Synergy is one of the most durable words in the corporate vocabulary. It has survived decades of use, misuse, and mockery. It appears in merger announcements, strategic plans, and all-hands presentations with remarkable consistency. It means, in theory, that the combined output of two things is greater than the sum of their individual outputs. In practice, it means almost nothing.
Where it came from
The word synergy comes from the Greek word for working together. In its original sense, it described a genuine phenomenon: two things combining to produce more than either could alone. This is a real concept. It happens. It is worth having a word for.
The corporate version of synergy arrived in the 1980s and 1990s, primarily in the context of mergers and acquisitions. When two companies merged, the combined entity was expected to produce synergies — cost savings, revenue opportunities, and efficiencies that neither company could achieve independently.
What happened to it
The word expanded. It moved from describing a specific financial outcome to describing any situation where collaboration was expected to produce a benefit. Then it moved further, to describing any situation where two things were happening at the same time. Then it became a general-purpose positive word that could be applied to almost any situation involving more than one person or team.
By the time synergy became a verb — "let's synergize on this" — it had lost most of its original meaning.
What to say instead
If you mean "working together will produce better results than working separately," say that. If you mean "combining these two teams will reduce costs," say that. If you mean "I think there is an opportunity here," say that.
The specific version of the statement is always more useful than the synergy version.
The test: Replace "synergy" in any sentence with what you actually mean. If the sentence becomes clearer, the original word was not doing useful work.