Synergy the Book Intro

This work is aimed at leaders in all organizations, in all industry segments, public and private, to show them how to enhance the powerful synergistic relationships that exist within any organization.

So what does that mean? Let’s start with the word Synergy. Merriam Webster defines Synergy as a mutually advantageous conjunction or compatibility of distinct business participants or elements (as resources or efforts). Dictionary.com has what I feel to be a more revealing definition as follows; “The interaction of two or more agents or forces so that their combined effect is greater than the sum of their individual effects”. These combined effects are always greater than any one of the agents alone could produce. Arguably this could be good effects or bad effects. The best process, the best people, the best partners, won’t work unless they are matched. Good people and a bad process, a great process and unskilled people, great process matched with unsuitable partners, the combinations go on, but synergy can not be maximized until attempts are made to evaluate the alignment or match between these three elements in any organization.

But where do we begin? Start at the customer, the ones who pay the bills, and work backwards. If you are not aligned to meet the needs and satisfy your customers, then all else is moot. This may seem to flow in an opposite direction from our synergy statement, yet as Covey says, Start with the end in mind.

For our purposes the customers, or those whom you exist to serve, are your primary partners. We start by identifying the critical to quality elements that your customers require. Patients in a hospital require being cared for and reassured they will recover, a consumer of a car will require the car to run and provide reliable and often luxury transportation. Fuel efficiency in America is also becoming a more important consumer criterion in America, yet the SUV’s keep showing consumer demand. It may also be cup holders or MP3 plug ins, but note that these are secondary to the primary requirements of reliable transportation. The public wants low taxes and comprehensive social services, an obvious indication the need for a skilled balancing act. Based on these requirements, the next step is to examine the process and the people that support that process to insure that the process and people skills and aligned to produce results, aka, performance, which can be excellent, poor or anywhere in between.

At each step of the process we then need to determine the best process to evaluate these relationships. When we analyze the available processes we have always returned to the comprehensive tools, systems and practices integrated into the Six Sigma Process, commonly expressed as DMAIC, Define, Measure, Analyze Improve and Control. We believe that most other organizational process evaluation tools are simply hybrids or off shoots of this process, so why re-invent the wheel.

The diagram on our website, www.tipsonxl.com, depicts these relations and illustrates the primary business process adopted by Tipson Enterprises. It should be mentioned here that this is not a simple linear process, one leading to the next. It is more so that one feeds on another, sometimes looping back to challenge previous assumptions. Indeed the overall intent is to drive continuous improvement and this always indicates a learning and re-integration of knowledge gained from a given process. And yes, this process will most likely involve change. Yet if done correctly the change will flow and quickly be adopted since you will be making changes that will ultimately benefit all involved.

The intent of this work is to explain and highlight the key elements of the process and to show the benefits that can be yielded. Given that we have introduced a backward looking model, this work will follow that same progression. However, as I indicated earlier, there are many times where we will maintain a fluid state of interaction as we progress through the process.