Hi EveryOne!! We are SYNERGY

OUR MEMBERS:

Upper(Left to right): Paul Mak, Gary Lam and Jason Ng

Lower(Left to right): Kenneth Kwong and Winky Lau

Gary:  

I am a graduated student from Hong Kong Baptist University with major in statistics and operations research. During my past working experience, I was a good team player and proficient in using computer applications. Studying in statistics nurture me have a distinct mind and broaden knowledge in analysis could provide a deeper perspective to view diverse difficulties. I am enthusiastic at collaborate with team members to solve adverse situations, which could benefit me to develop and enhance my cooperative techniques with colleagues.

Winky:
I am an officer of Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation. My work is to manage an incubation centre. In my working environment, I always work with 5 subordinates and other departments such as marketing team, financial team etc. As a leader of my team, if I know how to design a high performing teams and effective accountability systems, I could improve a performance of my team. Since I always work with (or deal with) other teams, persuading skills, influencing skills and resolving conflicts skills is useful for me. My first degree is Computing Mathematics and thus I am familiar in data collection and analysis. Hope these skills can contribute to my group.

Kenneth:

As a consultant in a eBusiness solutions provider, I always collaborate with colleagues who are experts in different IT area to provide professional services to our customers. So building trust among colleagues and customers, resolving conflict among colleagues and even with customers are important to me in order to complete the projects smoothly.
As a husband, I also collaborate with my wife to "run' my family. How to resolve conflicts with my wife on household affairs, especially the methods and attitude to take care our daughter is a very very urgent matter....kidding....anyway, I hope I can learn the skills in this course to achieve "high performance collaboration" in both work and family.

Jason:

I work in the Hong Kong Jockey Club as a Branch Supervisor at Mong Kok Road. The job is customer services oriented which I enjoy. I gain experiences in management on leading a team to the best performance so that I have to design a high performance team with my 30 subordinates. To develop a high performance team, I anticipate acquiring the skills of conflicts resolution, designing effective accountability systems and so on. Anyway, I hope I can handle all aspects of the course.

Paul:

I graduated from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University in 2006, majoring in Chemical Technology. I am now working as a supervisor in a merchandising company, leading a 7-people merchandising team to periodically liaise with customers about new product development. Our responsibilities include monitoring production to secure quality and on-time delivery, and keeping track of our clients' financial status to ensure they are maintaining a healthy financial status. I have developed strong scientific sense, critical thinking and communication skills in my previous studies and current career. I believe that I can further develop my potential in this course which will definitely benefit my life and my career.

We all are Year 1 student of MSOCM.

The meaning of "Synergy" is “the interaction of two or more agents or forces so that their combined effect is greater than the sum of their individual effects.” We hope to work out great assignments by combining our efforts.

We would like to learn and practice collaboration in the class so we could negotiate and liaising with others in both the team and organization level to achieve integrative collaboration.

These weekly topics are the most exciting for our group( In descending order):

- Week 9: Resolving Conflicts among Groups and Organization

   Reason: Learning resolving conflicts skill could minimize adversity in our work and life.

- Week 7: Designing effective accountability systems

   Reason: An effective accountability system is essential to high performance.

- Week 5: Designing High Performing Teams

   Reason: As a success leader, we necessary to learn how to design a high performing teams.

We prefer to learn these additional topics in the class:
- Communication skills in collaboration: 

   Reason: Communication skills would make a great impact on progress and result of collaboration.
- Learn from failure of severe conflicts:

   Reason: We would like to have a deep analysis on what conflict we would face in the collaboration and how we turn failure to success.

- Designing effective operating work-flow and system:

   Reason: It is important to make the teams to be collaborated in the organizational level.

OUR LOGO:



In our logo, it includes different colour puzzle pieces which mean different kind of people are in our life and working place. No. of Hands and no. of figures of logo represents that influenced by unique background and experience, different individuals would have their own personality and tasks handling styles. To complete a task (the puzzle), we have to collaborate with different people and use knowledge and skill learned from this master program to resolve problems caused by different cultures and standing points.

OUR GOAL:

 "Innovative Resolution"

We may sometimes start the negotiation with our own preference in order to get the best output. The fact that we are looking at the negotiation in our own preference would create conflicts that avoid us to achieve win-win situation and end up with a compromising or distributive result. However, putting off our own or otherside's needs can't help building good relationship and creating synergy. We have always to think outside the box to make both side "win" as well as achieving long term collaborative relationship. This attitude is very important for us to get rid of the current boundary to come up with a win-win/ integrative collaboration.

We believe that our goal can always remind us the current situation is NOT the only way to go. We should always look at the same problem repeatedly with different perspective and come up with an innovative solution to resolve the conflicts and the real problem.

OUR MYTH to be proved:

 "Collaboration is not the reverse of competition"

This myth means that competition and collaboration has some positive relationships.  People may think that if other party becomes your competitor, he/she will not be your partner. In our business competitive environment, organizations which provide the same services/products to the marketplace would classify as rivals. They spend time on thinking ways to win over or imitate competitors. Cooperation would not appear on their minds as they believe that competition is stand front with collaboration.

We choose this because in our notion that competitors collaborate with each other seems becoming a mainstream concept. Fashioned leaders would think that cooperation with competitors could create opportunities and values. They would rather have a clear vision to set the stage for friendly collaboration than thinking how to compete impetuously. This vision encourages leaders to focus on creating a one-of-a-kind customer experience and achieving objectives.

Toyota and BMW are a good example of confirming our myth. Both of them are renowned and one of the largest automobile manufacturers in the world. They compete vigorously in the automobile market before, but now they are also partners.

In December 2011, both companies agree to make a mid-to-long term research collaboration in environment-friendly technologies. BMW will supply the efficient diesel engines to Toyota; this makes an important step for both companies to expand and complement the growing range of hybrids. Both companies view this partnership as a significant step forward.

Extension 1 May 2012

Thank you for our classmates’ nice comments. It is a good learning opportunity for us to broaden the relationship between collaboration and competition.

As from all the comments wrote, most of the views are the same as our group said. In current competitive business environment, companies could not survive under the one way of winning over rivals. The whole society is progressing, as well as the whole atmosphere. Once of survival mode is to make a suitable collaboration of competitors. This not only extends the survival opportunity of the organization, but also creates a learning platform to both parties. Although collaboration with competitor is a trend and benefit for company, some items should be aware during work with the partners. Since there are differences between each company such as culture and language etc, companies should establish an effective accountability system. It could minimize conflict to be made in the collaboration process. In the accountability system, companies should know how to be solved if there are different comments from each company; which working procedure is responsible by which company etc. All companies should understand their roles in the collaboration.

Companies are faced with the challenge to optimize cost to remain profitable and same time invests heavily in research and development. Auto majors have been sourcing globally or setting up plants in lower cost countries to reduce cost structures, but this alone would not be sufficient, they would have to look at scale more seriously to bring down the cost structures. Collaboration is the way to go and collaborating with competitors could be a WIN-WIN for all. Zara, for instance, has her own factories to produce garments and retails stores to sell her produces. In some district, she would collaborate with some factories to manufacture clothing.

Zara and their partner works very smooth as their all know their roles and liability clear such as their partner could not open any retails store in such districts. Furthermore, to avoid any loss or conflict, company should keep their confidential items such as their technical skill or designs etc. in safe. Otherwise, the partner company may steal your ideas or technology skill. Of course, companies should build up trust in their partnership. Partners trust each other and are willing to put each other’s interests ahead of their own. (Darrell K.R., Kara G., James A., 2009). If there is trust in the collaboration, both of companies could get the minimum advantage.

Our group agrees that collaboration of competitor could benefit and cause loss of the customers. When two competitors collaborate, some new product may be created as they combine their advantages or special skill to produce a new product. For example, Sony and Ericsson develop a new mobile phone brand Sony Ericsson. Advantage of Sony is product design and color screening and Ericsson is mobile function. After they collaborate, they create a serious of mobile phone which can increase competitiveness of both companies. On the other hand, we admit that the bad situations are most likely happen in oligopoly market. Customers have no further actions to fight against if the unfavorable situations happen, as some classmates quoted in the comments. We do believe that the organizations need to consider the business sides and the social angles in the same time. That is why the corporate social responsibility is so important in current environment. Our city, Hong Kong, is a benefit society at large and full of unsatisfactory mainly due to the large enterprises lack of corporate social responsibility. For example, it is hard to maintain a balance between the economy and the ecosystem, a trade-off always exists between economic developments.

Also, in our daily life, competition is not such a bad thing even for teamwork, we just need to know how it works so we would know how to deal with it and get the best out of competitive employees. Competition is in human nature, it is the wish to succeed and perform outstanding actions that will set us apart from others such as faster, better, more productive and efficient. Therefore, do things in such way that everyone else will appreciate it, so that, the key is not to try and change the need for competition, but to redirect is energy and properly manage it as an interesting asset for teamwork and collaboration. The competitive employees can help the company empower your team to collaboration. Therefore, we do agree Cyndi wrote “有競爭才會有進步” no matter in personal development and organization development.

We do conclude that collaboration with competitors is good for the future of the organizations and society unless they have thoroughly taken the users/stakeholders into deep consideration.

Reference:
1. Darrell K. Rigby, Kara Gruver, James Allen, 2009, Creativity in Turbulence, Harvard Business Review