Greater Than the Sum of Our Partners
Why we can’t do this alone
I don’t like the word “synergy”.
Among cliché corporate speak, “synergy” is an all-time classic, ranking right up there with “bio-break” and “deep-dive”.
The problem is that it’s a great word, and I’m not sure that we have another in the English language that quite captures its meaning. Here’s its dictionary definition for anyone unfamiliar with the term outside of buzzword bingo:
The interaction or cooperation of two or more organizations, substances, or other agents to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects.
Like I said…great word.
I’ve been thinking a lot about synergy lately, especially given a recent SEA Change assignment that had our cohort lay out every partner and stakeholder we could think of — we identified over 30 groups of stakeholders; a list of individual organizations would likely have included dozens more.
A colleague also recently shared this article with me on healthy tension in product teams from the Intercom blog. The author tactfully avoided the word “synergy”, but its connotation is obvious. The article uses a geodesic dome as a metaphor for effective product teams:
Simply by arranging the struts in the correct relation to each other, something much stronger and bigger than its individual parts can be created. Each part pushes and pulls against the others in such a way that creates something incredibly effective.
If that’s not synergy, I’m not sure what is.
So you know what? I’m going for it. Let’s talk about synergy.
A Wide Web of Dreamer Support
I’ve written a lot about DACA Time’s vision and how we’re working towards achieving it. We have admittedly lofty goals — big rocks to move in small increments — and we’re confident we can make an impact.
But we have to acknowledge that the challenges facing Dreamers in applying for and receiving the protections of DACA represent only one slice of their barriers to success. Even after receiving DACA, they face additional hurdles along the road to prosperity, including restrictions on travel, a lack of access to federal (and in many cases state) financial aid for education, and limitations on obtaining professional licenses.
In other words, there’s an ecosystem of sociopolitical forces at work that may either benefit or hinder Dreamers, and trying to tackle them all would spread at least our small team so thin we’d likely fail at solving any individual problem let alone solving all of them.
Fortunately, there’s also an ecosystem of people and organizations who are passionate about helping Dreamers succeed. In the four months since the DACA Time team organized around the problem of the cost and complexity surrounding DACA applications, we’ve spoken with a host of adjacent teams and organizations, all of whom are working in some way toward helping Dreamers succeed: CRIS, DACA Scholars, Dreamer Fund, Franklin County New American Advisory Council, FWD.us, and the Ohio Hispanic Coalition to name a handful. And there are scores more out there whom we’ve not yet contacted.
(A disclaimer is probably necessary here — we have not yet established formal partnerships with the organizations noted here, and their inclusion should not be misconstrued as implying that they’ve provided us either formal or informal support.)
Now imagine a world in which the dozens of organizations all working toward the same goal of Dreamer prosperity were in some way even loosely associated and supporting one another. Imagine how we might pool information and resources, exchange services, and refer Dreamers to organizations who can help with whatever specific problems they’re facing at a given point in time.
If we’re all pushing against the same big rocks, we’re bound to move them at least a little further collectively than we possibly could on our own.
We — and our impact — could all be greater than the sum of our partners.
And that’s synergy.
Interested in partnership opportunities with DACA Time? Or do you have your own story of success through collaboration?
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