“THE whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”
On record, Aristotle first said that. He may have heard or learned the concept from other greater souls. I do not really know. But what does the phrase "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts" mean?
The phrase came as a flash in the mind, during the groundbreaking ceremony of the “Improvement of Kilometer 49 to Ambakian Farm-to-Market Road (FMR) Project” in Atok, Benguet last week, April 27, 2017. This multi-million project is a joint undertaking of the Province of Benguet and Department of Agriculture-Philippine Rural Development Project (PRDP).
In development work, you will always engage the phrase, “the whole is greater than its parts,” during consultations with stakeholders and beneficiaries to know, understand, analyze and find solutions to community development problems.
Let me proceed with this discussion by taking a look at consultation first as practiced in medicine. Ask any doctor in the medical profession and he or she will tell you that consultation is central to the practice.
The patient’s problems, hopes, fears, and expectations are explored during the consultation process. The process also provides the basis for the formulation of a biomedical diagnosis and plan of action, its strategies and approaches to address the problem. The evolved approach and strategies can tell you how professionals seriously do their work out of respect, honor, and care for their patients.
To doctors and their patients, the consultation process is not a one-time event. It is done almost daily because both patient and doctor have to be updated of what is happening until the work is completed.
Compared to local rural development practice, I must admit, the art and science of consultation need further internalization and refinement.
Last year, I asked a key person in the implementation of several development projects why these were turned over to representatives of the beneficiaries in the capital town, instead of doing it with the beneficiaries in their communities where these projects were implemented.
The answer I got was, “haan kami nga maserserimonias idiay. Adula-amin dagita.” In English, it simply meant “nonsense.” That was the person’s opinion at that time.
In medicine, on top of care, the consultation is also done to have a reliable documentation of problems, clinical findings, interventions, and recommendations from other professionals engaged in the work. It ultimately highlights the science and art of medicine as it attacks a problem.
In development work, the consultation process must do just that too. The approaches and strategies employed must yield and compile experiences, best practices in time, situations, phases, and space. Success and failure usually reveal how operatives have taken their work for granted or without due respect, honor, and care towards the project’s beneficiaries, partners, and its stakeholders.
The consultation process in development work must also be continuous until the projects are turned over to the beneficiaries. It is a learning and empowering process where beneficiaries can sustain and manage the projects as their own during turnover.
The implied end-goal of any consultation process in development work is synergy. Without synergy inherent in teamwork and a healthy community, development can be too costly.
Done properly, the consultation process evolves meaningful connections among the individuals and parties involved in the development work that the combined output or result of their individual efforts would be better than what each one can do on their own.
At the PRDP, I already attended three groundbreaking ceremonies for three big projects: one in Kalinga, and two in Benguet Province. The latest was the groundbreaking ceremony in Atok, that I mentioned earlier. All three ceremonies were done in the communities where these projects are implemented with the beneficiaries invited to the happy occasion.
Happy, because the direct beneficiaries get to listen directly from the implementing parties including the offices of government, and contractor report about their work and commit to support the project until it is successfully completed, according to agreed schedules and standards.
Notice here that in project implementation, the groundbreaking ceremony is made as a high point of the consultation process with the direct and concerned beneficiaries, not people who are not affected by the project as active participants. This ceremony also serves as a means to directly inform the beneficiaries more about the project on top of previous consultations and others that may yet follow.
During those groundbreaking ceremonies, I think PRDP Deputy Director for Northern Luzon, Elma Mananes saw the potential that an evolved team synergy can yet accomplish. She challenged the stakeholders to undertake their work in a manner as to implement and accomplish the FMR projects as “the best and model FMRs in the whole of Northern Luzon, even the Philippines.”
That is synergy, a team working together on a quality product. If you figure out what each member in the team can do in a period of time, together under the same period, they should be able to deliver the best quality product in even a shorter period of time, using teamwork. This is synergy. The individuals coming together producing more than what they could on their own. This applies to many things, not just people, obviously, but has applications in physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, agriculture, business, and so on.
Engaged in rural development work, we need to be thinking a lot about synergy as we pursue our work in developing and promoting healthy organizations and communities. Come to think of it. A whole healthy organization or community tends to care for its members or citizens, to a greater or lesser degree.
From the available literature on synergy, one notes that “any whole needs parts in good condition in order to function well, so it behooves it to care for its parts. Often benefit happens at every level: When a group of people together articulate a common vision, that vision (a) gives meaning to their individual lives, (b) coordinates their individual actions (sometimes with little explicit coordination), (c) eases their interactions with each other and with group-level functionaries, (d) inspires mutual aid among comrades and (e) increases the strength and coherence of the group as a whole -- all at once!”
So in a healthy whole, the parts have healthy relationships among each other, and the synergy they create is greater than the parts and the whole.