Synergy

What do we expect as leader and/or manager? Many people will answer that they expect that their people will be working together productively using the least possible resources to get the jobs done. It is indeed one of the ultimate roles of managers and/or leaders.

In order to achieve a higher quantity and/or quality output, many managers have chosen to bring additional people into the team. It is however, the additional resources may bring in competence and facilitate increase in quantity and/or quality but productivity may still be far away from what is expected. What actually required is the arrangement of all the resources, i.e. time, money, materials, and manpower so that there will be synergistic activities.

Many managers and/or leaders don’t understand the dynamics of how synergy works. Synergy not only can be measured but must be measured so that specific plan of actions can be employed to foster it. The capacity of the team in using resources can be measured and we can use the following 3 simple categorization to show whether or not it is as productive as it should be and whether or not it is synergistic.

1+1<2: What we expect from additional person or persons is certainly more output but there are many examples showing that additional people though working together but in a way consumes more resources than it generates. The result is less productive output than might be expected if the same individuals worked independently. This situation might happen when the 2 individuals spend more time and energy in conflict with one another or worst that they spend time talking matters not relevant to the tasks given. Another example is when the sales and production departments are blaming each other for undelivered promises to customers or they are having miscommunication. They look more like two competitors instead of two unified departments within the same company. It also can happen when people in the same department spend more time and energy in conflict with one another than actually doing the assigned tasks causing a negative productivity number - a waste of time, money, material, and other resources.

1+1=2: Many of us will accept this equation and though it appears to be no problem with this situation because the output is what we would assume when 2 individuals work together summing up their individual efforts, but this is not a synergistic working relationship. This equation shows that the 2 individual do not generate results beyond what is required to be produced and over the time it is possible that it may turn into the 1 + 1 < 2, a downward trend.

1+1>2: This is the synergistic working relationship where through the efforts from the 2 individuals in a cooperative actions result in a total greater than the sum of what each individual could produce independently. Such relationship will require an orchestrated actions. We can whistle a song but it would take a whole orchestra to play a symphony. Another example is a situation where a soccer team composed of ordinary players who are team-up synergistically might defeat a team made up of non-collaborative superstars. Merging the skills of two or more individuals into a highly productive working team is key to achieve a synergistic working relationship. Different departments in a company can synergistically blend their efforts and talents and compensating for each other weaknesses yielding a highly productive outputs in a more efficient and effective manner than when each department works independently. It is important that the management team utilise the knowledge and skills of all the team members in a way that they work as an operating unit than a group of individuals. Operating synergistically requires effective and efficient teamwork.

Team that is engaged in synergistic working relationships make optimal use of the resources to achieve more outputs necessary that eventually will enable the company to react to the rapid changes in the market more effectively. In an environment where the usage of information technology is the norm these days, we might look for application deployment that not only can increase output but reduce costs at the same time. The right application will enable us to increase efficiency and reliability. It is a synergistic working relationship when two or more people equiped with the information technology applications should actually be able to produce even more quantity than the sum of what they can produce when they worked independently. Synergistic working relationship through the usage of information technology will also create a more flexible and agile business to respond to customers needs.As leaders, we must strive to create a high level of synergy among our people as there will be greater chances of realizing our companies’ goals faster in a dramatically shifting environment through accelerated processes as well as improving morale of the employees and therefore their engagement to the vision of the company.