Richard Shatto’s Blog

SYNERGY SQUARED January 26, 2009

The past few years a has truth occured to me. This epiphany has changed strategically the way I will provide advice and consultation. It is a paradigm truth I call WHO Squares WHAT.  Simply put, who you know exponentially increases what you know. One person has a defined capacity of knowledge and understanding, but a network of multidisciplinary experts increases exponetially that knowledge capacity. This is not a new concept.

For years Ivy League school collegues have banded together as fraternity’s of friends and business associates to network with one another and share expertise and business acumen. As formal format for business consultation it is less well known, but does exist. The concept can work for anyone in almost any business venture, but for some reason, more than often it does not.

Think about the friends you knew in high school. Now consider how much their 15-18 years of life actually provided as a basis of understanding business or even about life. Some more than others, but certainly a defined amount at that point. Now think about college or university. By the end of this phase of life, your friends will know more, but it is still defined. At this point it is also beginning to fragment into differing disciplines. Each individual and commensurate association is beginning to move into its own unique direction.As our lives and careers continue, they develop more specific forms of skill, knowledge and expertise in a variety of divergent disciplines.

Now fast forward to the present. You are significantly farther along in your own life and career skill set. You have learned a unique, but defined, universe of skills from a specifically defined life of experience and learning. But, so has each one of your historical associates, collegues and friends. Think of the combined body of experiential knowledge and skill represented by the sum of all those acquaintances. It’s astounding! What if there were a way to harness that combined universe of experience and channel it exactly where it is needed, when it is needed, to exactly who (or what) and from whom it is needed.

That’s synergy squared — an Integrated Experience Network that extends your strategic knowledge and skill base exponentially farther than is singularly possible. It’s about bringing to the table world-class expertise for almost anything, anywhere, at anytime.

So, as you get older, don’t think yourself less valuable. The combined knowledge of your exteneded network can make your knowledge channel almost endless. The question is: How do we harness, channel and manage it?