12/26/13 The Seven Habits, A Practical Summary: Habit 6 - Synergy

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The Seven Habits, A Practical Summary:Habit 6 - Synergy

by SidKemp

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Synergy: The Sound of Music

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The solo violinist and the orchestra createharmony and contrast.

Source: By Zereshk (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0

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Table of Contents

Synergy - The Sound of Music

Synergy is full of beauty and

power. The music we can create

together is just one example.

Positive and Negative Synergy

Positive synergy is life at it's best,

but negative synergy is life at it's

worst.

Movie Magic

The team Peter Jackson created

to make a movie of Lord of the

Rings is a great example of team

synergy.

Energy and Synergy

Positive synergy energy working

in harmony. Negative synergy is

about energy drains and painful

Synergy - The Sound of Music

What the heck is synergy?

It is the wonderful things that can be

done by a group that cannot be done

alone.

Alone, a man or a woman can live, at

most, about a hundred years.

Together, men and women create a

species that lives for millions of years.

A person, alone, can sing. A person

with a musical instrument can drum, or

play flute, or play harp, and create

harmony in so many ways. A group of

people with voices and musical

instruments can form a choir, a

symphony orchestra, a rock band.

They can follow a score, or jazz it up with improvisation.

A writer, alone, can write a novel. But he needs readers. And if a producer, a

director, a cast and crew come along, the novel can become a movie.

All great human achievements come about through synergy, or, to be more

precise, positive synergy.

Positive and Negative Synergy

Above, I evoked the wonders of

positive synergy.

But there is also negative synergy.

Two angry men get into a fistfight.

When we get together in groups and

allow government to direct our

thinking, those two angry men can

launch a war that kills millions. And

there are many other kinds of cultural

and systemic oppression, prejudice,

and hatred that last for decades,

centuries, millennia.

And this also works on a smaller scale.

A happy marriage is a wonderful thing.

A miserable marriage can feel like an

inescapable trap. A good business

partnership flourishes. Many business

efforts fall into a mess, dragging good

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collisions

Simon & Garfunkel - The Gift and

Challenge of Synergy

This great musical duo shows

how hard - and how wonderful - it

is to create positive synergy.

Positive or Negative Synergy:

What Makes the Difference?

If we try for synergy, and we don't

get it right, a big blow-out is

likely!

All 7 Habits - a Lot to Do!

Synergy happens by itself - when

we're doing all six other habits.

And the work is worth it!

Movie Magic

A great example of synergy from

about 10 years ago was Peter

Jackson's production of J. R. R.

Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. He

made 3 movies in 15 months with a

team of about 350 people. Everyone

contributed tremendous creativity and

passion.

Two artists who had spent their lives

drawing and painting images of

Tolkien's Middle Earth designed the

sets. Dozens of others turned those

images into real full-sized sets, huge

miniatures for filming, and computer-

generated (CG) graphics.

There was a team for costume design

and creation. There was even one

guy who spent three years making

chain mail for orcs (goblins) out of

slices of rubber hose. He wore the

fingerprints off his fingers manually

linking the loops together to build

hundreds of suits of rubber chain

mail.

Every single aspect of the movie was

approved by Peter Jackson at every

stage. For example, he suggested the

design of the Nazgul, a Pterodactyl-

like evil flying monster. An artist made

drawings; Jackson made suggestions;

the artist made changes; Jackson

approved the drawings. A modeler

people and good talent with them.

As the late Stephen Covey discusses

in Habit 6 of The 7 Habits of Highly

Effective People, positive synergy is

what it is all about, but it is incredibly

difficult to achieve and sustain.

Negative synergy is what we are stuck

with when we try for positive, and it

doesn't work.

What's the trap? And how do we get

unstuck?

Energy and Synergy

The Power Inherent inSynergy

We really begin to understand the 7

Habits when we think about how much

energy we have in life, and how much

energy we put into what we do.

How much life energy goes into

creating a great symphony orchestra,

maintaining it for a century, and

creating, playing, and enjoying all that

music? How much joyful power is

there?

How much life energy goes into

creating, selling, and using addictive

drugs? How much waste of human life

is there?

Positive synergy is what we get when

parts work together as a whole. Picture

an 18-wheeler carrying 50,000 pounds

of goods across the country.

Negative synergy is what happens

when the same parts don't work well

together. Imagine the truck engine

seizing, the truck jackknifing, people

dying.

There are two key points here:

The more parts to the system, the

more ways it can go wrong. A

truck requires more precision

engineering and better driving

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worked the drawings into 3D models,

and Jackson again suggested,

allowed revision, and approved. Then

the CG team took over, using

computers to bring the Nazgul to life.

And Peter Jackson approved the final

product.

Each department had an "approved

by Peter Jackson" rubber stamp. He

could move quickly from team to

team, getting people started, leaving

them alone to be creative, approving

their work, and leaving them alone

again.

The production team for The Lord of

the Rings was more than a well-oiled

machines. It was creative and

productive people at their best,

working long hours for 15 months, to

translate the most inspiring literature

of the 20th century into the first great

movies of the 21st.

Watch this behind-the-scenes movie

of Peter Jackson's prequel to The

Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, for a

feeling of how the cast and crew live

and work together.

Simon & Garfunkel - The Giftand Challenge of Synergy

For me, Simon & Garfunkel are an

excellent example of positive synergy,

including how difficult it is to do. Each

of them, alone, is an excellent

musician. But when they work

together, something much greater

comes into being. Listen to

Scarborough Fair on YouTube and

consider these points of synergy:

Together, two voices produce a

harmony that you don't get from

one. But watch the video closely.

Note how deeply concentrated

each of them is, shaping each

than a car.

The more energy in a system, the

worse damage when it does go

wrong. When a truck flips over,

there's a lot more destruction than

when a car loses control.

And how much the more so if we think

about an airplane. How much more

capability for wonder. How much easier

- and more disastrous - if it crashes.

It's Not Just About Crashes

The damage is not just in accidents.

As people, we tend to trap ourselves in

unhealthy habits, damaging

relationships, and destructive social

patterns. Then the excess energy of

the system hurts people, and goes on

hurting and hurting. Some of the

hurting shows up as obvious

destruction, such as the million or so

people who die each year in car

crashes worldwide. Some of it shows

up more subtly, in the lost creativity

and joy, for example, for both men and

women, through sexual stereotyping

and the limiting of human potential

based on bias and prejudice.

Take a look around us: How easy it is

to do harm. How challenging it is to create lasting beauty and wonder, health, joy,

and peace.

But we can.

Positive or Negative Synergy:What Makes the Difference?

If you've come with me this far in

looking at being an effective person

through The 7 Habits of Highly

Effective People, you see how

incredibly valuable it would be if we

could create positive synergy and not

negative synergy.

How do we do it?

The answer is going to sound

incredibly simple. We can do it, but not

directly. Synergy is a gift, a result, of

living the other 6 habits. Positive

synergy arises when we live the other

6 of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective

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sound with his mouth, listening to

the other, tuning into the song.

Harmony takes work!

This version, Scarborough Fair /

Canticle blends two songs to

create a whole new message.

It is hard to achieve synergy

between two masters. They broke

up twice because they couldn't

agree on all the details of the

music they wanted to produce.

When it works, it changes the

world. Two of Simon &

Garfunkel's reunion concerts,

including the one in Central Park

above, were two of the ten

largest musical concerts of all

time. And many of their songs,

like The Sound of Silence,

inspired the transformational

thinking of the 1960s, well worth

remembering now.

Creating synergy is almost as difficult

as "finding me an acre of land . . .

between salt water and the sea

strand" making "a cambric shirt . . .

with no seam or needlework" but it's

worth the effort. We yearn for synergy

like we yearn for true love. In fact,

true love is the ultimate in positive

synergy.

People. The 7 Habits are the

machinery of effectiveness, and

positive synergy is the gift of a well-run

machine. But when that machine or

system includes human gifts, it is so

much more than a machine. All great

humanitarian and artistic ventures and

adventures arise from the gift of

people working in synergy.

To create positive synergy, we must:

Live the 7 Habits as consistently

as we can.

Be honest about our weaknesses,

and work to get better.

Say "no" to anything that is not

true synergy, that is, stick to the

"no deal" of win/win or no deal.

I picture myself as a race car driver. I

want to race, but only with an excellent

pit crew in a safe, well-tuned machine.

I want the power of creative success

with the minimum risk of an accident.

Negative synergy is the result of a

poorly run machine, system, or

relationship. When we falter in any one

of the other six habits, our positive

synergy comes crashing down. See

Table #1 for an example in a small

business, and Table #2 for an example

in a marriage.

Table #1: Business Habit Failures Leading to Synergy Failures

Habit Business failure

1 ProactivityReactivity, hostility, micromanagement,

negative busienss culture.

2 End in Mind Conflict about goals, wasted work

3 First Things First Bureaucratic slowdowns

4 Win-WinMaking money but ripping off

customers

5 Seek to UnderstandSloppy management fixes leave

problems in place

7 Self-RenewalBurn out people's talent, also

equipment failure and safety problems.

A failure in any one of the 7 Habits creates a failure of synergy, vastly reducing the valueof a business.

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Table #2: Marriage Habit Failures Leading to Synergy Failures

Habit Marriage Failure

1 ProactivityGiving up, not trying to make it work,

blaming each other

2 End in MindNot planning for success, and life's

events take you down

3 First Things First Getting overwhelmed and losing the joy

4 Win-Win Fighting, blaming, avoiding, arguing

5 Seek to UnderstandNo ability to work out problems -

divorce

7 Self-Renewal Exhaustion, misery, all the joy is gone

Sadly, how many marriages look like this, rather than the vision of joy we all have ingetting married!

All 7 Habits - a Lot to Do!

Of course, living all 7 Habits to achieve and maintain synergy only sounds simple if

you've studied each of them in depth, and put each of them into practice, then

you've dis-assembled your entire life and rebuilt your entire life from the inside out.

So, in a way, living the 7 Habits is like stripping down an old car and turning it into

a classic race car. Only you're the car!

Habit change is a process of awareness, diagnosis, and repair.

What makes it so hard?

Well, wouldn't it be hard to repair a classic race car while you're driving it down the

road?

Truly learning the 7 Habits takes years. I've been at it for 17 years, and I'm still

growing with it. Indeed, I think it is the journey of a lifetime.

How do we keep improving our habits, developing our character, and transforming

ourselves while making life work day-to-day?

That's what Habit 7: Self-renewal, is all about.

More Articles About the Seven Habits

This article is one in a series about Stephen R. Covey's Seven Habits of Highly

Effective People. This is one of my most popular series, so I wanted to give you

links that will let you learn all the habits, and also read more about how to make

them work.

This series was inspired by the news of Stephen Covey passing away. Here is my

Eulogy for Stephen R. Covey who was on the US News & World Report's list of the

50 most powerful people in the US for a number of years.

Here is my overview of how to achieve Leadership Success with the Seven Habits.

Inside that article, you will find a link to a detailed article about each of the Seven

Habits.

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Last updated on March 12, 2013