Loading...
 
Skip to main content

Team synergy

(return to Co-creative Learning Teams or see some keywords)

The Whole Course
  1. Systems Thinking
  2. Self-regulation
  3. Self-coordination
  4. Living systems
  5. Team consciousness
  6. Team synergy
  7. Team sizes
  8. Team diversity
  9. Lucky Teams
  10. Team Tools

6. Team Synergy

Digging Hole

Q: 3 men take 2 days to dig a hole - how long would 7 men take?"
  1. This traditional adding-up question is still being given to school kids.
  2. But it only makes sense if all the men are working at the same pace.
  3. The arithmetical logic would fail if they worked together as a team.
  4. Perhaps human reason has been influenced by how money works.
  5. It would explain why we can't fully understand the logic of synergy.
  6. We can't make sense of co-creative teamwork because it doesn't add up)!

Defining synergy

  1. The original Greek word for synergy simply meant working together.
  2. Aristotle went further by showing that wholes had emergent properties.
    • the whole is something besides the parts. Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book VIII, 1045a.8–10
  3. Buckminster Fuller (1971) emphasised synergy's capricious nature, defining it as:
    • the behaviour of whole systems unpredicted by
    • the behaviour of their parts taken separately
  4. Synergy often surprises us.

Teams with low synergy

  1. A team member's first responsibility is not to stop the team from flourishing.
  2. One team member can easily kill the creative optimism of collaborators.
  3. This may not be the result of careless mischief or wilful sabotage.
    • e.g. Innovator types and adaptor types may not understand one another (Kirton, 1980).
    • This can cause friction that results in needless argument or unhelpful conflict.
    • see The Emulsifier
  4. A team consisting of very similar, highly competitive super-achievers can reduce synergy.
    • Apollo Syndrome shows that can undermine teamwork studies of similar super-achievers
  5. Researchers found that team spirit is impaired by ego and competition.
  6. Relationships are the source of synergies within the team.

Types of synergy

  1. The unpredictability of synergies explains why we need co-creativity.
  2. If everything is changing we need creativity for self-regulation.
  3. We also need co-creativity for team-coordination.

Frugal and Generous synergies

Noun Penguin 3087865 Noun Penguin 5585217 Noun Penguin Reversed 6064099 Noun Penguin 6064110 Noun Penguin Reversed 3087865

  1. By huddling together Emperor penguins keep warmer than they otherwise would.
  2. As no external creatures benefit from this we might call it a frugal synergy
  3. Other types of also benefit the neighbourhood so we call them generous synergies
  4. See examples in synergies-of-synergies.

Relational thinking

One White Bit Noun Abacus 7875574

  1. The main purpose of using teams is to outperform individuals.
  2. And the reason teams can outperform individuals is synergy.
  3. In teamwork relationships are as important as individuals.
  4. If we apply arithmetic to relationships we can get surprising results.
  5. In the 'digging holes' example, each digger is isolated from the rest.

Team responsibilities

  1. In a duo of 2 diggers, each would be 50% responsible for the result.
  2. Suppose this was a co-creative duo (i.e. a team of 2)
  3. In effect, you would have 2 players and a creative relationship.
  4. So neither could take 100% credit for their output...
  5. Yet each would carry 100% responsibility for the relationship.
  6. (because each has the power to make it succeed or to fail).

How each team member sees it

  1. Each team member has a potential relationship with every other team mate.
  2. This means nurturing (n-1) relationships, where n is the number of members.
  3. As we saw - in a co-creative team each member is 100% responsible.
  4. A team of 3 has 3 potential relationships, so each member is 66.6% responsible
  5. A team of 4 has 6 potential relationships so each member is 50% responsible
  6. A team of 5 has 10 potential relationships so each member is 40% responsible
  7. This confirms that smaller teams mean greater proportionate responsibility.

Further reading

Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book VIII, 1045a.8–10 - "in the case of all things which have several parts and in which the totality is not, as it were, a mere heap, but the whole is something besides the parts, there is a cause; for even in bodies contact is the cause of unity in some cases, and in others viscosity or some other such quality.''

⇒ go to NEXT SESSION or return to The School of Co-creation

This content is licensed under the terms of the Copyright.