Achievement Management:

Systemic Innovation

Synergy

Achieving Extraordinary Personal and Business Results

Synergy Defined

Synergy is the energy or force created by the working together of various parts or processes.

Synergy in business is the benefit derived from combining two or more elements (or businesses) so that the performance of the combination is higher than that of the sum of the individual elements (or businesses).

 Case in Point  Joint Power of Four Horses

Two horses can pull about 9,000 pounds. How many pounds can four horses pull? The arithmetical response is 18,000. Sounds reasonable – but it's wrong! Four horses can actually pull over 30,000 pounds. It's synergy that makes the difference!

Your Intention

Your intention is a synergistic combination of three elements: desire, belief, and acceptance. It determines your motivation and how successfully you attain your goals... More

Systems Thinking

Your should master systems thinking if you wish to  discover winning business synergies. Systems thinking "focuses on the whole, not the parts, of a complex system. It concentrates on the interfaces and boundaries of components, on their connections and arrangement, on the potential for holistic systems to achieve results that are greater than the sum of the parts. Mastering systems thinking means overcoming the major obstacles to building the process-managed enterprise – for every business process is a whole system."²... More

The Growing Role of the Business Architect

In today's knowledge- and innovation-driven complex economy, business architects are in growing demand.  They are cross-functionally excellent people who can tie several silos of business development expertise together, create synergies, design winning business model and a balanced business system and then lead people who will put their plans into action.

Creating Competitive Advantage Through Capabilities

The opportunity for your company to sustain your competitive advantage is determined by your capabilities of two kinds – distinctive capabilities and reproducible capabilities – and their unique combination you create to achieve synergy... More

Building a Team Culture: 10 Action Areas

Key Benefits: Synergistic collaboration... More

 Case in Point  Ford Motor Company

Ford Motor Company's different brands bring their own strengths and systems to the company. The organization binds them together with shared data and compatible systems. Their adjacent businesses – high-tech and consumer-focused – hold the promise of dramatic revenue growth, and mine the synergies for maximum benefit.

Building Synergistic Partnerships

Meaningful partnerships are the foundation for success. Partnerships is what enables many companies to make continuous improvements. By sharing with others, you can direct your resources and capabilities to projects you consider most important.

Synergy is the power behind business partnerships. In a business partnership, two parties leverage their assets (resources, capabilities, expertise, client base etc.) for the mutual benefit of both.

Synergistic Corporation

A corporation that builds on core competencies utilizes skills that combine to strengthen value chains and build greater competitive advantages. This leads to synergies among business units, whereby they become more productive together than independently. The collection of skills used in this situation is largely intangible, but corporations can also build synergies by sharing tangible resources.⁵

Enterprise-wide Business Process Management (EBPM)

EBPM, representing the third-wave of Business Process Management, is "a deliberate and collaborative approach to systematically – and systemically – managing all of a company's business processes," says Andrew Spanyi.

EBPM addresses the pressing need of the new knowledge-driven economy to integrate business process thinking with strategy, organizational structure and people issues. It requires that your executive team lead and manage differently and think more systemically about your business... More

Corporate Leader: Specific Responsibilities and Expertise Requirements

As a corporate executive of your firm, you have a critical responsibility for the direction and successful operation of all business units within your organization. Corporate leadership involves a complex set of issues that demands a certain cross-unit expertise, which seldom is achieved through management experience at the business-unit level. You must search for synergies and explore achievements that are possible at the corporate level through cross-unit activity and the development of entirely new growth opportunities... More

 Case in Point  GE

"Integrated diversity" is a term used by Jack Welch, the legendary former CEO of General Electric, to define a learning culture. He described "integrated diversity" as the elimination of boundaries between businesses and the transferring of ideas from one place in the company to another. "Integrated diversity means the drawing together of our thirteen different businesses by sharing ideas, by finding multiple applications for technological advancements, and by moving people across businesses to provide fresh perspectives and to develop broad-based experience. Integrated diversity gives us a company that is considerably greater than the sum of its parts."²

Cross-Pollination of Ideas

Winning innovative solutions are inspired and developed in the process of cross-pollination of ideas, rather than narrowly focused search... More

Harnessing the Power of Diversity

Diversity is a specialized term describing a workplace that includes people from various backgrounds and cultures, and/or diverse businesses. You can inspire innovation and find a strategic competitive advantage in an organizational and cultural context by seeking to leverage, rather than diminish, opposite forces. People with different cultural, educational, scientific, and business backgrounds will bring different frames of reference to a problem and can spark an exciting and dynamic cross-pollination of ideas... More

Leveraging the Power of Trust

Trust – both between individuals and organizations – is at the core of today's complex and rapidly changing knowledge economy. With trust as a foundation, the companies – or teams within a company – can share their know-how to achieve synergy – results that exceed the sum or the parts. "Unlike formal contracts or rigid hierarchies, trust frees partners to respond together to the unexpected, which is essential for mutual creativity. Trust also fosters enthusiasm, ensuring the best performance from everyone."³... More

Enterprise Strategy

Corporate strategy seeks to develop synergies by sharing and coordinating staff and other resources across business units, investing financial resources across business units, and using business units to complement other corporate business activities... More

Effective Leadership

Leadership is imperative for molding a group of people into a team, shaping them into a force that serves as a competitive business advantage. Leader know how to make people function in a collaborative fashion, and how to motivate them to excel their performance. Leaders also know how to balance  the individual team member's quest with the goal of producing synergy – an outcome that exceeds the sum of individual inputs. Leaders require that their team members forego the quest for personal best in concert with the team effort.⁴

Systemic Innovation

Innovation used to be a linear trajectory from new knowledge to new product. Now innovation is neither singular nor linear, but systemic. It arises from complex interactions between many individuals, organizations and their operating environment... More

Achieving Synergy through Coaching

Coaching brings more humanity into the workplace. "Effective coaching in the workplace delivers achievement, fulfillment and joy from which both the individual and organization benefit."¹ These three components – achievement, fulfillment, and joy – are synergistically interlinked and the absence of any one will impact and erode the others. "Learning without achievement quickly exhausts one's energy. Achievement without learning soon becomes boring. The absence of joy and fun erodes the human spirit."¹

References:

1. Effective Coaching, Myles Downey

2. Jack Welch, Letter to Share Owners in General Electric 1990 Annual Report

3. "Trusted Partners," Jordan D. Lewis

4. "Extreme Management," Mark Stevens

5. "Strategic Management", Alex Miller

6. "The Fifth Discipline – the Art and Practice of the Learning Organization", Peter Senge

7. "SMART Executive," Vadim Kotelnikov

8. "SMART Business Architect," Vadim Kotelnikov

9. "Strategies of Market Leaders," Vadim Kotelnikov

10. "Systemic Innovation," Vadim Kotelnikov