The Magic of Synthesis

When I think about what skills I rely on every day to build a startup, synthesis routinely tops the list.  The need to integrate many pieces of information into a coherent whole that enables you to plan, tell a compelling story, and manage risks is a never-ending need that is entirely dependent on this skill.

What is synthesis and why is it important?

Closely linked to another essential entrepreneurial enabling skill (learning), synthesis is the ability to collect and quickly combine ideas and parts of ideas together into a coherent whole – a system of ideas that informs decision-making and storytelling.  What I notice is that effective startup leaders nearly all exhibit this skill because, without it, doing the pathfinding work that is fundamental to an innovative startup is likely impossible.  Yet, I do not think it is a common skill, which is what makes it such a differentiator. I find myself seeking it as I grow my team and looking for it when I consider investing my time, talent, and resources in other entrepreneurs. Having enough capacity in yourself and your team for true synthesis-based work is an essential critical success factor. Without it, I believe teams and startups fail.

How is synthesis used in innovative startup work?

To successfully find the best path forward day in and day out, you need to be able to grasp all the moving and developing parts of your startup and make decisions about where to focus your personal time and energy, as well as that of your team.  Doing this well requires synthesis – seeing the moving parts and relationships amongst them.  Because there is always more to do than time and resources to do it, you must see the dynamic whole with its constituent parts to make the right value-adding trade-offs and priorities choices.  To do this well, you need to be able to build up a comprehensive picture (aka synthesis) in your head of the moving parts, with the bright stars and dimmer stars in the right relationship to one another to give you navigational beacons to guide your startup forward. 

How do you do effective synthesis?

Synthesis is something I do every day – and yet I find it challenging to describe the “how” of it because I think, for me, it is largely one of those unconscious skills that are difficult to unpack. However, I am going to give it a go and try to break out some of the critical elements that enable effective synthesis:

• To start, recognize that synthesis is oriented towards a goal or a need. While synthesis is often abstract, it still requires some organizing purpose to seed the process of assembling and arranging the parts. For example, are you formulating a fundraising story for your startup? Mapping out the development pathway for a groundbreaking product? Figuring out a growth strategy? Start your synthesis process with a purpose in mind to provide a focus to your work.
  
  
• Once you have a purpose identified, the next stage is to start assembling the component parts. The key here is that you are not following a known pathway (if you were, I would call that a process, not synthesis). That means that you start with only a vague idea of what dimensions of the problem at hand are the most critical. I think of this stage as a bit like a jigsaw puzzle. Regardless of the method, start by trying to bring to mind all the potentially relevant dimensions. Think broadly and only generally group (like sorting jigsaw pieces into basic colors, but not yet fitting them together). Jot notes on a pad. Build a mindmap. Cut and paste slides from everywhere into a new deck.  Brainstorm with a colleague. 
  
  
• As you start sifting and sorting, seek to define the relationships between the elements/dimensions (like finding patterns in a starry night sky). What are the most important points?  What are the relationships between points? Are some aspects causally related to others? Are some parts components of a larger idea? Think about your purpose and what logical ordering would be most useful. Is it a process? A hierarchy? A grouped list? A cycle?  Finding an organization for the information you are considering requires determining the most important dimensions and then relating the information you have along those dimensions as well as to your purpose.  This usually iterative process should help uncover the points of emphasis, most important risks or other elements, and begin to provide a framework for the information you have. Start with broad brush strokes and then add in the next layers of details to test and build out the picture. Ultimately your synthesis will need sufficient detail to highlight the tradeoffs and options under consideration.
  
  
• Once you have the information organized, you can start pruning out the least important elements and summarizing the most important points with the relevant supporting points into a logical order. This is often the critical part of defining an effective story. What can you leave out and still get your message across?  How can you present the information in a logical order that builds on itself? If you are planning, you can think about the dependencies between different parts as well as what resources are needed for each task.  Then you can consider these multiple dimensions to define the critical path as well as what other parts can go on in parallel to accomplish the goal you have. If you are identifying risks, you can first group them and then prioritize them, likely in terms of impact.
  
  
• Know that there is a great deal of work involved in synthesis.  It is not something that just leaps together fully formed, like Athena from Zeus’s brow.  Do not underestimate the amount of work and time that it takes to develop an initial synthesis.  Like writing a research paper, you often have to work through all the details, and then come back around to tease out the executive summary (main points), and come back around again to really nail down the crystalized and summarized short “abstract” version that has only the most critical dimensions mentioned.
  
  
• Good synthesis is often easier and better when you bring expertise into the mix.  Expert understanding of a topic area often makes it easier to discern the important dimensions quickly as well as sorting other elements into the mix swiftly. While often entrepreneurs have to venture into new greenfield spaces, if you can bring expertise into the mix, it often expedites the process of achieving a comprehensive synthesis more quickly.  This is one of the advantages successful and experienced entrepreneurial CEO’s bring to their later companies. Their prior experiences provide them with a reservoir of reference points and past synthesis to expedite the development of new synthesis on their next company. In effect, they begin with some basic roadmaps and landmarks already sorted and available to test on the new situation to see if the pattern still holds.
  
  
• Engage a collaborative thinking partner.  Once you have your thoughts assembled, it is often fruitful to talk it through your draft of a coherent whole with  a colleague or peer who is knowledgeable. Trying to explain your thoughts to a third party often highlights missing elements or helps you see new connection points.

Synthesis is a continuing process, revisited frequently, and used constantly to filter through what is most important for a rapidly evolving startup. The need is never-ending to consider various combinations and potential solutions to the multi-dimensional problems you face to find an effective path through the complications. Improving your ability to do good synthesis comes from expanding experiences and expertise, and just doing it.  My experience is that there is no substitute for practice to help strengthen your skills in this area.