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Exploring how humans connect and get stuff done together, with Dan Hammond and Pia Lee from Squadify.
We need groups of humans to help navigate the world of opportunities and challenges, but we don't always work together effectively. This podcast tackles questions such as "What makes a rockstar team?" "How can we work from anywhere?" "What part does connection play in today's world?"
You'll also hear the thoughts and views of those who are running and leading teams across the world.
[00:00:00] Dan: Is it okay to have a big team? This is a question that we are asked very often, so it is the first of a new kind of episode from We Not Me towers the q and a. In these episodes, we'll take listen to questions about teamwork and answer them as full as we can from both the scientific and empirical angles. If you have a question you'd like us to explore, just email us at wenotmepod@gmail.com. But for now, let's get stuck into the perennial question of team size.
[00:00:34] Dan: Hello and welcome back to We Not Be the podcast where we explore how humans connect to get stuff done together. I'm Dan Hammond.
[00:00:41] Pia: And I am Pia Lee.
[00:00:43] Dan: And this is exciting, Pia, because this is our first ever q and a episode, um, where we're going to be answering listener questions.
[00:00:51] Pia: I know this is, this is such a great, great idea because get a lot of these questions off air. So we've brought them on air so that we can, pull them apart, understand a bit, and actually build a bit of a shared understanding about some of these challenges that face teams and, and the people in them.
[00:01:10] Dan: Yeah, exactly. And it, we, we are finding, I think it'd be fair to say that people find working in teams harder than we'd imagined they would. More complicated and more questions arise as we're doing a lot of enterprise rollouts at the moment. More questions come up. So this, I hope, will, will inform our listeners.
[00:01:27] Dan: And so today's question is one, uh, not from a specific listener, but from many listeners, and many of our clients, which is. Is it okay to have a really big team? Or you know, how big can my team be? Um, yes. You know, there's sometimes you get questions about is it okay that it's only three people?
[00:01:44] Dan: Yes, by the way. But it's not that, it's actually that these are big teams. So let's dive into that topic. What, what's your, what have you seen practically first, like, we can get into the theory a bit later, but what's your experience of working, you know, when. What's driving these big teams? Wh why are they there and how, how is it when you, when you're working with them, what do you, what do you see practically?
[00:02:07] Pia: Well, I think, um, a start is of course that you know, have you got the right people to get the job done? So asking who's in the team and how big the team is, is looking at the, the system that you've got, the construct that you've got, and how those people work together. To achieve the outcome. And sometimes I think we don't have enough discipline around that.
[00:02:32] Pia: So people sort of get added on. And then we just have this rather cumbersome, large sized team, which is more of a group, it's not even a team 'cause it's not necessarily formed as a team. Um, and then it becomes incredibly time consuming, slightly unwieldy, and often not very productive. So
[00:02:52] Pia: I think a key part is What is the purpose for this team? What are they trying to achieve and who do they need on that proverbial bus to achieve it? And, size and quantity is not everything. It is. Having the right people, doing the right things together in a way that creates that outcome.
[00:03:13] Dan: And very often I think there isn't there a mix mix up between either reporting lines where there's a pressure to flatten organizations and become, and sort of save money, really save middle managers and um, as well, but you know, where you get these big spans of control. So a functional line manager has 20 odd people reporting to them.
[00:03:35] Dan: Now that has its own problems, even individually. I mean, it's very difficult to give people enough attention when you've got 20 direct reports, but in a team it becomes a sort of information sharing vehicle rather than actually a decision making executing high performance vehicle.
[00:03:51] Dan: Um, so it sort of gets into that. I think that's the first bit of. Science I think is really interesting to share, and we'll get into the exact sizes, but part of this is the sheer number of connections in the team, these personal connections, and it's, it's surprising the, um, the, the sort of science behind this is quite surprising, but in a team of three people, you have only three connections you can imagine.
[00:04:15] Dan: You know, when you around or think about this, when you're clinking a glass around a table, glasses around the table. If there's three of you, it's just three clinks. Um, interestingly, when you, and this is basically each one of those is a one-to-one connection with someone else in the team.
[00:04:29] Dan: So you've got these individual connections that sort of hold the thing together. When you get to six people around a table, there are 15 clinked glasses and therefore six people in a team. You've got 15 individual one-to-one connections. And that's why when we're around a table clinking glasses, we just go clink in the middle and you stop. You don't do those individual ones.
[00:04:51] Dan: And so this, it multiplies massively. And you know, you and I have worked with a team of 23 people. There are 253 connections in that team. You know, it just doesn't make sense. So you, that's why it all gets mushy, I think, and you start to lose that into that connection and it becomes just an information sharing sort of arena, really.
[00:05:11] Pia: And that, I think then is, uh, the larger the number, the group. this is, uh, in a lot of sort of psychological studies, the less the individual contribution. So you get this thing called social loafing. Social loafing is the individual, contribution. So they did lots of tests on a tug of war, you put two people against one another, one on each side, and they give a hundred percent. You add people incrementally, and the individual output reduces. So if you've got 23 people in a team meeting, one
[00:05:44] Dan: where that is.
[00:05:46] Pia: a whole bunch of them are gonna be texting, doing their emails or on
[00:05:49] Dan: it's easy to hide, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. And this is researched by, uh, I've been looking this up, Maximilian Ringle man. Um, he was a French agricultural engineer, fascinatingly, and it was research done in 1930. And the numbers are, as you say, p you know, one person, you give one a hundred percent effort.
[00:06:08] Dan: Ama and, and you we're talking about us here. If we were in this situation, this is what we do. You add another person, you each give 93% of your effort, and once you get to three people, it's 85%. So they've actually measured this and that social loafing thing in large groups just gets absolutely massive. Yeah, it's pretty easy to hide at the back, even in a virtual setting, uh, when you've got a large team.
[00:06:32] Pia: and I think it comes down to as well, so what are the roles that everyone is playing? So, optimal size team, we'll come to that, like what the data's telling us what the optimal size team is. But, but you could have optimal size team, but no one has clear roles.
[00:06:47] Pia: So clear roles and a collective goal that, so not, individual KPIs laddered up, there's, there's an overlay here. So, just getting the right numbers of people is not the sole answer. It's how it's, there's a science to this.
[00:07:05] Dan: Yes, absolutely. And I think, you know, it comes back to what is a team? It's a, it's a, you know, it's more than more than one person with a shared goal, as you say, not just KPIs, laddered up, and then a high amount of interdependence. And that independent dependence is what falls apart when you have too many people in your team.
[00:07:22] Dan: So we're basically saying the answer to the question is, small teams are better and. Just getting some numbers around that. Ringman we just heard from says seven is the sort of peak number of people. Putnam Ware did some research. They said three to five. And Hackman, who is Yeah, exactly. Um, exactly right.
[00:07:44] Dan: And Hackman who, um, did a load, I think he was at Harvard and did some of the really sort of seminal work on teamwork. Interesting. He came up with the number of 4.6. So I dunno who that 0.6 of a person is, but, uh, that was his number. But these are surprisingly low, aren't they? Compared with the teams we're working with.
[00:08:05] Dan: You know, it's, it's, it's in, I think our average team size in Squadify is nine or 10. But all of those numbers are way below that, which is fascinating. And above that performance starts to, starts to drop off.
[00:08:18] Pia: Where I see this being a particular challenge for the leader actually is at the exec level or the leadership team, and then they have a, a core leadership team and an extended leadership team, and there's a constant friction as to how people are engaged. And whether, and, and when you're looking at extended leadership team, you're looking at, you know, 15, 16, but you are including functions that may not be core to the commercial aspects of the business, but are integral to the overall success of the supply chain or the delivery or the product innovation.
[00:08:54] Pia: But it's always a challenge as to whether you are a small, smallish core team of that sort of six or seven people or that, that broader, and there are trait, there are, there are pros and cons, but if you have a broader team, you have to have guidelines about the expectation. And if it's just a playing back of results or, you know, just information sharing, I think people might feel they could do more with their time.
[00:09:19] Dan: a a lot of those meetings can be replaced by a, by an email. I think if, if you were to have a larger group where you are doing some consultation, sharing information, getting informa, getting feedback, you know, I think it's about the role of that team, isn't it? When it's large, just say that's what it's for.
[00:09:37] Dan: But we have a smaller team and we've both seen people doing this as sort of. There's a, an executive leadership team, and then there's a sort of more as a sort of smaller group that is tasked with actually, really getting stuck into, yeah, decision making and leading execution. But yes, as you say, it's about team role as well, but once it gets large, it's not going to be great at making decisions.
[00:10:01] Dan: And we'll probably talk about this in another, um, another one of these Q and As, talking around the table is a pretty poor form of conversation, and with a, with a big group, it's, um, it's, it's pretty ludicrous. Um, so a, a findability data from me that I have is in, is outta the Squadify platform.
[00:10:20] Dan: We've looked at performance ratings by the teams, um, versus. The team size and um, it's really interesting. The best fit line, um, shows us that as you add, every person you add reduces your performance by 2%. So that's what the data tells us from the platform. So you know, which, okay, 2%, five, but you add three people, five people, you start. Wow, this is really denting the, potentially denting the performance of the, of this team.
[00:10:51] Dan: So it's, um, you know, this really, this reinforces what all those other researchers said that large teams are really gonna struggle in terms of performance. So, um, yeah, that's straight from the Squadify data that we have, which is pretty juicy.
[00:11:06] Pia: Yeah, that is that. I think that's a really, really key one. And what is it? Jeff Bezos's two pizza rule.
[00:11:12] Dan: Yes, exactly comes back to that. He's actually spot on about that. Um, it's back to those, those small teams and um, yeah, his ins instinct was absolutely right and all the science backs that. So I think that's the answer to that question, Pia, no, it's not great to have a large team. If you do call it a group, use it for information sharing, but make sure you've also got a team that's going to be a proper high performing decision making executing machine.
[00:11:40] Dan: So, um, that's, that's that one knocked off. Great fun doing a q and a with you. Thank you Pia. Um, looking forward to a few more of these and if there are any listeners out there would like to submit a question, just send it Into us and we will dive into it.
[00:11:54] Dan: But that is it for this episode. We, not Me, is supported by Squadify. Squadify helps any team to build engagement and drive performance. You can find show notes where you're listening and at squadify.net. If you've enjoyed the show, please share the love and recommend it to your friends. And also send in a question for us to answer. We Not Me is produced by Mark Steadman. Thank you so much for listening. It's goodbye from me.
[00:12:16] Pia: And it's goodbye from me.