
What Google Learned from Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team - aarghh
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google-learned-from-its-quest-to-build-the-perfect-team.html
======
swalsh
Something I always wish existed was a recruiting platform that hired a team as
a whole. Today it's pretty much just a recruiter coming to me, and saying "Hey
wanna change the future at xyz?" where the only criteria that I might work is
based on my skill set on my resume. Instead i'd rather fill out a survey, and
get matched with some people I would probably work really well with. Maybe you
hack together for a weekend. Once your team has a set of strengths and
weakness, and a price, companies can bid, and the team as a whole judges where
to go.

I think how well a team works together is sometimes more important then how
much knowledge you may have of some arcane framework.

~~~
herval
Just a couple of anecdotes: one thing I've seeing in 2 diff companies now is
the new CTO bringing in their posse. It not only didn't work (for the CTO and
his gang), it also undermined the rest of the company, who immediately felt
"left out".

I've also watched an entire frontend team quit and go work at a different
company because, well - they were a pretty well-knit team, but more loyal to
each other than to the company...

~~~
gherkin0
I think management "teams" are a completely different beast to "regular" teams
that are mostly individual contributors. I think it would only really be smart
to hire a "regular" team as a unit.

~~~
herval
The frontend team case in point didn't actually have any managers. That's
complicated because what you're buying there is a group of people with
already-set practices and that works well together - if you're not careful,
you'll end up with a "silo" that just doesn't communicate with the rest of the
company.

That kind of thing happens when a big company acquires a small startup, for
instance (and it's the main reason I always see acquisitions/acquihires
failing spectacularly) - again, all anedoctal...

------
eitally
Even if it turns out this is a puff piece supplied to the Times by Google,
it's still a very well written and insightful article explaining a bit of why
psychological safety is critical for teams to perform optimally. It's probably
my favorite Google-related article this year, actually. I'd much prefer
reading about companies trying to improve their working environments than
about whatever incremental new product feature they're launching.

~~~
bayonetz
I love the topic and like this particular article. Having said that, this
still feels like a puff piece. The notion of psychological safety certainly
matters but not always. My experience is it matters less when you have teams
made up more of "thinkers" (vs "feelers"). Also matters less when the team has
a clear vision and set of requirements and just needs to adapt their past
expertise to minor variations in new problem. Sometimes teams are more
efficient and innovative when truth wins over harmony. Depends on team's
purpose, etc. Let me be clear, I prefer the more psychologically safe mode of
group work. Yet it's still pretty clear to me that hinders, not helps, in
plenty of cases.

~~~
bayonetz
Good points, these replies. I think it is fair to question what truth/harmony
we are talking about. The "truth vs harmony" dichotomy has become a bit loaded
especially with all the folks invoking truth as a license to be jerky
intellectual bullies.

I definitely don't mean that. More like, there are always tradeoffs. There is
cost/benefit in being truthy just as there is cost/benefit in being
harmonious. Each has it's own type and you get to choose which make more sense
for the situation, team, etc.

I don't think you can "have it all" so much as you can choose to set the
tradeoff point somewhere in the middle rather than at the extremes. For
example, in the Rust code of conduct example, it sounds like they have decided
they want a nice mix. This will cost them though. Maybe the cost is as small
sending $some_multiplier_above_1 the amount of emails between the team because
things are worded more indirectly to not offend and therefore more
disambiguation has to take place. If their team instead committed to be as
direct as possible, the could spend less time on follow up emails but now
they'd probably turn of or drive away some good folks from the team who
decided they didn't like all the directness and send of urgency.

Personally, I like a nice mix. I think it is just worth being clear with
myself it is a mix and not two independent things where you can have an
infinite supply of each.

~~~
solipsism
Where are you getting this "harmony" junk? Maybe you're right, there is a tug
of war between truth vs harmony, for some definition of 'harmony'. But who's
calling for something called 'harmony'?

I believe you may be misunderstanding something about the idea of
psychological safety. I can't think of any definition of "harmony" that has
anything to do with psychological safety.

------
JoeAltmaier
They used 'meeting behavior' to predict team performance. And not in the way
you would expect. Its not about productivity in the team meetings. Its about
feeling safe, respected, and sharing the load.

Makes some sense. Team meetings are not where anything gets done after all. If
team members are engaged with their peers, they may invest in team goals and
perform better.

Issue: they correlated team meeting metrics (talking time; socialization time
vs problem solving time etc) with team success at achieving goals. They could
have used behavior outside the meetings (communications per day; social
interactions after work) and predicted successful teams that way. It doesn't
mean that "Meetings that go like this indicates good teams"? I.e. changing
your team meetings to look like what good teams do, may not improve your team
at all. That might be put under 'cargo cult management'.

~~~
jerf
"Its about feeling safe, respected, and sharing the load."

You know, I think it's worth pointing something out about the word "safe"
given the sense it has been used in lately. In this case, it means people feel
_safe to express dissent_. Not "safe from dissent", as the term is often used
nowadays.

Of course the two usages shouldn't be overlapping much anyhow. It shouldn't
surprise anyone that a team where people actually attack each other's personal
identities is not going to be very effective! But it's still worth pointing
out the two very different ways the term can be used, and important not to
accidentally substitute one definition for the other.

~~~
jamii
Something the Recurse Center also put a lot of work into is making it safe to
express lack of understanding/knowledge. There's a huge difference between a
meeting where someone feels able to say "I'm totally lost, can we rewind" and
one where they just quietly panic.

That's somewhat in tension with being able to express dissent, in that being
able to dissent constructively requires both social skill and an underlying
environment of trust.

It's easy to cultivate only one of those (eg most OS mailing lists choose
dissent) but cultivating both is harder and I haven't seen it ever happen by
accident - all the communities that come to mind are ones that direct a lot of
attention and effort to community structure and expectations.

~~~
rajbot
The Recurse Center's social rules are really well thought-out. After I learned
about them, I started to see how people who violate the "no feigning surprise"
rule can make team members feel excluded and belittled, often unintentionally.
This includes myself, and have since changed my behavior.

I feel the "social rules" are quite valuable both inside and outside the
workplace. I wish more employers and groups practiced them:
[https://www.recurse.com/manual#sec-
environment](https://www.recurse.com/manual#sec-environment)

------
boothead
I'd be willing to bet that Sakaguchi has read "The 5 dysfunctions of a team"
[1]. One of my favorite books about how people jell together in groups.

Like him I was also in a military setting before I became a programmer. I
haven't yet experienced the same level of engagement and team cohesion outside
of the military but I believe that the answers are to be found in the kinds of
insights that studies like this uncover.

[1]
[http://www.tablegroup.com/books/dysfunctions](http://www.tablegroup.com/books/dysfunctions)

 _edit_ formatting

~~~
beanstalknoob
@boothead: As somebody who's never been in the military (drafting for military
service was suspended just before my number came up) I'm curious. Does the
level of engagement and team cohesion you speak of only occur in, or
afterwards derive from, combat situations, or would it theoretically be
possible to recreate these levels outside a military context as well?

~~~
marktangotango
I think the key element is 'shared hardship'. Personally, I didn't see combat,
but military life in general sucks; doing a lot of stupid stuff at the whim of
others. I think you see this in other areas of life as well, sports teams,
project teams meeting tight deadlines, etc...

------
thesz
They tested group IQ on the brainstorming tasks!

So they took wastly (40% worse) suboptimal method of groupwork [1], which
emphasizes only communication abilities and then they try to infer general
claims from that.

Of course they will find that "emotional senitivity" makes "teams" that work
in such conditions better.

And of course they won't find "common patterns for successful teams" in their
meetings because, basically, meetings are not where decisions are made.

What a clueless research.

[1] [http://observer.com/2015/05/brainstorming-does-not-
work/](http://observer.com/2015/05/brainstorming-does-not-work/)

~~~
rntz
The linked article doesn't support your claim that brainstorming "emphasizes
only communication abilities"; it only claims that brainstorming in groups is
a worse way to generate ideas than to have people generate ideas individually
& then combine them.

~~~
thesz
Brainstorming is a social activity, with heavy use of communication abilities
of ever participant.

Would not you agree?

------
qznc
This Woolley paper [0] cited in the article gives three reasons for effective
teams. The NYT only tells you two behaviors. True enough. The third is not a
behavior. It is "the proportion of females in the group".

Paper says "Finally, c was positively and significantly correlated with the
proportion of females in the group (r = 0.23, P = 0.007). However, this result
appears to be largely mediated by social sensitivity (Sobelz = 1.93, P =
0.03), because (consistent with previous research) women in our sample scored
better on the social sensitivity measure than men [t(441) = 3.42, P = 0.001].
In a regression analysis with the groups for which all three variables (social
sensitivity, speaking turn variance, and percent female) were available, all
had similar predictive power for c, although only social sensitivity reached
statistical significance (b = 0.33, P = 0.05)."

[0]
[https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~ab/Salon/research/Woolley_et_al_Scie...](https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~ab/Salon/research/Woolley_et_al_Science_2010-2.pdf)

~~~
Discordius
It seems to make sense to not cite that as an additional factor, given that it
is almost fully mediated by one of the factors already listed. There is an
interesting observation in here that women have on average higher social
sensitivity, though it looks like measuring social sensitivity directly in job
interviews and other team building processes is just more effective than
looking at gender (though a bit harder to do, I would guess).

------
calinet6
Oh this is good.

Some conclusions:

\- Teams and focusing on team cohesion, team building, and team performance is
far more important than individual performance.

\- Understanding psychology (of individuals, of individuals in teams, and of
organizations) is critical for making companies work. "Psych Safety" amounts
to the foundation of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, as but one example.

This stuff is important. Build good teams, don't just hire good individuals.

------
gnufied
It is interesting that Agile movement has in general enshrined idea of time
boxed team meetings for software teams. And in general - we engineers are wary
of long meetings.

And yet - most of us measure ourselves, how we are performing in a team by
things that happen in team meetings(according to the article anyway):

1\. Is idea my ideas heard and debated before being accepted/rejected?

2\. Do I get opportunity to present my idea at all.

A time boxed meeting does not by nature leave room for idle chit-chat or from
my experience even opportunity to hear everyone's thoughts. Part of the
problem of course is, meeting rooms in lot of companies are a scarce resource,
so you better clear out after time is out.

This is really curious because we hate meetings and yet we have adopted them
in a sort of haphazard way which creates more problems than solves.

~~~
tamana
Agile standups are designed to give everyone a minute to share info, not
debate or reject anything. Debate is for targeted follow-up meetings.

~~~
gnufied
I didn't mean standups as meetings. I think standup is a good idea as it is
and for most teams it lasts hardly more than 5-7 minutes (and some teams have
moved it to emails).

I meant 20-30 minute meetings that teams typically have, like retrospective or
something.

But I was not talking about Agile per-se. I meant in general most meetings of
software teams are time boxed nowadays- no matter which development
methodology they are following. I am also not criticizing time boxed meetings
since I have no data to back that claim.

But I am just curious, what if as a rule - teams decided to have fewer
meetings but meeting last as long as they have to not because someone is
knocking on the door for next slot. Will it make things easier?

~~~
squeaky-clean
The retrospective and sprint planning are supposed to be much longer than
that, and not timeboxed, as far as I know.

Also one of the core ideas of Agile is adapting to suit your team, rather than
following some process from a book as if it were written in stone. If time
limits on certain meetings are causing your team more grief than they help,
remove the timeboxes! Talk to your team and see what they think, that's what
the retrospective is meant for.

------
late2part
The 3 word summary I infer is "egalitarian golden rule." If you work with
people that are respectful, that listen, that care about you as a person,
you're far more likely to work hard and be successful both individually and as
a team.

------
dhatch387
"But the kinds of people who work at Google are often the ones who became
software engineers because they wanted to avoid talking about feelings in the
first place."

Problematic stab at engineers. I don't think people go into software because
they prefer computers to humans.

~~~
shimon
It's a broad stereotype, but I don't think it's entirely wrong. My social
awkwardness definitely contributed to my spending more time on the PC as a
kid, and that got me excited about computers.

I've since improved my social skills a ton, but it's natural to expect
different psychological trends in a population of engineers than in, say,
people who go into sales.

------
fitzwatermellow
There is a concept in Japanese culture, Wa (和), or "group harmony" that seems
to nicely complement ruminations on "collective intelligence". Perhaps most
interesting is how fragile the cohesion really is, a single person, a single
sentiment expressed poorly even, is enough to break the spell.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wa_%28Japanese_culture%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wa_%28Japanese_culture%29)

~~~
dmourati
I really liked your point and the Wikipedia link. Group harmony is the essence
of the piece. Wa succinctly captures the point.

------
AndrewKemendo
Nobody has done more research on this than the US Military, specifically the
special operations community.

The key takeaways that you find in very effective SOF teams are:

1\. Clear and accepted authority chain (Top guy _earned_ their place at the
top)

2\. Candid and constant communication/feedback between all members

3\. A clearly defined, proven effective and specialized role for every member
with each member knowing how each others role plays together

4\. Common sense of purpose (Objective etc...)

5\. Common experience (BUD/s, Q, FTC etc...)

If you have all of those then pretty much everything else falls into place.
Note also that this has no requirement for everyone to being an "A"
personality or whatever and has basically no bearing on what they do outside
of work. Those aspects can help, but they can equally hurt depending on the
egos involved.

~~~
tsunamifury
These are great qualities for making a team which follows orders and makes
field decisions within a extremely narrow scope.

These are terrible qualities for teams who are self-assigned, entrepreneurial,
and have to disrupt standard accepted behaviors in order to create new
products.

For example in Number 4: How does this work when the teams assignment is to
come up with an objective, rather than just have one assigned to them.

Answer: They would splinter and struggle because they are following a chain of
command.

Which follows to Number 1: To make products you need a diverse set of leaders
who share authority in varying decisions, not a chain of people who wrongly
think themselves to be universal experts. This does require Number 3, but in a
different cultural fashion that isn't so rigidly hierarchical.

Basically these are great for teams who just take commands from the actual guy
makes the decisions. Google and the NYT are interested in the teams that make
decisions. I think the modern workplace is actually trying to UNDO these very
narrow minded and ultimately damaging behaviors and their misapplication to
the creation process.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
No offense but I don't think you understand Special Operations. You are
describing how conventional forces largely operate.

SOF on the other hand are typically given a problem and asked to figure out a
solution. Watch Charlie Wilson's war or read any of the books about the weeks
after 9/11 in Afghanistan as a good example of this in practice.

 _For example in Number 4: How does this work when the teams assignment is to
come up with an objective, rather than just have one assigned to them._

 _Answer: They would splinter and struggle because they are following a chain
of command._

This is completely wrong. In fact the majority of the problems SOF are given
are within the domain of objective identification for effects. When problems
come down, everyone works together equally (back to the communication piece)
to come up with a solution just like we do with startups. When it's time to
execute, you execute within that chain and take direction based on your role.

 _Basically these are great for teams who just take commands from the actual
guy makes the decisions._

Again, that's not how it works. Often the "commands" are even more nebulous
than within narrow software domains. For example: "Keep [wartorn city] stable
enough to allow for elections to run."

~~~
tsunamifury
I think your answer shows how you are already narrowing and then differing to
an authority to give you scope. Relative to you, that might seem like
creation, but its actually just following through on a pre-planed, however
vague, agenda. This is common among military-mindset types who scope out the
problem they can't process and then claim to have solved it. They are rightly
trained to ignore what is "above their pay grade."

The "higher pay grade" problem a team must solve in your example is to shift a
popular mindset in a region to inspire them to create elections, not keep the
city safe while elections occur as assigned from your superior officer.

These teams need to decide the human social agenda, not just the strategy and
execution of one given to them.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
_narrowing and then differing to an authority to give you scope._

I think the difference is that you assume that is _not_ happening in the
entrepreneurial world. In fact it is, only guided by consumer demand, or some
broadly defined corporate niche or group of uncoordinated individuals [1].

But that gets off the point however. Lets be clear here though, the scope of
the article was how Google builds teams within the already defined "higher pay
grade" problems. So by definition that is the context of what I am discussing
teams already within a system. As it relates to Google they have "higher pay
grade orders" from the Executive team of Page/Brin etc.... This is not Valve
we are talking about here.

I think you are trying to make a larger statement about entreprenurial
endeavors in sum total at the economy level which is not the scope of this
discussion and it not relevant.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structurelessne...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structurelessness)

~~~
tsunamifury
The larger statement is that civilian teams are focusing on optimistic futures
to create value and military teams are focusing on horrible realities to
mitigate loss. The team configurations for those two things I think should be
radically different.

We become dystopian when we apply the ultimately violent tactics of the
military to the creation based goals of civilians.

------
Xcelerate
> "It seemed like a total waste of time," said Sean Laurent, an engineer. "But
> Matt was our new boss, and he was really into this questionnaire, and so we
> said, sure, we'll do it, whatever."

I started cracking up at this point because me and every engineer I know would
have said the same thing in response to a survey designed to promote team
building.

~~~
gedy
The irony is, a lot of the time these "dysfunctional teams" were formed due to
some managerial decision, and basically without the team members input. So
it's natural to eye-roll when the same management structure comes in to preach
about "you need to gel together! We need to measure you!"

When people mostly pick who they work with and how, it's usually quite
automatic and natural for things to work out without managerial baby-sitting.

------
thatfrenchguy
I liked this until the "my life is my work" part. What is it with Silicon
Valley that always ends up in "you spend all your life at work and it's a good
thing" ?

~~~
Nimitz14
I understood it differently: He's saying work is a large part of life and
therefore should not be treated as if it's something apart/different. That
does not mean that one 'should spend all your life at work'. It means one
should try and have fun and not take things so seriously all the time.

And I would completely agree with that. In STEM I'd say the majority does not
understand the concept.

~~~
HappyTypist
I think you're right. Treating your work life as a separate component of your
life is not something that's natural for humans and our social traits.
Treating work life as part of your life does not imply anything about how long
you work.

------
jotux
Google's conclusions, summarized: [https://rework.withgoogle.com/blog/five-
keys-to-a-successful...](https://rework.withgoogle.com/blog/five-keys-to-a-
successful-google-team/)

------
no_wave
It's a huge mistake to frame this in terms of safety rather than belonging.
Any criticism of someone who feels out of place will cut them to the quick, no
matter how much you pad your language.

If your standing within a group is assured, you can call each other dumb
assholes all day and it won't matter. This is the classic phenomenon of male
friendship. What works in a group isn't an absence of criticism, it's a
sensation of security of your belonging in that group.

How do you make people feel secure? The only real way it occurs is if everyone
actually has respect for one another's contributions and work. This can't be
faked, unfortunately, and respect has to be earned, and everyone's respect is
earned slightly differently. Some peoples' respect algorithms are more
compatible than others.

An interesting study might be to try organizing people by what they value most
in their co-workers.

~~~
rntz
> This is the classic phenomenon of male friendship.

Why do you single this out as an especially male phenomenon?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Its stated as a classic phenomena of male friendships. Not only male. Not all
male. Just a strong mode, right?

------
randcraw
Aren't psychological safety and forced ranking fundamentally at odds? Who will
be generous when only the fittest survive?

These results seem like a condemnation of any management practice based on
competitive exclusion.

~~~
mathattack
This is a strange cultural thing. On the surface I agree with you. And I'm not
a huge fan of forced ratings. But I will say that at some of the places I've
worked, there was such a strong culture of sharing that this transcended the
forced ranking system.

If anything, I've seen the lack of sharing a bigger issue in places with a
culture of competing metrics. "You get paid on revenue, and I get paid on time
to completion." I've seen terrible sharing behaviors absent the forced
ranking.

------
radicalbyte
Being able to understand the emotional state of your fellow man is key to more
than just good teamwork: it's key to a successful marriage and to keeping
close friends.

------
matt_wulfeck
I've been part of good teams before and loved it. However it wasn't until I
was part of a "bad" team that I learned why it's so important to be inclusive.
When it became difficult for me to make mistakes, immediately I went into self
preservation mode with everyone else. That kills creativity and happiness.

Now that I've felt the hammer of that first hand I want nothing to do with it.
I try and be conscious of my teammates. What are they feeing? Do they have an
idea that they are scared to share? What are they scared of?

------
qznc
> Sakaguchi had recently become the manager of a new team, and he wanted to
> make sure things went better this time. So he asked researchers at Project
> Aristotle if they could help. They provided him with a survey to gauge the
> group’s norms.

Does anybody have an idea what that survey was or looked like?

------
anu7df
This has changed the way I think about teams. I used to think I am pretty good
at "figuring out this team work business". A few times in this article I had
to go.. wtf?. The title of the article seemed to suggest (my mistake, I jumped
to the conclusion) that this is all fluff. Not so. This is very well written.

If you think you are very good at this and don't need conclusions driven from
poorly controlled experiments, please do yourself (and others) a favor and
read through!

------
ap22213
Early in my career, I emphatically asked my managers to work on most highly
important yet most visibly failing products. They would look at me in shock.
Why would I put my career at risk with such a thing? But, they would
reluctantly agree. And, this may sound like masochism to some, but really I
just liked a good puzzle and challenge, and I've always viewed work as a game.

So, over the next 10 years and many products, I'm extremely proud to say,
_none_ of those products ended up failing. And, most eventually exceeded
expectations. Who knows, it could have been by chance. Or, maybe it was
regression toward the mean. But, I like to think that my focus on the problem
and my motivation helped solve it.

Over all of this, I was rarely directly credited, which is not surprising.
Often I wasn't the 'manager' or even the 'technical lead'. I was just some
relatively smart dude on the team, and I was in it for the thrill and
enjoyment.

The key is to

1) be a good manipulator (or, more politically correctly, a good 'influencer')

2) clearly understand the strengths, personalities, motivations, and goals of
each member of the team

3) view each person as a potential 'force multiplier' (to take another word
from the military)

4) strategically coordinate the right activities between the right people at
the right time

5) lead from the bottom, by example

6) be positive and optimistic

7) recognize potential conflict early and extinguish it subtly

If you have a really awesome manager, they can do this from the start. But, as
many of us know, management (in the U.S., at least) is a status position, and
it attracts those who like status or competition. I've only worked with one
manager (out of dozens) who has been able to do this, well. It's a rare skill.

------
huac
Read the other articles in the issue too (top nav bar) - they're all as good.

------
boothead
I'd be willing to bet that Sakaguchi has read "The 5 dysfunctions of a team"
[1]. One of my favorite books about how people jell together in groups.

Like him I was also in a military setting before I became a programmer. I
haven't yet experienced the same level of engagement and team cohesion outside
of the military but I believe that the answers are to be found in the kinds of
insights that studies like this uncover.

[1]
[http://www.tablegroup.com/books/dysfunctions](http://www.tablegroup.com/books/dysfunctions)

------
visarga
So, basically, it's about the principles of differentiation and integration
applied inside teams.

Differentiation comes from "feeling psychologically safe" so you are able to
be creative and express your ideas. When you feel safe to be different you do
your most creative work. In the beginning of the article I thought the author
will conclude that teams made of people with different skill sets would work
better than teams with more similar members. The Google 20% time for creative
work is also boosting differentiation through creativity.

Integration comes from balancing speaking and listening. When everyone can
speak, they become mutually integrated. Your ideas have a fair chance of being
heard and influencing the group decisions.

The same pair of principles (differentiation and integration) are present in
other systems like the brain, the ecosystem, the free market and the open
source community. I originally discovered these concepts from Giulio Tononi's
consciousness theory of integrated information. The same two ideas
interestingly coincide in name with the basic operations of calculus and are
founding principles in the European Union.

------
ksk
I enjoy reading these articles because they always seem to trick me into
thinking I got to know of a new insight when I didn't. I don't know why we
still cling to psychology when its been shown over and over that the vast
majority of psychology is junk science that cannot be reproduced.

~~~
SolaceQuantum
I don't understand what is wrong with their methodology as described in this
article that makes it junk science. Can you source something that says that
the vast majority of psychology can't be reproduced (studies, etc)?

~~~
ksk
>I don't understand what is wrong with their methodology as described in this
article that makes it junk science.

There is nothing wrong with this article and their methodology because it's
not about real science at all. Science produces models, with predictability
(among other things) where you or I could go out and get the same results.
That is far from what Google has actually demonstrated - and I don't know
whether they intended to do that in the first place.

Psychology has never been accepted as a science because they don't produce
accurate, reproducible models. I don't want to sound rude, but all this stuff
isn't exactly new and can be searched for online. A random set of links from
10 seconds of googling:

[https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/aug/27/study-
delive...](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/aug/27/study-delivers-
bleak-verdict-on-validity-of-psychology-experiment-results)

[https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20447-journal-
rejects...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20447-journal-rejects-
studies-contradicting-precognition/)

[http://psychsciencenotes.blogspot.com/2011/05/failing-to-
rep...](http://psychsciencenotes.blogspot.com/2011/05/failing-to-replicate-
bems-ability-to.html)

~~~
SolaceQuantum
No rudeness taken; I just would rather people making the claims to have some
links for people who don't really search for the reciprocity of fields of
pseudoscience/science.

What would you call this thing in the article that people did then?
Statistical analysis?

------
mactitan
The article pulls you in making you think there is some subtle dynamic. Then
the first discovery is psychological safety. Very important but not that
insightful because everyone is looking for this environment. I wonder if Alan
Turing's enigma project had a psychologically safe environment?

Now this notion of psychological safety is interesting because it makes me
think of our larger environment (too much a leap!) that it's similar to our
personal safety ( perhaps requiring more surveillance?). It reminds me of
Hayek’s notion in "Road to serfdom" opining that submitting to less freedom
for more safety will make you worse off. I do have to say I would probably
submit to more safety - it's so much easier.

------
SalmoShalazar
Cool article - though I have to wonder how they measure team performance,
given that it is our all important response variable.

In modern animal breeding, our goal is typically to improve some trait through
genetic means. We extract the animal's DNA, sequence it, and compare it across
many different families in order to evaluate how that individual differs from
others and how its genetics affects our trait of interest. We call this trait
our 'phenotype', and in animal breeding, phenotype is king. We can do all of
the analysis we want, but if our phenotype is inaccurately measured or
uninformative, it's all a waste of time.

------
ghshephard
Wow - how do we even _classify_ this - it's clearly not just a story. Is it a
case study? Series? It feels like it's almost book length - sort of thing
we'll be readying for days (if not weeks).

Has NYT ever done an article in this format before?

The "Blind Hiring" section starts off great:

 _A few years ago, Kedar Iyer, an entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, became
acutely aware of a problem in his industry: A surfeit of talented coders were
routinely overlooked by employers because they lacked elite pedigrees. Hiring
managers, he thought, were too often swayed by the name of a fancy college on
a résumé._

~~~
eterm
Let's not go crazy here, it's 11 pages / 5.6k words. While it's unusual to
have magazine articles that length these days, it's not a huge amount of time
since that was more normal.

It's an excerpt from a book:

> Charles Duhigg is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The New York Times
> and the paper’s senior editor of live journalism. He is the author of ‘‘The
> Power of Habit’’ and the forthcoming book ‘‘Smarter Faster Better: The
> Secrets of Productivity in Life and Business,’’ from which this article is
> adapted.

------
DaveWalk
> [Sakaguchi] wanted everyone to feel fulfilled by their work. He asked the
> team to gather, off site, to discuss the survey’s results. He began by
> asking everyone to share something personal about themselves. He went
> first..."I have stage 4 cancer."

Is this what is required to have a team jell at work? I imagine the same
sentiment could have been achieved with a different question, but the article
continually references this one. Does it make me a non team-player if I don't
want to share my health issues with my coworkers? (In addition: is this legal
to do?)

------
asdfologist
"People on the more successful teams in Woolley’s experiment scored above
average on the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test."

I wonder if giving this test during interviews would help in building better
teams.

------
GnarlyWhale
I recently read a (fiction) novel, The Affinities, that focused on the
ramifications of optimizing productivity of teams, raising the collective
I.Q., not just professionally but socially as well. It's a pretty light read,
but I recommend it to anyone else who finds this subject fascinating.

[https://books.google.ca/books/about/The_Affinities.html?id=z...](https://books.google.ca/books/about/The_Affinities.html?id=zPd-
BwAAQBAJ&hl=en)

------
varelse
IMO and experience, the best way to build a team is to exploit comparative
advantage so that the whole is stronger than any of its parts. Assuming you've
avoided hiring a sociopath, group cohesion follows from everyone having a
critical skill they bring to the project uniquely.

This is of course 100% anecdotal.

This of course runs 180 degrees against the concept of fungible engineering
and Google's generalist fetish.

Or TLDR: I prefer building the A-Team instead of trying to be Agile.

~~~
existencebox
I tend to agree with you. I think back through a decade of coworkers, and when
I take your "A-Team" approach I find myself picking "The Sysadmin" and "The UX
guy" etc. And when I ask myself how they stand up against even the best
generalists I met at big5 companies, well, it's no competition. (In that the
specialists wipe the floor with the generalists, and I say this as someone who
has followed more of the generalist route)

There is fundamentally too little time in the day, and too much to know to
truly be GREAT in a domain, to expect anyone outside a select few (certainly
not enough to fill out general employment at google) to be able to bridge
these domains meaningfully and still be as deep as possible.

Now; there is a massive benefit to the specialists having sufficient
understanding to communicate with other domains. But this to me is not what
being a generalist means, and is an asset that is often looked over even in
the generalist-focused agile orgs I've worked for; "are we communicating well
internally in general".

(To bring this back to the article as well, I've also found the specialist
groups with "eigenvectors" of skills to be MORE cohesive, as it's a great
trust builder when someone can say "I'll be supporting your work in Y with X"
and you know that they'll be doing X _light years_ better than you could, and
you can truly TRUST them to have your back. Not that the same thing isn't very
feasible in other environments, but that's an "easy way in" to trust.)

------
sangnoir
I feel that the alluded conflict of personal efficiency vs team efficiency is
something that is overlooked in the perennial open-plan vs office debate. It
is easy for individuals to measure our own efficiency, but hard to measure, or
even appreciate team efficiency. My suspicion is open plan offices are better
for team efficiency than private offices, but worse for personal efficiency.

------
bambax
I didn't read every paragraph of the article but it seems it doesn't describe
what "success" means?

In the outside world, the success of a company can be measured quite
objectively; but inside one company, what defines success?

Isn't it possible that patterns are hard to find because "success" is vague
and, fundamentally, random?

------
JSeymourATL
> what Silicon Valley does best: figure out how to create psychological safety
> faster, better and in more productive ways.

How do you get a group of cynical alphas to take-off their game-face for work?
This screams for a How To manual.

~~~
tosseraccount
How many people felt psychologically safe in a meeting with Gates, Jobs or
Ellison?

~~~
sdenton4
And how many people are Gates, Jobs or Ellison? The CEO design review isn't
where the vast majority of people spend their time, or where ANY of the
important work gets done.

------
perseusprime11
There is no such thing as perfect team. A perfect team in one context can
become an average team in another context. Good Teams embrace values as they
solve problems while still having fun. End of story!

------
tdaltonc
This is just a conclusion from data mining; what is google doing to
experimentally confirm this finding? Or how would I use this insight to
engineer a better team?

------
cmurphycode
Wow. Lots of interesting points, and a few things that made me say WTF and
wonder how much this will be torn apart in the comments.

In other words, a very worthy read.

------
unfocused
This reminds of the comment I had left about another post here about the
"Costs of under-confidence", where I posted what I though made a great team.
Essentially, that we create a "safe zone".

The article in this post echos what I had felt:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10731071](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10731071)

 _This is an interesting article since he cites a pub quiz and sports -
something I participate in.

I've been playing for about 4 years in a pub quiz. We've won once and are
considered a strong team. However, the difference between the a strong team,
and the better team in a night, is the fact that our team fosters a "no
suggestion is a dumb suggestion" policy. No matter how stupid you think your
answer is, you are encouraged to say it. In fact, if we see body language from
a person hesitating we're quick to jump in and say "Spit it out! Just say it!"

We essentially create a safe zone for our team members to not worry about the
consequences of a wrong answer. There were so many times where a completely
wrong suggestion makes another teammate say, "Hey! Wait, I think I remember!"

We also have a policy of if a person has a different answer than the rest,
then he/she has to "fight for it". That is, you have to convince the rest of
the team. By having a "fight for it" rule, we put controlled confrontation on
the centre of the table and let people hash it out. There is no regret, or
fear, or worrying about feelings. It's just a normal part of our evening that
is done with humour and friendliness. Firm, but friendly!

By doing the above, we instil confidence in every team member. Those that are
more confident by their nature, can still be challenged by anyone and keeps
them in check, and the weaker confident ones feel safer to step forward when
they need to. It balances out and our team has absolutely great chemistry
because of it.

I've also played team sports for most of my life and some of the best teams
I've played for had former professional athletes. Since they were stronger
than the rest and more confident, they always raised their hand and took the
blame for any mistake! It was quite funny because we knew my screw up was not
their fault, but they would make an excuse about how they should've done 'X'
and I wouldn't have screwed up.

Needless to say, that allowed players like me that weren't former pros, to be
at ease and to be more confident and give my best, knowing that the strongest
player on the team wasn't going to look down on me for every mistake.

It was a very interesting dynamic where the more confident person ensured that
the less confident person is playing their best and it raised their
confidence. Again, it is a kind of delicate balance that can change on any
given night._

------
edem
Is there a summary for this? I've read 3 sections but it only contained fluff
about people and not the point of the article.

------
perseusprime11
So have they figured it out? I couldn't tell from reading the article.

------
riskneural
The standup in a scrum lets people speak for equal amounts every morning.

------
filearts
I really want to finish reading the article but the browser keeps locking up.
Anyone else having their experience crippled like this?

~~~
filearts
Shockwave ad. Thankfully this nonsense is on its way out :)

~~~
majewsky
> Thankfully this nonsense is on its way out

Do you mean Shockwave, or ads? ;)

~~~
acveilleux
The former is likely out before the later but ads on the web in general are in
dire needs of improvements or they will be erased from existence by browsers.

------
anonymousguy
I don't understand why this is such a mystic secret to the corporate world.
This is common sense to anybody who has served on a military deployment.
Google could have saved a crap load of time and money by funding the military
to conduct this study and simply applying the results internally.

~~~
ktRolster
And what would the military do to take a team that was functioning poorly and
turn it into a team that is functioning well?

~~~
anonymousguy
Many things. There are a great many ways to address that question (too many).
The correct answer depends more specifically on the nature of the problem.

------
xyzzy4
Psychological safety is a double edged sword. If you feel free to interrupt
people, express dissent, and joke around during meetings then people might
begin to resent you. It's a big risk. Despite feeling "safe", it's still a
risk that could affect your job security and finances.

~~~
SolaceQuantum
It's about being able to determine when people are resenting you and why. The
article focused on people who were sensitive enough to determine when others
in their group were feeling upset or left out or something. Also if everyone
speaks and interrupts and jokes as much as you, they should be allowed to also
express their dissent in that they don't think your jokes are appropriate or
that you don't listen or whatever.

~~~
xyzzy4
Even if it feels safe it doesn't mean it really is. If you aren't paranoid
about these things you can lose a lot.

~~~
SolaceQuantum
Like I said, isn't that where being a highly socially sensitive individual
comes in?

------
cowardlydragon
TLDR guess after two paragraphs: Is this how grades/salary/individual rewards
will poison pill any imposed group goal dynamics?

~~~
cowardlydragon
Hm, now that I read well, I feel this research group does too much
"snapshotting" of dynamics. Groups not performing well could have had their
"norms" subjected to a harsh external force, such as, say, performance
reviews, hire / fire / downsize / layoff, etc.

And where is the discussion of sociopathy and other classic psychological
manipulations? You'd figure that subtle disruptors would be critical to the
study, since I argue that middle management collapses in most large
organizations due to the Machiavellian predilections of petty power brokering.

------
bobinator606
I am a self-professed terrible team member, and I scored "average" (27 out of
36) on "Reading the Eyes" test. Its not that I can't read people's faces, its
that I don't care.

------
ktRolster
If the teammates respect each other, and feel respected, then they will feel
safe, there will be a safe zone created by the respect.

If the teammates don't respect each other, they will ignore what the others
are saying, even if they are forced to listen to them.

