately and permanently.

Everyone will have unique requirements but the essential theme is to be frictionless in collaborating with your superpartner.

Accelerants

Superpartnerships collaboratively build and traverse a deeply connected knowledge graph. Shaping this graph is a dynamic generative and filtering activity, and superpartnerships have honed their skills here^divergent.

Communicating at the Shannon Limit

We’ve built our own pidgin language: my super partner and I communicate outwardly in a manner that seems to navigate syllogisms in large steps^darmok. We consistently share at our mutual Shannon limit: at the highest abstractions to maximise information density. As I dissect our conversations, I find them invariably littered with allegory, metaphor, parables, and other devices that efficiently compress and convey context and perspective. We each have built an arsenal of these tools to call upon built over time by our individual unique experiences.

Superforecasting

Superforecasters^book are individuals who are incredibly adept at prognostication. The linked book goes into great detail around their traits and habits, with the clear statement that this is a learnable skill. Until I read this book, I lacked the vocabulary to describe my other significant accelerant succinctly: superforecasting.

While we don’t manifest every habit or trait, the partnership can winnow ideas and think probabilistically. We don’t consistently frame our thinking about what comes next, yet our conversations naturally dig deeply into nth-degree implications. Exposing assumptions, revising estimates, thinking counterfactually and so on^book are consistent shared behaviours. Individually, I don’t think we’re necessarily strong or consistent in these areas, but together the whole is much greater than the parts.  

Odds & Ends

My categorisation above is Pareto efficient and necessarily incomplete. Several other pieces are vital but deftly managed with the foundation above. As I look around to other successful superpartnerships, I suspect that this offal is unique to me, but list them here given the uncertainty:

• Bias-to-action threshold: our boundary between talking and doing sets a shared conceptual finish line balancing discourse and action
• Perseverance and vulnerability: we reveal our soft underbelly, equip it with armour and build stamina for what comes ahead
• Passion and hard work: we invest deeply in what we do and what we don’t do

Communicating consistently with the highest information density and embodying characteristics of superforecasters are strong accelerants for superpartnerships.

Building a Superpartnership

I think of building a super partnership as analogous to hiring in tech^others. I’m “hiring” a partner for whom the must-have skills are the frictions above, and should-haves are the accelerants. Partially missing accelerants are acceptable but require partnership coaching & mentorship. It’s difficult to grow something from nothing or teach everything, so I veer towards those for whom things are partly clicking. Searching for a partner this way is a top-of-funnel hiring problem: how do I find a specialised candidate from a tiny pool of potentials?

I’m constantly looking for people who meet the minimum requirements above, searching at work, through friend groups, and any other network. I focus on finding a person and then thinking of opportunities to collaborate rather than the reverse. Occasionally I’m lucky, and this winds up being in my present focus area. But, if I look solely for people around a specific topic, I find the pool thins egregiously.

Once I’ve found someone, getting to know each other meaningfully through a small project where the outcome isn’t known or guaranteed is ideal. Uncertainty is essential for assessing our accelerants. The projects needn't be constrained to the context that you met your prospect in; I regularly have year-long personal projects that have become great proving grounds. The important thing is to get some material mileage with your partner-to-be.

In hiring, false positives are a source of great pain. They are less problematic here since the partnerships are opt-in and broken engagements can be wound up quickly, and civilly is my assumption. False negatives, however, are catastrophic. With a thin sourcing pool, I err towards being hopeful. The opportunity cost is ordinarily low, well-structured projects are strictly additive, and multiple swings at bat help you hit better. Like any self-learning process, a retro after an unsuccessful experience is hugely instructive.

Search wide-and-far; form short lists of people you want to work with; work on passion projects jointly; rinse & repeat until it sticks.

Other Observations

In dissecting and reviewing my and others' superpartnerships, there are a few additional items that come to mind around their sustainability and universality.

Symbiosis

While partnerships and symbiosis are synonymous, until now, I’ve focused a lot on the value to me, perhaps skewing the perception of a partnership. Superpartnerships only work and are sustainable if partners extract comparable benefits too. It may not always happen simultaneously, but over long runs, it must.

Two's Company, Three's a Crowd

Partnerships don't place restrictions on the number of partners, but I'm focusing only on partnerships of two people. It is challenging to find another simpatico individual; to find a third that is pair-wise compatible seems improbable, but not impossible; I just can't speak to it.

I do believe it possible to have multiple superpartnerships simultaneously. Right now, I haven't experienced multiples, but can see line of sight to get there. Ultimately, the amount of time and energy I have to invest limits how many can be maintained simultaneously. For me, this cap is at most two.

Portability

As these partnerships have aged, I’ve also noticed that they become both durable and transferable. Having built this perpetual motion machine in an initial area, I’ve found it portable to others. Reduced context and overlap do diminish its efficacy, but they are still valuable.

The Lindy Effect

The more meaningful time spent in a superpartnership, the longer it lasts and the better it is at value creation. "Meaningful time" is tricky. I've needed to ensure that not only is time spent on creativity but that our creative pursuits themselves are not static. Periodisation, as in sports, is important to maintain the partnership. In truth, I haven't had much difficulty with this. My superpartnerships have been naturally addicting, so spending time isn't a problem^rhythmic. The strong sense of psychological safety and all-encompassing curiosity also lends itself to variety.

Key Takeaways

1. Get a handle on the hard requirements in a partner. Safe spaces, compatible engagement styles are critical for me. Without these in play, the partnership can never form.
2. Accelerants are important to be able to build and mold the partnership. Communicating with high information density is a prerequisite. As is superforecasting ability.
3. Eyes and ears open! Search for potential superpartners everywhere. They need to meet the minimums above and also tick off some of your accelerators.
4. Create projects to collaborate on and try out the budding superpartnership. Results aren't immediate and some initial effort is needed. You should see things grow quickly though; if not you may need to continue your search.

Penn Jillette, of Penn & Teller, talks about how their superpartnership focuses on creating the absolute best performance while coming off lighthearted. They both have compatible characteristics that enable them to work together and bring out the best in each other. Sanjay & Jeff, Google's only Senior Distinguished Fellows, also form another superpartnership. They simultaneously dissect the same few hundred lines of code and pair to redefine data processing as we know it–all in the pursuit of excellence. The Book of Duos highlights others through time too. From the non-human world of machine learning, GANs also form a mathematical superpartnership^zero-sum in the pursuit of excellence too. When I spent time looking, I've found that history and the sciences are filled with examples.

Tomes of self-help texts, personal and other resources draw attention to a multitude of ways to grow solo. Personally, this has only taken me so far. To move past the plateau, searching and forming superpartnerships has been my lasting way to grow myself, and others.

Related Reads

Here are a few interesting articles and books that informed different aspects of my thinking above. Please know that I may collect Amazon affiliate credits for purchasing through some of these links. Any credits I earn are used to buy and read things I think are cool.

• "Life’s Work: An Interview with Penn Jillette", HBR.
• "The Friendship That Made Google Huge", The New Yorker.
• Superforecasting
• Deep Work
• Extreme Ownership
• Smarter, Faster, Better
• The Talent Code
• The Book of Duos

1. The Talent Code refers to this state as master coaching: an external system/individual that is able to foster deep practice and ignite motivation.
2. Extreme Ownership highlights this need from the perspective of delegation in a hierarchy: "...They do not need the full knowledge and insight of their senior leaders, nor do the senior leaders need the intricate understanding of the tactical level operators’ jobs. Still, it is critical that each have an understanding of the other’s role.".
3. A compatible perspective from Smarter, Faster, Better frames innovation as needing intellectual middlemen who straddle different domains as well as tensions that trigger divergent thinking.
4. Star Trek TNG afficionados should look to the episode Darmok for an example of stylised high bandwidth communication.
5. I strongly encourage folks read Superforecasting.
6. Dating, fantasy football, and other analogies work here, too.
7. Deep Work refers to this as a rhythmic practice. I don't know if other modalities (bimodal or journalistic) would work since I veer towards a rhythmic deep work practice myself.
8. The verbiage of zero-sum games isn't as well suited to a functional partnership, but the idea of two abstract entities in a system challenging each other to refine their output does align well.