

Why a great individual is better than a good team - j_baker
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/06/why_a_great_individual_is_bett.html?cm_sp=most_widget-_-blog_posts-_-Why%20a%20Great%20Individual%20Is%20Better%20Than%20a%20Good%20Team

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auxbuss
I made the decision to work in small, preferably very small, teams 20 years
ago. Why? Because I noticed that the very small teams I worked with were far,
far more productive than the bigger teams.

I also learned at that time, empirically, that "flying in" domain experts for
certain problems was far, far more effective than having them hang around on
the project. And this is how I've liked to work with my clients ever since.

Taking this a stage further, I decided to study individual effectiveness on
teams by writing a thesis on it (for my Masters) by studying a small number of
projects in quite a large company. (I am very grateful to that company, and a
particular individual, whom I still know, for letting me run riot in their IT
department for a summer to conduct this study.)

The result I obtained was absolutely clear that productivity is linked to
individuals. I used function points as the basis for the study, and while I'm
not wedded to them in any way, I've yet to find a better metric. I'm not
active in that field any longer, so please enlighten me of progress.

The maxim "hire smart people and get out of their way" is the best way to be
productive in IT. Better still, practice servant leadership alongside
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Servant_leadership> and you are golden.

It's hellishly difficult getting businesses to adopt this practice, though.
When you are all command and control this doesn't tickle your pseudo alpha
genes. But when you want to get work done, it's the nuts.

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mattgreenrocks
I'm never able to understand why businesses cannot accept this fact and
incorporate it into project management. It seems that they'd rather throw 20
average engineers (using average technology) at a problem and just spend more
money and time on all sorts of official-looking artifacts such as meetings and
design documents. They often strike me as signalling devices to show that
responsibility for the problem is being distributed among everyone in case
something goes awry. They're certainly necessary, but they're almost always
done to excess. Really, the heavy emphasis on 'collaboration' always seems
hellbent on forcing ideas to fit some safe notion on how things should be done
instead of just trusting individuals to figure it out for their own.

What's the motive here? Fear? If so, why do we allow people in charge to
project this?

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amadeus
I know they are talking about businesses and everything here, but let me throw
a wrench into that entire theory.

2010 San Francisco Giants.

~~~
espeed
When teams gel and you get a synergistic effect, it's an awe-inspiring thing.
Humility is often the key ingredient. Contrast the 2011 Mavs with the 2011
Heat. The individual team members must be humble else hubris and competing
egos will drag them down.

Hubris leads to overreaching and taking uncalculated risks
(<http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/10565>), and I believe this is far
more common when individuals are part of a team than whey they are working
alone because teams provide a safety net and outlet for passing the buck.
Individuals working alone don't have these outs, and this helps keep them in
check.

Another aspect to this is if an individual has the freedom to flow in any
direction and is not bound by constraints imposed by the group, then the
individual has the freedom to tap into and include their best ideas in the
project without having to pass them by a committee. This reduces context
switches, allows them to flow faster and better maximize their potential.

In addition, when a corporation hires someone with a specific task in mind,
they may only see a sliver of the individual's potential because the latent
parts aren't relevant to the job description. Contrast this to an entrepreneur
that puts his heart and soul and every fiber of his being into realizing his
vision. This environment is maximizing his potential because he is summoning
all his best parts. When all of that energy is harnessed and focused, the
individual is much more valuable.

~~~
amadeus
Another good example!

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yungchin
As much as the hypothesis in the title appeals to me, I don't think there's
anything in the article to substantiate it. The whole thing is a repetitive
pattern of {cite some scientific finding}, {blindly assert that the same (or,
at some point, the inverse!) applies to this unrelated subject}. Bleh.

