This past week I had the opportunity to partake in a 3-day event where three countries came together to meet and talk business. Our company sells products to foreign governments for use in their military branches, with some going through the U.S. government first. Unfortunately, I cannot say what the product is and what countries. For the sake of this blog I am going to say we sell oranges, and the other two countries involved were Zimbabwe and Mookie.
Zimbabwe already owns some of our oranges and now wants to upgrade to super oranges. Our team knew the proper and customs and courtesies to use and the meet and greet went great. Once the briefings started is when we started having some issues. The representatives from Zimbabwe would just start talking among themselves in their native language while one of our guys were briefing. Or they would ask a question in broken English and our guys would answer the question even before it was fully asked. By the end of the first day, I was looking up what the opposite word for synergy was. We were frustrated and failing.
Day 2 started and the first thing Zimbabwe wanted was to be able to finish the meeting by the end of the day and not go into day 3. We had to hunt down briefers to make sure they could brief early. Somehow, we pulled it off and I was surprised that our customer left happy because I could not tell that they were.
After Zimbabwe and Mookie left, our team sat down for a debrief, where we talked about the good, bad, and the ugly. We had some team work but no synergy. We realized our mistakes so that we do not make them again.
So, what is the word for the opposite of synergy? What I found is that synergy does not have an opposite. “A synergy is a special type of combination where the resulting entity is greater than the sum of its parts. … Synergy as a special case of combination, does not have an antonym – fruit is a special case of vegetable, but one does not say there is an opposite to fruit” (La Belle, 2018).
References:
LaBelle, M. (2018). Retrieved from: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-opposite-of-synergy
Picture. Retrieved 29 Sep 2018 from: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjbZTXhOHdAhUD61MKHfvkDwIQjRx6BAgBEAU&url=https%3A%2F%2Fdiversipro.wordpress.com%2F2014%2F02%2F18%2Fdiverse-teams%2F&psig=AOvVaw3Ci5b9WigRZgLT38HBF0u4&ust=1538337343132056
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