“Synergy is better than my way or your way. It’s our way.” ~Stephen Covey

Yves Morieux has a world-class pedigree: Director of The Boston Consulting Group’s Institute for Organization, he is an expert in corporate transformation, has a PhD in industrial marketing, and has worked with over 500 companies around the world.

He is also passionate about his message: We’ve over-complicated our companies, creating levels of control and compliance that stymie collaboration initiatives. Unruly beasts.

In his TED talk, Morieux expounds on “smart simplicity” that seeks productivity through synergy as described in his book, Six Simple Rules: How to Manage Complexity Without Getting Complicated.

Morieux points out that the global economy has grown at a 1% rate since 1995 a rate that predicts it will take three generations to double a family’s standard of living, versus it doubling each generation only one generation ago.

He explains: “Smart simplicity seeks to unlock productivity by creating an environment in which employees are able to both exercise their autonomy and work together. Autonomy harnesses people’s flexibility and agility, while cooperation multiplies the effects of their efforts through synergy. When people cooperate, they require fewer resources.”

Morieux goes on to develop the analogy of a relay race and posits that perhaps the handing off of the baton between runners is equally as important, if not more so, than how fast their individual legs move: the trust between the four runners is not only critical, it’s unquantifiable.

Synergy is not always about the sum of the parts, but rather the the way the parts work together.

Developing trust in the trenches of any organization is a hard slog; wadding one’s way through the swamp of rules/layers/metrics/compliances and other impediments not only reduces productivity, it undermines collaborative efforts.

This is especially true in organizations led by people who rely on anachronistic command and control strategies, based on the “holy trinity”—clarity, measurement, and accountability—a system, Morieux emphasizes, that sets up a culture of blame in a matrix destined to fail. We care more about preparing for failure than we do about building for success.

As Peter Drucker once remarked, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast any day.”

I am heartened to find such passion in someone so experienced in the futility of fighting antiquated management systems.

Maybe it’s time to listen to people like Morieux. And Drucker. And Peters and Covey and a host of others.

Maybe it’s time to change the system.

Maybe the answer to improving cooperation is to create a culture where it’s safer to seek synergy than scapegoats.

“Those who have learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.” ~Charles Darwin