

New Science on Building Great Teams - jeremynixon
https://hbr.org/2012/04/the-new-science-of-building-great-teams

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Fede_V
Reading articles in that format drives me crazy. For example:

"For example, we now know that 35% of the variation in a team’s performance
can be accounted for simply by the number of face-to-face exchanges among team
members"

Can I get a reference to a scientific paper that measures this or where this
result is discussed? Off the top of my head - this depends hugely on the task
at hand. Certain tasks require constant nonstop communication and updates -
other tasks are more modular and the communication sweet spot is different.
Even within the same task, different phases of the task require different
amounts of communication - when you are whiteboarding the design of a
particular library, constant feedback is exceptionally useful. When it's time
to sit down and write difficult code involving pointer math, constantly
discussing things will just throw you off.

I am sure there was some proper science done behind that number - but that
number refers to teams of a certain size, working on a specific task, in a
given context (I would also be curious to know the C.I. on that 35% too).
Trying to draw a nice narrative with a simple message from a narrow experiment
is basically everything that I dislike about this Gladwellesque style pop
science.

Reading narratives like this gives a completely unwarranted sense of
confidence into something which we still understand very, very little about.

~~~
loceng
Time constraints are also an important factor as to how a team can potentially
function under different conditions.

------
read
_the best predictors of productivity were a team’s energy and engagement
outside formal meetings_

 _We’ve been able to foretell, for example, which teams will win a business
plan contest, solely on the basis of data collected from team members wearing
badges at a cocktail reception._

 _Individual reasoning and talent contribute far less to team success than one
might expect._

* Social time turns out to be deeply critical to team performance, often accounting for more than 50% of positive changes in communication patterns, even in a setting as efficiency-focused as a call center.*

 _Our data also show that exploration and engagement, while both good, don’t
easily coexist, because they require that the energy of team members be put to
two different uses._

 _in a typical high-performance team, members are listening or speaking to the
whole group only about half the time, and when addressing the whole group,
each team member speaks for only his or her fair share of time, using brief,
to-the-point statements._

 _making the tables in the company’s lunchroom longer, so that strangers sat
together, had a huge impact._

 _The best-performing and most creative teams in our study, however, sought
fresh perspectives constantly_

 _we found that the more of these charismatic connectors a team had, the more
successful it was._

Observation: I wish I had a tool for writing short notes on things I read. It
seems I end up doing this in the form of HackerNews comments.

I think I want conclusions.

~~~
gregclermont
You might like [https://www.diigo.com/](https://www.diigo.com/)

~~~
teamonkey
Or OneNote

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adunn
"For example, we now know that 35% of the variation in a team’s performance
can be accounted for simply by the number of face-to-face exchanges among team
members."

As someone who lives in a rural area I see a distributed team as the way to go
for hiring talented individuals. I also know that working remotely can hurt
communication and collaboration if extra effort is not given. It would be
interesting to see a similar study on distributed teams and a comparison of
how effective their different strategies and communication tools are. Do any
remote workers here have any observational evidence on this?

~~~
toolz
I work remotely and I would say that communication is much better and easier
when working remotely for many people such as myself. Tapping someone on the
shoulder is a LOT more intimidating than highlighting someone in chat. I don't
want to bother people, I just want to be effective. Highlighting allows me to
hit someone up with questions and they'll be able to respond depending on how
urgent the task is in relation to their other tasks.

I will say I get more solo work done when I'm around people. It's hard to stay
on task if you don't have the ambiance of people with expectations. I go to
coffee shops, because even though they aren't my co-workers, if they see me
working, they still have expectations. If they look over my shoulder and see
me on social media, I've failed their expectations, and just that subconscious
feeling does wonders to motivate me. I want to be a people pleaser and
remotely that can be tough.

~~~
p0nce
Thanks, I was wondering how to solve this very problem. I over-perform only
when people are expecting something of me, to please them. Else I do simply
nothing.

------
ThomPete
Just as understanding the science to music does not make you a good musician
or allow you to build a great band, understanding the science to teams does
not make you a good team builder.

I look at these things as performance art. Theory goes in the background when
you perform all that is left is execution.

~~~
amirmc
> _" Just as understanding the science to music does not make you a good
> musician or allow you to build a great band..."_

I'm not a musician, but I disagree with the first part of this statement. My
impression has been that understanding the theory can make the difference
between a good musician and a _great_ one.

One could apply the same to programming -- understanding the fundamentals of
computing is not _necessary_ but it can mark the difference between good and
great.

~~~
analog31
I'm a musician and a programmer, with minimal theory knowledge but extensive
work experience in both areas. I can do productive work, but at the same time,
can see my own limitations. For instance, I would have a hard time organizing
a large scale effort in either area: In music, that would be something like
creating a long composition or arrangement involving multiple musicians. In
programming, it would be coming up with the architecture for a big project.

Still, in a vein similar to a comment that I made about education yesterday, I
wonder if there is such a thing as a "theory" of the formation and
administration of work teams, i.e., of a level of reliability similar to music
or programming theory.

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dpritchett
As much as I like the scientific method in most other aspects of life,
Taylorism has always terrified me.

~~~
programmarchy
If you're interested in well thought out criticisms of Taylorism (as well as
Schumpeterism and other status quo models), check out Organization Theory by
Kevin Carson.

One interesting point in the book is that Taylorism suffers from the garbage-
in-garbage-out problem. Large firms are islands of calculational chaos because
they suffer from the economic calculation problem [1] pointed out by Mises and
Hayek. Similar to centrally planned economies, large firms cannot
intelligently allocate resources or make other managerial decisions because
there are heavy distortions in incentives / price signals.

He further points out that economic distortions occur not because of socialism
per se, since large capitalist firms also suffer the same problem, but rather
long hierarchies. He explores other modular and co-operative organizational
models in the book also.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem)

------
trhway
it isn't surprising that the identified communication patterns correlate well
with team being successful. Yet it is somewhat doubtful that such good
communication can be enforced, ie. good communication seems to be a
manifestation of a good team not what makes it.

~~~
s0uthPaw88
The article discusses some different interventions that were used to improve
communication on teams:

1) "Every day for a week, we provided team members a visualization of that
day’s work, with some light interpretation of what we saw. (Keep in mind that
we didn’t know the substance of their work, just how they were interacting.)
We also told them that the ideal visualization would show members contributing
equally and more overall contributions. By day seven, the maps showed, the
team’s energy and engagement had improved vastly, especially for the two
Japanese members, one of whom had become a driving force."

2\. "The manager wanted to raise energy and engagement in lockstep. We
suggested instituting a common coffee break for each team at the call center.
This increased the number of interactions, especially informal ones, and
raised the teams’ energy levels. And because all team members took a break at
once, interactions were evenly distributed, increasing engagement. When we
mapped energy and engagement against AHT afterward, the results were clear:
Efficiency in the center increased by 8%, on average, and by as much as 20%
for the worst-performing teams."

