Okay, so about this whole ‘Keyword’ thing. At my old joint, the big, fancy keyword everyone was buzzing about for a good year, maybe even two, was ‘Synergy’. Yeah, I know, sounds like something straight out of a cheesy corporate training video from way back.
But it wasn’t just a keyword, you see. It became THE keyword. Everything, and I mean everything, had to ‘synergize’. Marketing was supposed to synergize with the tech guys. The tech guys, bless their cotton socks, had to somehow synergize with HR – don’t ask me why. We had meetings about synergy, reports about synergy, probably even synergy-themed coffee breaks if they could’ve figured out how to swing it. Honestly, it was a total circus.
You think it’s a headache when one department starts using some new, complicated tool? Well, try getting five different departments, each with their own wacky idea of what ‘synergy’ even meant, all forced to ‘synergize’ on projects that made absolutely no sense. It felt like trying to charge five completely different electric vehicles, each needing a unique plug, with one weird, all-purpose charger, and then expecting them all to hit full battery at the exact same time. Most of the time, all we managed to do was drain everyone’s personal batteries, if you catch my drift. Forget about actual range; we were barely making it out of the parking lot.
So, how did I get tangled up in this synergy mess, you ask?
Well, I was right there in the thick of it. My team’s job was to provide ‘synergistic data insights’. Rolls right off the tongue, doesn’t it? We had this one project, oh boy, this one was a doozy. The brilliant idea was to ‘synergize’ the cafeteria menu with how productive different departments were. I kid you not. The theory was, if a department was slacking, we’d suggest they put more ‘brain food’ on that floor’s menu. Collecting the data was a complete nightmare, and the actual ‘synergy’ we achieved? Zip. Nada. All it did was create more spreadsheets and a bunch of angry emails about why the ‘synergy salad’ wasn’t magically boosting output.
This whole synergy obsession really hit the fan during a massive company ‘restructure’. And guess what the main theme of that restructure was? Yep, ‘synergy clusters’. My department, which actually ran pretty smoothly on its own, got completely torn apart. They fed us some line about how it was to ‘maximize synergistic potential’. Sounded fantastic on paper, a bit like those electric car battery lifespans they advertise – you know, 10 to 20 years, lasting for ages. But the reality? It was more like those ancient EVs that could barely make it to the corner store and back before needing a five-hour charge just to do it again. Our ‘synergy’ just didn’t have the range.
My old boss, a decent guy, he actually tried to argue against it. He even showed them numbers, real data, proving our old setup was way more efficient. They just gave him a polite smile and said his figures didn’t capture the ‘future synergistic gains’. A week later, he got ‘re-synergized’ right out of his job and into some other department. That was my cue to start polishing my resume. It stopped being about the actual work and became more about just surviving the constant onslaught of buzzwords.
I still remember sitting in one of those final ‘synergy planning’ meetings. They had all these colorful charts and graphs, making it look like everything would just magically click into place. Super impressive stuff. But then you’d ask a really basic question, something like, ‘Okay, so who’s actually going to do this specific task?’ And you’d just get these blank stares. Everyone was so busy ‘aligning’ to ‘synergize’ that nobody was actually assigned to do any real work. It was totally wild.
- Eventually, like all fads, the ‘Synergy’ buzzword started to fade away.
- It got replaced by something else, probably ‘Agile-Synergy’ or ‘Synergistic Innovation’, I don’t really know. I was long gone by then.
- But man, it taught me a valuable lesson. Chasing after keywords without stopping to think about what they actually mean, or how you’re going to make them happen in the real world, is just a surefire way to create a whole lot of chaos.
- It’s kind of like thinking that just because you own an electric car, you’re saving the planet, even if you’re plugging it into a grid powered by dirty old coal. The keyword sounds great, but if the substance isn’t there, it’s all for nothing.
So yeah, these days, whenever I hear a new corporate keyword being thrown around, I get a little bit antsy. I’ve seen firsthand where that road can lead. And usually, it’s paved with good intentions and an enormous amount of completely wasted time.