The German word Einheit would literally translate as “one-ness” or “unity,” but Boyd (who did not speak German) often used the phrase “mutual trust.” In his framework, it also has the connotations of “cohesion,” “similar implicit orientation,” and even such awkward phrases as “overall mind-time-space scheme.” As you can see, it’s a powerful concept, and we often say that without Einheit, don’t worry about the rest of this framework because you won’t be able to use it anyway.

Building Einheit is a process:

Expose individuals, with different skills and abilities, against a variety of situations—whereby each individual can observe and orient himself simultaneously to the others and to the variety of changing situations. Why ? In such an environment, a harmony, or focus and direction, in operations is created by the bonds of implicit communications and trust that evolve as a consequence of the similar mental images or impressions each individual creates and commits to memory by repeatedly sharing the same variety of experiences in the same ways. (Organic Design, 18)

Difficult to build, but not difficult at all to destroy. One easy way is to not take action when people openly violate the underlying moral code, whether it be implicit or explicit. You can turn this into a weapon by employing propaganda and rumor to accuse people within the target organization of such violations and mocking the organization for not taking action.

With all that in mind, read the article “When trolls come out from under their bridges, it’s bad news for scientific discourse,” in Science News.

When you do take action, especially if your troll is a top performer as measured by the numbers, keep one primary consideration in mind: The other members of the organization must see your action as fair and deserved. So you probably want to start with a gentle reminder and a suggestion for an apology. Another thing to consider: Are you a troll? How do you know? One final thought: How many trolls do you have? If the answer is “lots,” then being a troll is the company style, hardly a violation of the moral code, and you’d look (and be) stupid taking action against an individual.