I get this word “synergy” thrown at me all the time. From what they say, it must be able to cure cancer, take any business from bankruptcy to wild success in a week, and cause fabulous orgasms into the bargain. Apparently, not having some of this thing is really, really bad.
I’m sold. What is it, and where can I acquire some?
Send me fifty bucks, and I’ll mail you some.
Synergy is a fancy buzzword stupid people (usually managers or people from the HR dept) use to make themselves sound smart. Like ‘paradigm’ or ‘actualize’. They only have a vague idea as to what it means.
Synergy as defined by Merriam-Webster is:
Main Entry: syn·er·gy
Pronunciation: 'si-n&r-jE
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -gies
Etymology: New Latin synergia, from Greek synergos working together
Date: 1660
1 : SYNERGISM; broadly : combined action or operation
2 : a mutually advantageous conjunction or compatibility of distinct business participants or elements (as resources or efforts)
Unfortunately, it looks like the guys at MW have also been effected. Synergy, as I have always held it, is more along the lines “more than the sum of its parts”. That is if we were to combine our efforts we could achieve more the what we could seperately, even added to together.
Wanna have some fun? It might get you in trouble, but the next time you’re in a meeting and you hear someone use the word ‘synergy’ ask them what it means. Pick someone you know is kinda daft (manager or someone from HR) and no matter what they say ask how it applies to the current context. I did this once (I’m a programmer, and a damn cynical one, but I couldn’t resist). After the meeting my manager let me know that no matter how funny it was for everyone else you shouldn’t make the Chief Technology Officer (who wouldn’t know an algorithm if it was taking a piss on his hush puppies) look like an idiot in front of 25 other managers and leads. 
GOD I LOVE THIS JOB MARKET!!!
Frequently used to describe strategic partnerships or mergers, ex. “The Daimler-Chrysler merger was intended to capitalize on synergies between the two businesses but has failed to do so.” If I have a car company and another car company, and I put them together, a lot of our efforts should overlap - we can manufacture cars in the same place, my cars can benefit from the safety features of your cars, and you can learn how to market to the American public.
Someone pass me a crowbar - I got some leveraging to do…
pan
Argh. Kabbes, you bastard, you just had to bring that one up, didn’t you? If anyone can justify the transformation of leverage from a humble noun into a hackneyed verb for IT marketing wanks I’d love to hear it.
Keep yer hair on - I’m just trying to create an organic office environment for us here.
pan
Now i may be thinking outside the box here, but isn’t synergy the paradigm of a working relationship that feels no need to reinvent the wheel and moves forward with one eye on its future expansioning and one eye on its illustrious past in order to facillitate the organic growth of a product through viral marketing and brand-based ideals?
Ah, I see Francesca’s passed many a meeting playing buzzword bingo. Either that or she’s a consultant.
::adjusts his rolled-up-sleeve elasticated band thingies::
Algorithms can do that!!! And I’ve got these things just lying around my office! Geeze! No one said anything to me a about this! I gotta get some cages and newspapers…
You forgot “guru”.
Here’s a funny little site that makes fun of all of this.
Sounds like you have been proactively reading “7 Habits of Highley Effective People”.
I used to work for a company where every team leader and office manager was spewing out this kind of psudeo-psycho-office babble on a daily basis. The division I worked for took 6 months and had at least 10 meetings of a special committee just to come up with a mission statement that ended up being used for nothing. What a waste of time, effort, and MONEY. The rest of us were getting slammed on the phones all because the stupid “Mission statement committee” (composed of management, and people from our helpdesk who should have been working) had to hash out whether or not the word “all” had to be included or not in the f**king mission statement.
[Sarcasm]
No… I don’t hate my former job at all. Who, me? Bitter? Not me!
[/Sarcasm]
Did you strategize your post to maintain a mission, vision and principles? Or is it more likely that the low hanging fruit helped you with your gap analysis while you attempted to see things with a helicopter view? Is this thread best-in-class? Do we have the bandwith to supoort your business portfolio? Just what is the broad-based solution?
Maybe we should benchmark other threads. The OP should be much more client-focused and customer driven, while we are maintaining cross-functioning processes. We could outsource it, if we want to get our deliverables to be a done deal. All posters should be empowered to edit their global based functionality so that we have more value-added posts.
All threads should be a win-win and every member should be a team player. If we need to deploy, then come up with a straw man before we have a final product rollout.
Keep leveraging your resources to prevent realignment. We are just weeks from ramping up. We do not need to push the envelope or we risk a paradigm shift. Remember to prioritize your oppoortunities for this mission critical, market based, knowledge based infrastructure so that the industry specific, highlevel design document isn’t too information based.
We need to stay on the fast track and be flexible to facilitate the core processes.