E-Commerce businesses have a strong online presence.  They have to.  The Internet is their marketplace.  They must have a robust website, strong SEO, social media pages, blogs, vlogs, podcasts, content placement, PPC and retargeting advertising, etc.  That makes perfect sense. 

But what about companies that provide a product or service that cannot be bought, sold, provided or delivered online?  Property Inspector.  Aesthetician.  Automobile mechanic.  Dentist.  Attorney.  Engineer.  It might be a product or service that can’t even be quoted online.  Landscaper.  Commercial Real Estate Broker.  General Contractor.  Event Coordinator.  Accountant.  Such companies get most of their business from word-of-mouth referrals, repeat business and networking.  While those businesses recognize the need to have a website, they may not necessarily see the need for a robust, current, active and engaging online presence.  That is a mistake.

Abraham Lincoln.  Winston Churchill.  Martin Luther King, Jr.  John F. Kennedy, Jr.   Maya Angelou.  Ronald Reagan.   Nelson Mandela.  Susan B. Anthony.  Fred Rogers.  What these very different people from vastly different experiences, cultures, occupations, places and times share in common is that they were all great orators.  We don’t have to necessarily agree with what they said to at least acknowledge that how they said it was highly impactful.  They all understood and mastered the art of conversation.  They could effectively deliver the meaning of what they were saying to their audience.  Part of that was not just by the words they chose, but by how they said what they said. 

Communication is fraught with misunderstandings, misfires, miscommunications and mishaps.  It’s akin to the Abbot and Costello radio comedy skit from 1938 titled “Who’s On First?”.  The premise of the sketch is that Abbott is identifying the players on a baseball team for Costello.  But the players’ names simultaneously serve as the basis for questions and responses.  For example, “Who is the first baseman?” and “The first baseman is Who.”  This leads to repeated misinterpretations and growing frustration between the performers.

You talk a lot.  Don’t worry, it’s not just you.  People talk a lot, regardless of gender.  That’s a scientific fact.  James Pennebaker, the chairperson of the University of Texas at Austin’s psychology department, and his colleagues at the University of Arizona in Tucson collected data for over a decade which looked at how much people talk. 

In one study published in 2007 in the journal Science, researchers sampled the talking patterns of 396 university students (210 women and 186 men) at colleges in Texas, Arizona and Mexico (345 Americans and 51 Mexicans).  To do this, they used a device Pennebaker created called an EAR (Electronically Activated Recorder).  It is a digital recorder that can be stored in a sheath similar to a case for glasses in a person’s purse or pocket.  The EAR captured 30 seconds of ambient noise (including conversations) every 12.5 minutes for a day.  The students in the study could not tamper with the recordings.  Based on the data collected, researchers then estimated the total number of words that each student spoke daily, assuming they were awake 17 of 24 hours.  In most of the samples, the average number of words spoken by men and women were about the same.  The most economical speaker spoke about 500 words daily and the most verbose spoke a whopping 47,000 words a day.  But, on average, it came out to be about the same:  16,215 words a day for women and 15,669 words spoken a day for men (a statistically insignificant difference).  

Getting rid of things that are “no longer needed or useful” is what administrators, accountants and consultants are constantly trying to do.  They point out ways to “cut the fat” and create lean businesses with minimal waste and without superfluous people or processes.  In fact, the second principle of building a lean, agile business is to “cut waste”, according to LivePlan.  Business journals, such as Entrepreneur, Harvard Business Review, and Forbes, regularly tout the need for startup and small businesses to be lean, avoid waste, and eliminate or avoid superfluous processes and positions.  And, following this mandate, it would follow that redundant systems, processes and people should be eliminated.  And yet there is another management philosophy that advocates for businesses having redundant systems, processes and people.  So which is it?  Is redundancy a good thing or bad thing for business?

Businesses have so many options, choices and models from which to choose when it comes to strategies, software, systems, processes, and approaches.  As a result, decisions typically result in outcomes that are highly unpredictable, unreliable, time consuming and error-prone.  On the flip side of the coin, businesses faced with vast choices and options often become plagued by frustration, friction, indecisiveness, decision fatigue, apathy and gridlock.  And many things can make the decision-making process even harder.  Unforeseen innovations.  Pace of change.  Market shifts.  Economic conditions.  Staffing mistakes.  Inability to see or grasp all of the variables.  But businesses need their decision-making to be quick, precise, and mindful of the entirety of their business.  So what is a business to do?  How can a business better handle the decision-making process?  

For business, synergy is a team amplifier.  Instead of 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 5.  Synergy makes 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 10 or 15 or 20 or 50.  It happens when all of the members of the team are in sync and able to work together in a way that magnifies each individual’s contributions as they work together and minimizes their friction and waste.  Synergy is about economy of motion and effort while capitalizing on opportunities in unique ways and eliminating or reducing waste of time and energy.  It’s about synchronicity, ability to build on one another with minimal effort, and respect and trust for what each brings to the table. 

Greek philosophers held the belief that “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”  This is, in fact, the underlying premise of synergy.  In fact, the word synergy comes from the Latin word, synergia, which is derived from the Greek word, synergos, meaning “to work together” or “to collaborate.”  At its core, synergy is about effectively connecting, communicating, and collaborating with cross-functional partners in order that together they are significantly better and greater than what they can each do individually but for the good of the whole.  Synergy is how a team grows together to achieve higher levels of potential and satisfaction while accomplishing even greater things for the collective.  When they are following, supporting and sustaining the same thought values, principles and processes, a team of 10 is always more powerful and effective and will always outperform 10 individuals each with their own thought values, principles and processes.  But when they do that enough times, they achieve a level of harmony that produces even greater results for the whole.  It’s rare and magical and something that every organization, company or team should aspire to achieve.

Some people spend a lifetime talking about success.  Others go on to achieve it.  John Robert Wooden did both.  Considered one of the greatest NCAA basketball head coaches of all time, he won many games as both a player and an NCAA coach.  Inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as a player in 1960 and as a coach in 1973 — the first person ever to be chosen in both categories – he was wildly successful in his career.  But he also went on to memorialize his strategies for success in a system he dubbed the Pyramid of Success and became a prolific speaker on how to be successful.  He not only talked a lot about success, but he also taught others how to be successful.  He was the epitome of “teach what you know.” 

In the world of sports, John Robert Wooden is considered one of the greatest NCAA basketball head coaches of all time. Nicknamed the “Wizard of Westwood”, he won ten National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) national championships in a 12-year period as head coach for the UCLA Bruins, including a record seven in a row. No other team has won more than four in a row in Division I college men’s or women’s basketball. During that period, his teams won an NCAA men’s basketball record 88 consecutive games. Wooden won the prestigious Henry Iba Award as national coach of the year a record seven times and won the AP award five times. Wooden, who had also been a basketball player before he was a coach, was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as a player in 1960 and as a coach in 1973, the first person ever to be chosen in both categories.