Growing Capacity with Synergy
Growing Capacity with Synergy
When my husband and I started dating, our schedules were on opposite ends of the spectrum. With our work schedules, I woke up when he went to bed. We had to be very intentional with scheduling time to connect if we wanted to continue to develop our relationship. We planned three times a week to spend time together with a romantic date night, a fun playdate with friends, and a synergy session to dream together and share what was going on in our lives. Synergy is two or more coming together to produce greater results than they could have accomplished separately. A weekly synergy session with the right person (or people) powerfully moves us towards our vision.
Synergized Teamwork
In EntreLeadership, Dave Ramsey drives home the power of synergized teamwork. Belgian Draft horses can pull 8,000 pounds independently, but they can pull three times as much when two horses pull together. Those are some great returns. Furthermore, if the team trains together, their pull power increases to 32,000 pounds, which is a mind-blowing quadruple increase. Like a synchronized draft horse team, our capacity increases when we set aside time to synergize with our key people.
Crafting the Agenda: Schedule, Budget, Goals, and Optimizations
Setting up a synergy session is simple and will feel natural with time and practice. Use this time to cover the pertinent items for your group. Stay flexible with structure and agenda when you’re getting started. I’ve learned less is more. My husband and I have been meeting weekly for almost a decade so we know our essentials: schedule, budget, goals, and system optimizations. We sit down with our planners and digital calendar to plan for special events or appointments. We discuss the week’s agenda, transfer the pertinent events from our shared digital calendar into our planners, and then verify the support and resources needed for the week ahead. Next, we review our monthly budget to gauge if we are on track and discuss any necessary adjustments. Then, we’ll share progress and obstacles for our main goal, core habits, and passion projects. Finally, we wrap up the session with anything that we are working on optimizing. Last year we developed and implemented two new systems: (1) a housekeeping schedule for cleaning, maintenance, and improvements and (2) a standard meal plan, grocery shopping list, and healthy nutrition protocol. What’s important enough to make the essentials list on your agenda?
Sharing a Unified Vision and Values
Synergy sessions are most effective in small groups with a unified vision and values. If you’re married, your spouse should be on your list. Building a life together is much easier when you’re on the same page… chapter… book… or genre. You get the point. Although we’ll probably have unique goals and callings, awareness of the small stuff happening in each others’ lives helps us provide better support for the big stuff. We can also use these synergy sessions to model healthy communication, responsible stewardship, and loving accountability for the next generation. Synergy sessions are important for singles too. Pick a buddy with a similar vision for growth, and hold each accountable. When I was a teenager, one of my best friends, James, and I met weekly at 6 AM at Waffle House to set goals, share challenges, and provide accountability. Those meetings were invaluable, and I can’t tell you how often I stayed up late the night before to accomplish everything I told him I would have done. We are meant to do life together, so figure out which perfectly imperfect people you want to share life with on a deeper level and get started.
Be Flexibly Consistent
There’s no universally perfect time to synergize, so pick a time that works best for the group. Consistency creates traction. For people with shifting schedules, put it on the calendar as early as possible and protect that time like you would any other important appointment. For those of us with more consistent schedules, don’t skip even if you have to do a two-minute micro synergy check-in. This will serve as a placeholder to solidify the habit even when you’re short on time. Keep it short enough to be enjoyable for the person with the shortest attention span, and long enough to be effective for meaningful progress. Ours is typically thirty minutes, with the point of diminishing returns being around forty-five minutes.
Synergy Prompts
It’s time to get into the details! Coordinate a time, add it to the calendar, create a few bullet point prompts, and just get started. Feel free to borrow this outline as you determine what’s important for your group to discuss.
Schedule Logistics: 5 minutes
What important dates and milestones are on the calendar for this month?
What appointments and meetings are on the calendar for this week?
Are there any pending schedule changes or potential pivots to prepare for this week?
Does anyone need additional resources or support this week?
Financial Planning: 5 minutes (know your dollars, but share percentages if it’s more appropriate for the group)
What’s our projected income? How much can we keep to save or invest? How can we increase the margin for planned giving and unplanned generosity?
How much are we spending on essentials for living? How much are we spending on lifestyle expenses we truly value?
Where are we wasting money on items we don’t value?
How long can we live comfortably if our income stops today? Can we cover an unforeseen expense or emergency?
Goals Progress: 10 minutes
What is everyone’s main goal during this season?
What were some challenges from this past week? How did you handle them?
Which habits, actions, and resources are important this week to make progress toward the goal?
How can we best support, challenge, and encourage you?
System Optimizations: 10 minutes
What is something we want and can improve together?
What’s our vision for how this system can work?
In the current system (if applicable): What’s working? What’s broken? What’s missing? What’s confusing?
What are the obstacles to optimizing this system AND how will overcome them?
Sharing Life
Over the years, the name has changed from Family Meeting to Home Team Huddle to Synergy Session. We’ve also played around with the agenda, duration, and meeting time to determine what works best for us. We’re productive individuals, but our meaningful production capacity is significantly higher when we synergize. It’s evident when we skip our synergy session. Working towards a vision with the support of someone we love and respect has a powerful effect. We often let the details prevent us from getting started, but committing to consistently share all the mundane, celebratory, and challenging moments is the whole point of doing life together. Sharing our lives with the right people multiplies our capacity.
What’s one step you can take today to set up a consistent, recurring time to connect with the people who matter most?
Faith Encouragement:
Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 - Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor: If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up.
Acts 2:44 - All the believers were together and had everything in common.
Dave Ramsey: “One of the largest, strongest horses in the world is the Belgian draft horse. Competitions are held to see which horse can pull the most and one Belgian can pull 8,000 pounds. The weird thing is if you put two Belgian horses in the harness who are strangers to each other, together they can pull 20,000 – 24,000 pounds. Two can pull not twice as much as one but three times as much as one. This example represents the power of synergy. However, if the two horses are raised and trained together they learn to pull and think as one. The trained, and therefore unified, pair can pull 30,000 – 32,000 pounds, almost four times as much as a single horse.”