The Co3Org: Synergy

Talk about a concept that has been tainted by overpromising and underdelivering, synergy seems to be on the wrong side of the "what's hot" and "what's not" lists these days. Perhaps this is mainly due to the frequent failures of mergers and acquisitions to live up to their expected potential. You might call it whatever you want, but making the whole greater than the sum of its parts is at the heart of teamwork and organizational performance. We still call it synergy.

Some years ago the Los Angeles Lakers were formidable, having two all-time great players in Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal. During the off season a couple of aging stars, Karl Malone and Gary Payton, signed on with the Lakers in hopes of winning a championship before ending their impressive careers. Unfortunately for Malone and Payton, the Laker chemistry was deteriorating, and the group never really played to its potential. Sports fans are all too familiar with the phenomenon of synergy because they often get to experience the consequences of its absence.

Corporations need not venture into mergers and acquisitions to be shortchanged on synergy. Whenever "knowledge is power" afflicts the mindset of an organization, suboptimization will surely follow. Since the value of knowledge grows with sharing, the idea of hoarding knowledge should be antithetical, and yet we see it all the time. What we have never seen is an articulated corporate value of "hoarding knowledge". When a behavior is not what we ask for or hope for, we simply ought to follow the money by asking what is rewarding and reinforcing such behavior. Then we can take action to make it more rewarding to share information and much less rewarding to hoard it.

Another common example of coming up short on synergy occurs in the arena of talent management. A very capable subordinate usually gets known around the organization. When other departments have an opening, their leads will naturally be seeking the best and brightest talent around. If it's your very capable subordinate they are recruiting, you may foresee her opportunity as your worst nightmare: now you are stuck trying to replace Ms. Super Capable. When managers are rewarded for developing people and getting business results, the chances of enabling synergy via a talent pipeline are greatly increased.

One last example of a synergy opportunity: resource allocation. We will look at resource allocation in reverse - the resource takeaway. When times are tough, the conventional wisdom leads to belt tightening which often takes the form of an across- the-board budget cut of X%. Why is it across the board? Because that is an easy and convenient way to be perceived as fair. Ideally, cost savings would come disproportionately from wasteful or unproductive activities, and productive activities might actually deliver greater benefit with increased investment. It is unlikely that many workers will volunteer that their efforts are wasteful or unproductive, but it is entirely possible that they would offer suggestions for eliminating "stupid stuff" from their day-to-day work activities.

The presence or absence of synergy is observed in organizational culture. Culture largely consists of behaviors that get rewarded, formally or informally, explicitly or implicitly. Synergy is a valuable organizational capability that is well worth fostering, whether you intend to pursue mergers and acquisitions or not.

Comments

You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

cialis tadalafil cialis tadalafil 100mg cialis tadalafil 20 mg cialis tadalafil american express cialis tadalafil canada cialis tadalafil cialis tadafil tal cialis tadalafil reviews cialis tadalafil viagra cialis tadalafil work cialis the dangers fda cialis the sex pill cialis to buy

Posted by: RX-order | November 20, 2010 at 09:04 PM