The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

SYNERGY IN BUSINESS

I enjoyed one particularly meaningful synergistic experience as I worked with my associates

to create the corporate mission statement for our business. Almost all members of the company

went high up into the mountains where, surrounded by the magnificence of nature, we began

with a first draft of what some of us considered to be an excellent mission statement.

At first the communication was respectful, careful and predictable. But as we began to talk

about the various alternatives, possibilities and opportunities ahead, people became very open

and authentic and simply started to think out loud. The mission statement agenda gave way to a

collective free association, a spontaneous piggybacking of ideas. People were genuinely

empathic as well as courageous, and we moved from mutual respect and understanding to

creative synergistic communication.

Everyone could sense it. It was exciting. As it matured, we returned to the task of putting the

evolved collective vision into words, each of which contains specific and committed-to meaning

for each participant.

The resulting corporate mission statement reads:

Our mission is to empower people and organizations to significantly increase their performance capability in order to

achieve worthwhile purposes through understanding and living principle-centered leadership.

The synergistic process that led to the creation of our mission statement engraved it in the

hearts and minds of everyone there, and it has served us well as a frame of reference of what we

are about, as well as what we are not about.

***

Another high level synergy experience took place when I accepted an invitation to serve as the

resource and discussion catalyst at the annual planning meeting of a large insurance company.

Several months ahead, I met with the committee responsible to prepare for and stage the two-day

meeting which was to involve all the top executives. They informed me that the traditional

pattern was to identify four or five major issues through questionnaires and interviews, and to

have alternative proposals presented by the executives. Past meetings had been generally

respectful exchanges, occasionally deteriorating into defensive Win/Lose ego battles. They were

usually predictable, uncreative, and boring.

As I talked with the committee members about the power of synergy, they could sense its

potential. With considerable trepidation, they agreed to change the pattern. They requested

various executives to prepare anonymous “white papers” on each of the high priority issues, and

then asked all the executives to immerse themselves in these papers ahead of time in order to

understand the issues and the differing points of view. They were to come to the meeting

prepared to listen rather than to present, prepared to create and synergize rather than to defend

and protect.

We spent the first half-day in the meeting teaching the principles and practicing the skills of

Habits 4, 5, and 6. The rest of the time was spent in creative synergy.

The release of creative energy was incredible. Excitement replaced boredom. People became

very open to each other’s influence and generated new insights and options. By the end of the

meeting an entirely new understanding of the nature of the central company challenge evolved.

The white paper proposals became obsolete. Differences were valued and transcended. A new

common vision began to form.

***

Once people have experienced real synergy, they are never quite the same again. They know the

possibility of having other such mind-expanding adventures in the future.

Often attempts are made to recreate a particular synergistic experience, but this seldom can be

done. However, the essential purpose behind creative work can be recaptured. Like the Far

Eastern philosophy, “We seek not to imitate the masters, rather we seek what they sought,” we

seek not to imitate past creative synergistic experiences, rather we seek new ones around new

and different and sometimes higher purposes.

SYNERGY AND COMMUNICATION

Synergy is exciting. Creativity is exciting. It’s phenomenal what openness and

communication can produce. The possibilities of truly significant gain, of significant

improvement are so real that it’s worth the risk such openness entails.

***

After World War II, the United States commissioned David Lilienthal to head the new Atomic

Energy Commission. Lilienthal brought together a group of people who were highly influential

—celebrities in their own right—disciples, as it were, of their own frames of reference.

This very diverse group of individuals had an extremely heavy agenda, and they were

impatient to get at it. In addition, the press was pushing them.

But Lilienthal took several weeks to create a high Emotional Bank Account. He had these

people get to know each other—their interests, their hopes, their goals, their concerns, their

backgrounds, their frames of reference, their paradigms. He facilitated the kind of human

interaction that creates a great bonding between people, and he was heavily criticized for taking

the time to do it because it wasn’t “efficient.”

But the net result was that this group became closely knit together, very open with each other,

very creative, and synergistic. The respect among the members of the commission was so high

that if there was disagreement, instead of opposition and defense, there was a genuine effort to

understand. The attitude was “If a person of your intelligence and competence and commitment

disagrees with me, then there must be something to your disagreement that I don’t understand,

and I need to understand it. You have a perspective, a frame of reference I need to look at.”

Nonprotective interaction developed, and an unusual culture was born.

***

The following diagram illustrates how closely trust is related to different levels of

communication.

The lowest level of communication coming out of low-trust situations would be characterized

by defensiveness, protectiveness, and often legalistic language, which covers all the bases and

spells out qualifiers and the escape clauses in the event things go sour. Such communication

produces only Win/Lose or Lose/Lose. It isn’t effective—there’s no P/PC balance—and it

creates further reasons to defend and protect.

The middle position is respectful communication. This is the level where fairly mature people

interact. They have respect for each other, but they want to avoid the possibility of ugly

confrontations, so they communicate politely but not empathically. They might understand each

other intellectually, but they really don’t deeply look at the paradigms and assumptions

underlying their own positions and become open to new possibilities.

Respectful communication works in independent situations and even in interdependent

situations, but the creative possibilities are not opened up. In interdependent situations

compromise is the position usually taken. Compromise means that 1 + 1 = 1½. Both give and

take. The communication isn’t defensive or protective or angry or manipulative; it is honest and

genuine and respectful. But it isn’t creative or synergistic. It produces a low form of Win/Win.

Synergy means that 1 + 1 may equal 8, 16, or even 1,600. The synergistic position of high

trust produces solutions better than any originally proposed, and all parties know it. Furthermore,

they genuinely enjoy the creative enterprise. A miniculture is formed to satisfy in and of itself.

Even if it is short lived, the P/PC balance is there.

There are some circumstances in which synergy may not be achievable and No Deal isn’t

viable. But even in these circumstances, the spirit of sincere trying will usually result in a more

effective compromise.