Saturday, October 07, 2006 Batuhan: Winning teams (2) By Allan S. B. Batuhan Foreign Exchange
WE have all heard about synergy —1+1=3 or something to that effect.
It’s something that’s supposed to happen when the combined performance of a group of individuals put together is somehow better than what would be expected from just looking at the talents and capabilities of its members.
Synergy comes from the Greek word “synergos,” which means working together. But the literal translation itself does not quite convey the concept as clearly. It is not just working together, but doing so in a way that the output is greater than the sum of the individual inputs.
Unnatural as this may seem but the idea is not fantasy. In the physical world, it may seem like an absurdity to believe it could happen — the law of conservation of matter says that you can neither destroy nor create anything. Therefore, nothing should emerge out of nothing.
But the Greeks seem to know what they are talking about when it comes to synergy.
We have all heard of Alexander the Great and his legendary conquests. Even then, perhaps not that many can imagine the full immensity of what he had actually done.
Millennia before mechanized armies made war look like a game straight out of Xbox, he held together a kingdom so huge that not a single army since then has been able to duplicate his feat. His feat is probably one of the best examples of team effort that can ever be found.
Armies like that of the Persian king Darius were numerically more superior than his, yet in spite of this disadvantage, Alexander managed to defeat them all. Why were his forces always collectively punching above their weight, and how was he able to get them to do it?
Think about our own individual situations for the moment. Most of us belong to a team of some sort — whether it be a basketball or football club, a dance troupe, a rock band or a business organization.
Invariably, we will be a member of multiple teams, involved in a variety of endeavors.
Where are we most productive and energized? Invariably, this will be as members of teams where we feel most happy being in, right? And we feel happy being in a team where we enjoy what it is we are doing.
If we love basketball, being a part of a basketball team gives us a great sense of enjoyment. No use trying to be in an outfit that plays baseball, if basketball is not our game. Otherwise, we will just be unhappy, and will probably not try to do our very best within that team.
There is a significant connection between happiness and our willingness to perform. This is a natural phenomenon in the animal kingdom, and humans are no exceptions.
Ever watch the Shamu shows in Seaworld? Every time the whales do something, they always get a treat of fish, which, of course, is their favorite food of all. And guess what —they like doing the tricks because they know that each and every time they go through hoops of fire, or splash the audiences with their tails, or take their trainers for a ride around the pool— they get something that makes them happy.
So is happiness the key to getting good performance then? Is it really as simple as that?
We will reserve our conclusion on this for the moment. But granting that it is, how do we make people happy? More to the point, is it really our jobs as managers to make people happy? (Continued next week)
