Synergy All Around

Spreadsheet Nerd

spreadsheet tower

I am a spreadsheet kind of girl!  I have yet to meet a spreadsheet I didn’t want to figure out or tweak.  You might even call me a spreadsheet nerd.

Those of us who like to live in the tidy world of numbers, however, can sometimes lose sight of the bigger picture.  Keeping our pages “pretty” and our formulas “pure” can seem more important than factoring in shades of grey.

Let’s not Stack the Deck

While I like to think you need at least one person like me on every project, the benefits of not always stacking the team in our favor became clear to me (once again) while working on the groupings for my neighborhood’s progressive dinner.

Let me explain:  after we thought we had finished putting the groups together we realized that we had forgotten to place one couple.  As a somewhat hyper number-type my inclination was to fix our problem right away.  How would I sleep knowing there were loose ends lying about?

Saner minds prevailed.  The most laid-back members of our little team said not to worry, there would be movement among participants and things would surely work themselves out.  YIKES.

Sure enough there was some movement within groups:  a few late-comers and a few who dropped out.  However, about a week before going live we did feel the need for one last push.  Eventually those loose ends started to niggle at others…..And I am the first to admit that waiting to pull things together was a wise decision.

The synergies within our committee mirror what we were trying to accomplish within dinner groupings. We strove to mix young and old, new and long-time residents and, perhaps most importantly introduce people to each other. After all, if you want to have dinner with your friends have a dinner party.

Synergy at Work

These synergies pop up daily in all aspects of life.  I was recently speaking with a very accomplished older lady about some of her volunteer work.  Having worked with me, she knows that I often deal in spreadsheets.  She shared a story about joining a board full of “number people”.  At first she was terribly intimidated.  However, she soon realized that she brought a depth of understanding of the population the board was meant to serve that the best spreadsheet could never capture.

Ultimately this comes back to the conventional wisdom that most of the time a group makes a better decision than do the individuals that comprise the group.  I would hazard a guess that the more diverse the skill sets and perspectives of the members of the group the better their ultimate outcome.

As uncomfortable as it may be surround yourself with people who think and operate differently than you do, the reality is that how we play off and leverage our differences is what helps us achieve the most synergistic results.  So next time one of us spreadsheet nerds is driving you crazy:  listen, push back and work together.