Buzzword Bullshit: Synergy

It's everywhere. It is used when bodies come together for a beneficial outcome. It is used when the speaker has no idea how to articulate a concept. It cannot be avoided.

It is "Synergy."

This poor, innocent little word. Two parts Greek god, one part Alan Parsons Project song title. We hear it so often now that we've even stopped flinching when douchebags use it. But have we paused to wonder what it really means? What was its original use before the dark forces of idiocy co-opted it? Can we restore it to its former glory?

As it turns out - synergy's origins lie in Greece (along with democracy, tzatziki, windex, and swarthy hirsute men) in the word syn-ergos, or "working together."

An easy-going word, this original "synergy" simply liked team sports. But then this man began the change.

Coining the term "synergistics" - which is seemingly defined [by Wikipedia] as "an encompassing term which he used broadly as a metaphoric language for communicating experiences using geometric concepts and, more specifically, to reference the empirical study of systems in transformation, with an emphasis on total system behavior unpredicted by the behavior of any isolated components" - Buckminster began the downfall of this word. In one vicious stroke of the pen the word no longer meant "working together" - now it had significance and discovery of full system effects greater than the isolated elements!

Uh oh.

Plus it had some really technical descriptions attached to it.

So now we see it used in a variety of situations. In drugs - "synergy" refers to two drugs interacting to magnify their respective side effects (yay?) There is also pest synergy, toxicological synergy and so on and so on. I'm willing to sort of buy into these ideas - after all, the two bodies interacting create a more powerful effect than other one on its own. I guess that works.

Where the bullshit really hits the fan (in an act that we might define as synergy) is when people with a straight, unflinching face (soon to be punched) refer to "human" or "corporate" synergy. The human synergy effect goes like this:

Bob wants a cherry from the cherry tree, but he can't reach it! So Steve comes over and stands on Bob's shoulders. Combined, they can reach the cherries.

We had a word for this - cooperation - a much better word, might I add.

But we descend further into madness.

Corporate synergy is described like this:

Corporation A acquires Corporation B for added financial benefits.

We have a word for this too - takeover. There's no happy cooperation for corporations. They compete with one another and when one corporation merges into another, the world knows perfectly well that one corporation simply bested the other.

In this respect, synergy has lost its value. Nowadays, we see Synergy sub in for a number of other words:

Bullying

Nepotism

Hostile Takeover

Power Grab

Theft

We've allowed this word to enter such a silly array of usages that it no longer holds any value. It is now simply a word used by people who don't know what they actually want to say or are too ashamed or spineless to call a situation out for what it is.

As an MBA, you're going to hear it a lot. Learn to control the flinch.