|
Synergy Achieving Extraordinary Personal and Business Results |
|
by Vadim Kotelnikov, Founder, The first-ever BUSINESS e-COACH for Innovative Leaders, 1000ventures.com
"Life is like a combination lock; your job is to find the right number, in the right order, so you can have anything you want."
|
Synergy Defined The befit 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). 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 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 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 Real Time Business Development Real time development brings about change and learning simultaneously - not separating the two. This approach is about "how to transform the development so that it means transforming the business whilst learning at the same time - continuously improving and learning and getting a business pay-off as an integral part of it. This means embedding development into how we do business and seeing it as part of doing business."14...More 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 Mutual Creativity in Business Partnerships Mutual creativity is a shared mind-set. By learning to be creative together, you increase the chances of constructively sorting through your differences, which encourages you to go further.In an opportunity-maximizing strategic alliance, continued joint creativity leads to regular improvement, outperforming what any single change can do...More Case Study: General Electric (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 Case Study: GE Equity Currently GE Equity invests between $1.2 billion and $1.5 billion annually in ventures. Value investing - using corporate venture investments to help GE businesses grow - is the main mission of GE Equity. Ideally, each and every of GE Equity's investments adds value to both GE and the start-up. Before investing in a venture, GE Equity determines if a synergetic relationship between the venture and one of more of GE's businesses is possible...More Case Study: Ford Lio Ho Motor In 2000, Ford Lio Ho, Taiwan established a Corporate Synergy System (CSS) with its suppliers to enhance its overall corporate environmental performance. Twelve firms joined in the first year, and Ford Lio Ho expects to have more of its upstream suppliers (151 firms at present) join its CSS in the near future. Ford Lio Ho has also requested that all of its suppliers become certified under ISO 14000 by 2003. The total investment in the Green Productivity Demonstration Programs (GPDP) options and corporate synergy projects was estimated to be US$ 15.6 million. The environmental benefits generated from these GPDP options in 2002 are listed below and resulted in savings of US$ 6.8 million: § Raw materials consumption reduced by 8,000 tons; § Water consumption reduced by 58,000 tons; § Electricity consumption reduced by 8,900,000 kW; § General waste reduced by 1,000 tons; § Hazardous waste reduced by 290 tons; and § CO2 emissions reduced by 4,500 tons...More |
Bibliography:
-
"Effective Coaching", Myles Downey, 2003
-
Jack Welch, Letter to Share Owners in General Electric 1990 Annual Report
-
"Trusted Partners", Jordan D. Lewis, 1999
