Principle-Centered Leadership
by Stephen R. Covey
Developing a habit of synergizing will improve
the quality of all your processes.
Synergize for Quality
What ultimate behavior is necessary to promote the interdependence required
to improve the quality of all processes, products and services within organizations?
Interdependent effectiveness develops by practicing the sixth of the Seven
Habits: Synergize. It incorporates and requires practicing all the other
Habits.
Synergy requires that "we together can accomplish more than any of
us alone." It demands a genuine, inside-out commitment to valuing differences
and respecting others' opinions. Seeing differences as a source of strength
lies at the heart of synergy.
Think of the fundamental quality proc-esses in your organization requiring
significant interdependence:
Make and implement decisions.
Solve present and prevent future problems.
Develop, identify and take advantage of opportunities.
Analyze, interpret and act on customer and
other stakeholder feedback.
Create innovations in products and services.
Improve continuously all other systems and
processes.
The quality of results from all of these processes depends upon the quality
of synergistic collaboration and cooperation. Involvement creates commitment.
Through involving the right people in the right way at the right time, we
engage our creative and intellectual resources to produce higher-quality,
longer-lasting results than any of us could achieve acting alone.
Unfortunately, the opposite behavior occurs too often in many organizations.
The way many groups interact can most kindly be described as painful. They
have guarded opinions, saying one thing while really believing another.
They see which way the key executives are leaning on the issue before taking
a stand. They even participate in heated debates
How do we develop a synergistic culture and overcome these obstacles? The
process of synergizing includes nurturing key conditions that support interdependent
behaviors and more effective outcomes among all organizational divisions
and stakeholders:
Individual private victory: Private victory
means the self-discipline that develops when people clearly identify the
core values and principles that drive their behavior. They proactively respond
to others' behavior and initiate their own prioritized actions and activities
according to those values. They accept full responsibility for their own
behavior without blaming and accusing others.
Win-win thinking and third alternatives: The
parties sincerely commit to mutual benefit and a willingness to seek third
alternatives. Cooperative interdependence replaces defensive, competitive
independence.
Open communication-seeking first to understand:
People exercise the strength to overcome the powerful drive first to defend
their own positions and to attack those of others. Ego investment is subordinated
to open and honest discussion.
Trustworthiness and trust-character: Trust
flows from the experience of the group with each others' trustworthiness-both
their character and competence. Key character requirements include: Integrity
to principles and core values, maturity and an abundance mentality in contrast
to scarcity thinking.
Trustworthiness and trust-competence: The
parties possess a complementary level of knowledge, data and expertise.
They recognize their own respectively different backgrounds. Relevant data
is made available to everyone. Appropriately diverse and complementary backgrounds
are important to fertilize the very ingenuity that the process of synergizing
is intended to cultivate.
Commitment of time and patience: Under deadline-driven
pressures, internally or externally imposed, the process of synergizing
can collapse into a power-driven result. While a balance must be developed
between "ready, fire, aim" and "ready, aim, aim, aim . .
.," synergistic investment in sufficient time and patience with the
appropriate parties can be the most time-effective approach possible.
Synergizing is not necessarily easy; it is definitely worth the investment.
Developing a habit of synergizing and improving the process means developing
these conditions more consistently and completely. Doing so results in improving
the quality of all other processes.
About the author
Stephen R. Covey is chairman of the Covey Leadership Center and author
of Principle-Centered Leadership and the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
Keith A. Gulledge is vice president and senior consultant with Covey Leadership
Center's Professional Resource Group.
© 1995 Covey Leadership Center. For more information, telephone (800)
553-8889.
