Brian Johnson explores synergy through three stories: Ellen Langer's numeral experiment, Stephen Covey's plant and wood examples, and Dave Ramsey's Belgian draft horses pulling far more together than alone. One plus one can equal four when people combine their strengths.
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another Optimize plus one. Not too long ago we talked about the fact that one plus one doesn't always equal two. In fact, as Ellen Langer tells us, the answer to the question what's one plus one? Is? It depends. Add the Arabic numeral one to another Arabic numeral one and we get two. But add one piece of gum to another and we get one. Another example we could have used in that one was the one one three. Synergy goodness Stephen Covey talks about in the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Recall his thoughts on the subject. I quote, synergy is everywhere in nature. If you plant two plants close together, the roots commingle and improve the quality of the soil so that both plants will grow better than than if they were separated. If you put two pieces of wood together, they will hold much more than the total weight held by each separately. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. One plus one equals three or more. So one plus one equals three or more. For more on the or more goodness, let's turn to some Dave Ramsey wisdom from Entre Leadership, where he gives us another astonishing example of the power of teamwork making the dream work. Here's how he puts it. I quote 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 to 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 not only 24,000 pounds, but will hit 30 to 32,000 pounds. The unified pair can pull four times as much as a single horse. They can pull an extra £8,000 simply by being unified. But unity is never simple or easy. End quote One plus one equals two, except when it equals three or four or more. Let's pull together today.
