One goal I have as a business owner is to build a business that can run without me. When I talk to clients about this, they always seem a little confused. It is a little counterintuitive to what we’ve come to understand as business owners, after all. Many of us believe that we have to involve ourselves in every area of our business to know what is happening.

Well, this does not have to be the case. Actually, if you wish to reach genuine success with your business, your business should function in a way that does not require you to be there. Our businesses should operate like a well-oiled machine, with all the parts and pieces running in an automated way. Everyone in your team should have their roles and should execute them routinely so that the business is running efficiently to create profits.

Once we do this, we can then achieve synergy.

This is a core foundation of ActionCOACH’s teachings and is the fifth step in our “6 Steps to a Better Business” process. You can learn more about our 6 Steps here.

But basically, this is a cumulation of all your efforts to produce significant results.

What is Synergy?

We at ActionCOACH defines synergy as, “The working together of two things to produce a result greater than the sum of the individual things.”

The equation we like to use is 1+1=4. Trust us, our math is not wrong in this case.

The reason 1+1 equals 4, not 2, is because the product should be greater than what we individually bring to the table.

So if you are combining efforts with your team and you are all bringing unique skills to the table, the equation would look like this:

You + Team = More Profits, More Sales, Higher Margins, etc.

The key to achieving synergy is to make your business run smoothly and keep it that way.

Maintaining Synergy in Your Company

Once your business is running smoothly and you have a team and systems in place to handle day-to-day operations, your focus should then be on maintaining the business you’ve built.

At this stage, we suggest hiring a management team to oversee your operations. As we’ve previously established, you can not be everywhere at once and you cannot have a hand in every aspect of your business while giving it your full effort. Hiring a management team puts people in place who can take the lead of other team members, enforce the vision and goals, and oversee specific areas of your business. The members of the management team can then report back to you on the progress of your business and report any issues, current or forthcoming.

Quarterly Business Reviews With Your Team

We suggest scheduling quarterly reviews with your management team to ensure that your team is meeting its goals. This is a good time to remind them of the vision and goals for the company and make sure they are aligned with them. This is also the time to refresh goals, develop strategies to meet them, and develop a business plan.

The Quarterly Business Review starts with a review of your business goals and evaluating if they are being accomplished, the dollar impact, and who handles what.

Then you do an organizational review where we review operations (production, waste, new development), sales and marketing efforts, and talent and time management.

This will give you an understanding of the organization’s current position and what still needs to be achieved.

Items you can also use in the review include:

• Customer Input — Sales trends, new product development, component technology trends, outsourcing strategy and objectives
• Sales history of customer
• Quality performance— Product returns, corrective actions
• Delivery performance and any issues affecting deliveries
• Program Performance — design for manufacturing, ECO, ADR, documentation
• Prototyping – Verification – Validation
• Quotations — Information required/desired, quote turnaround time, new product quote, quote of an existing product(s), quote clarity/format
• Cost reduction initiative — Cost savings, other issues (invoicing, terms, etc.)
• Inventory levels
• New Program Introductions
• Goals and objectives

For our business to remain successful, we must work in synergy. You can achieve this through team bonding exercises and training that will make everyone feel included and encourage continuity without departmental division.

Many of our workshops can help in this development and it is also great to look outside the system for team building events or get the team to organize regular team only events.

We hold regular events, some even monthly. Check out our event page to sign up for our next event.