What Is Synergy, and How Can It Help My Management?

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Synergy might be one of the original buzzwords, but that doesn’t mean it’s not without value for you and your management style. Jennifer Bridges, PMP, explains how synergy can help your management.

Here’s a screenshot of the whiteboard for your reference.

how synergy helps managers

In Review – What Is Synergy, and How Can It Help My Management?

Jennifer said that synergy, like any buzzword, can turn people off. They might make fun of it. But there are those who might not have heard about synergy and others who are simply curious about how it could help them manage projects.

What Is Synergy?

Synergy is when two or more organizations interact or cooperate to produce a combined effect that is greater than the sum of its separate parts. The word might be newish, but the idea is old enough to have a catchphrase attached to it. You’ve all heard, “Two heads are better than one.” That’s just another way of saying synergy.

But it’s best not to accept received wisdom until you’ve done some critical thinking about it. Thankfully, there’s a study that was published in the journal Science led by Bahador Bahrami, of the Interacting Mind Project.

It noted that the key to success in communications. When you have more than one group working on an initiative, it’s important to know how they feel about the answer to questions and how confident they are in the decisions made. This occurs successfully when each group can discuss their different perspectives. If one has flawed information or is less competent or overconfident, the outcome could be negative.

Successful collaboration is the ability to estimate and report our own ability accurately. And what is synergy if not successful collaboration?

What Are the Benefits of Synergy?

Besides working well together and serving both parties beneficially, synergy builds trust through collaboration and co-creation. Trust lays the groundwork for innovation.

In order to facilitate synergy, Jennifer offered a three-step formula that promotes diversity, creativity and focus:

  • Diversity: This allows for the inclusion of people from different geographies, with various experiences and perspectives, which helps to expand the range of ideas.
  • Creativity: This is a quality we all intrinsically have, which needs a safe environment in which ideas can freely be shared without fear of criticism. Mistakes are acceptable at this stage. Read our brainstorming tips for help.
  • Focus: Like attracts like, and a deliberate focus creates a powerful momentum of attraction of people, knowledge and information. This allows for evolution in a positive and productive direction.

How Does Synergy Help Management?

There are many ways in which synergy helps management. Jennifer outlined three:

  1. Synergy creates better effects and results
  2. Synergy generates better solutions to problems
  3. Synergy achieves organizational vision and mission

Pro-Tip: Synergy isn’t only achieved when two organizations work together for a common goal. Methodologies can have synergy, too. That’s what’s called hybrid methodologies. It’s taking two different ways to do something and using parts of one and parts of the other for an innovative way to manage a project.

Take it Further: Synergy is critical for coming up with new ideas that can yield big results. Learn how to establish an innovative culture at your workplace.

Thanks for watching!

Transcription

Today we’re talking about what is synergy, and how can it help my management? Well, first of all, yes, synergy can be the new buzzword in some organizations and people can make fun of the term because it is a buzzword.

And some people have never even heard of the term, yet some people are curious, what is it and how can it help?

So, that’s what I wanna talk about today but I want to start with what synergy is because there is some confusion.

So, synergy is the interaction or cooperation of two or more organizations to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of the separate effects. You may have heard the phrase, “Two heads are better than one,” and some people question, is it really?

So, there’s a study published by the Journal of Science and through information of the Interacting Mind project. And they concluded that the key to success is communication.

So, if we have people interacting and cooperating towards an initiative, then it’s important to express or communicate how they felt about their answer and how confident they were in their decision.

So, only when each person who is in the interaction and cooperation can discuss their different perspectives. And if one has flawed information or they’re less competent, then the outcome could be negative.

So, you might want to ignore that person or that specific input. Also, overconfidence can also have a negative effect.

So, they also concluded that successful collaboration is the ability to estimate and report our own ability and accurately.

So, I wanted to start here because cooperation, collaboration is a part of synergy.

So, what are the benefits? Well, synergy’s very important because once you have synergy, it builds an environment of trust.

And when you have an environment of trust, people who are interacting and collaborating on the team can also provide better ideas and ultimately lead to co-creation where the people involved are more…have more ownership of what they’re contributing.

So, because synergy is so important, I wanted to look at there’s this three-step formula for team synergy, and it includes diversity, creativity, and focus. So, let’s look at these three.

So, diversity is people from different geographies, experiences, perspectives. By having these people working together, it allows them all to expand each other’s ideas.

And with creativity, some people think that they don’t have any creativity but we all have this intrinsic quality.

And then by working together, being able to release limiting beliefs or perspectives about what creativity is and what it’s supposed to look like.

Again, some people thinking they’re not creative but they really are, and then creating a safe environment for people to make mistakes, being able to contribute ideas without being ridiculed.

Also a focus, you may have heard of Abraham Hicks, who has written about the law of attraction where like attracts like.

And by having a deliberate focus, it creates a powerful momentum of attraction of people, of knowledge, information and resources coming together, which allows us to evolve in it’s direction.

So, how can it help in my management? Well, by having synergy, trust, collaboration and ultimately and hopefully co-creation, it helps to create better effects and results.

It also can help generate better solutions to problems and achieve the organizational vision and mission.

So, if you need a tool that can help you with your synergy and ultimately collaboration, then sign up for our software now at ProjectManager.