The Power of SYNERGY: The 100-Day Challenge

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed individuals can change the world. In fact, it's the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead

Clydesdale horses are magnificent muscular animals; they are known to pull tremendous loads.  One horse can cart 8,000 pounds.  When two horses are teamed together you would anticipate that the horse could move 16,000 pounds (twice the weight that one can haul).  Amazingly, when two Clydesdale horses are placed together, they can move 24,000 pounds (three times weight than one can move). However, more remarkable is the fact that when the two horses are trained together and work together, their hauling capacity increases to 32,000 (four times the weight one can move alone).  This tremendous example is the law of synergism at work. Synergism is when two things, or people, work together they can produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects.  In short, when you work with others to achieve goals, you multiply your results.  Booster clubs need to harness the law of synergism allowing your team to do great things for students and your community.  A key question is how we as a booster organization can connect our human resources (aka, volunteers) to allow for the biggest benefit for students and parent organizations.

Each summer, I would charge my booster leadership team with the “100-Day Challenge.” Ideally, we would actively engage every parent in the booster club in at least one act of service in the first 100 days of school. The goal was to “break the ice” to create a safe space for every parent to participate in the collaborative action of the organization. Then, over time we realized we needed to systemize our 100 Day Challenge follow-up to a) evaluate how we did, and b) take action to improve our synergism of the team. Reflecting on the Clydesdale analogy, we desired to full identify our human resource strengths and match our human resources to form the most complete, effective teams to train and work together to increase our capacity of support for the music program.

If this is your first time to consider the 100-day challenge, you can add that to your booster improvement plan for next year. But, don’t wait to build synergy! Importantly, now, is the perfect time to act thoughtfully as your booster club has likely completed the first 100 days of the school year. You are in position to reflect on how things are working. What project teams may benefit from additional help? What project teams still have vacancies for upcoming events? How many new faces have wandered through the rehearsal space, marching field, theater stage, or parking lot pick up line?

Every parent has valuable talent and skills. New parents can absolutely add value to our synergy as an organization today. Unfortunately, not all parents are extroverted enough to jump in without a little nudge. Additionally, there may be some existing parents that have been “standing on the sidelines” or have been busy working “zone coverage” managing multiple kids in a variety of activities. The last thing a booster club wants to do is to unintentionally communicate an impression that “we’ve made it this far without you…we don’t need you.”

The challenge often lies in that we as booster leadership were not connected with the new faces enough to know their strengths and interests when we launched into the planning of project teams last spring or summer. Importantly, more information is available now that you have experienced the first 100-days of the year together. Gather your project team leaders, section liaisons, and officers to brainstorm. Identify the new faces and explore their skills, talents, hobbies, interests, etc. to learn how you can partner them with other volunteers with similar skills and talents. Perhaps, even more impactful, would be to match new volunteers’ gifts and expertise to fill a gap on a current project team to add much needed expertise to increase the synergism of the team. Lastly, once the brainstorming has been completed, determine who among you have the largest influence, deeper relationship, or connection with the “newly identified volunteer candidates” to strategize who best to make a personal invitation to serve and sharing how we feel they are “needed” as an active collaborator on the team to help maximize opportunities for kids!

Conclusion. One of the largest legacies a booster leadership team can offer a music program is to continually expand the “small group of thoughtful committed individuals” who strategically activate the incredible benefits of synergism to positively impact the students in the community.