New Science on Building Great Teams
1–10 of 28 posts
Re: New Science on Building Great Teams
#2As much as I like the scientific method in most other aspects of life, Taylorism has always terrified me.
Re: New Science on Building Great Teams
#3"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?
Re: New Science on Building Great Teams
#4As much as I like the scientific method in most other aspects of life, Taylorism has always terrified me.
While I agree with you, I think it's also important to see that this sort of analysis can be used two ways:
1) Taken at face value, managers might try to directly change the positive metrics. For example, since face-to-face communication is shown to be superior to conference calls, ban remote work and mandate all meetings be in person. Obviously this probably wouldn't make people too happy.
2) On the other hand, understanding what is really driving the metrics can generally improve workplaces for everyone. For example, the article points out that instituting team-wide coffee breaks not only increased productivity, but also employee satisfaction at a call center.
As with all research like this, some companies will make good use of it, and others will not.
Re: New Science on Building Great Teams
#5Just 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.
Re: New Science on Building Great Teams
#6Just 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.
Neither does studying computer or electrical theory alone make you a better programmer. It does help though.
It's nice that there's a 'Human Dynamics Laboratory' out there that does so much research and puts out the findings.
Re: New Science on Building Great Teams
#7Just 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.
> "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.
Re: New Science on Building Great Teams
#8Just 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.
It's interesting. I used to work in digital agencies for quite a number of years and the pattern you see is that for a project "the management" composes a team based on who's available ("resourcing" they call it.)
A lot of projects went over budget or were delivered very late and over time I came to notice that the projects that weren't late or over budget were executed by people who'd worked together before on two or more projects. It meant that this team had already gone through a bonding experience and that their lines of communication could be kept short. I referred to this at the time as "the band" since it was like playing in a band. If the chemistry matches between people then communication will happen automatically and magic "just" seem to happen.
Re: New Science on Building Great Teams
#9Reading 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.
Re: New Science on Building Great Teams
#10it 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.