> ... Google’s intense data collection and number crunching have led it to the same conclusions that good managers have always known. In the best teams, members listen to one another and show sensitivity to feelings and needs.
> ... Google, in other words, in its race to build the perfect team, has perhaps unintentionally demonstrated the usefulness of imperfection and done what Silicon Valley does best: figure out how to create psychological safety faster, better and in more productive ways.
> Project Aristotle is a reminder that when companies try to optimize everything, it’s sometimes easy to forget that success is often built on experiences — like emotional interactions and complicated conversations and discussions of who we want to be and how our teammates make us feel — that can’t really be optimized.
I recall a study that found that the difference between good and bad teams most of the time was ... if they have a bad member on the team or not.
It wasn't the quality of the members, it was if there was just one "bad" member, or not. One bad member could sink a team no matter how good everyone else was.
They did find a sort of magic outlier where if the team member had an outstanding leader they could overcome the one bad member. However they believed that those folks were so rare and you're unlikely to find them that it's not something a team can strive to have.
That's interesting. Do you have a link to the study? Also was "bad" here incompetence? Or toxicity? I would imagine they have pretty different effects.
Sadly I do not. I heard about it on an NPR story ages ago and can't find anything about it.
Their measurements as for "bad" was largely based on their observations of teams meetings. Factors like simply being negative, insults (or close to insults, what we probabbly call toxicity today), disruptive, disrespectful, not being prepared (I found this one interesting as NOBODY seems prepared for a meeting anymore), and things like simply trying to change direction on any plans that were agreed to repeatedly.
Some excerpts:
> ... Google’s intense data collection and number crunching have led it to the same conclusions that good managers have always known. In the best teams, members listen to one another and show sensitivity to feelings and needs.
> ... Google, in other words, in its race to build the perfect team, has perhaps unintentionally demonstrated the usefulness of imperfection and done what Silicon Valley does best: figure out how to create psychological safety faster, better and in more productive ways.
> Project Aristotle is a reminder that when companies try to optimize everything, it’s sometimes easy to forget that success is often built on experiences — like emotional interactions and complicated conversations and discussions of who we want to be and how our teammates make us feel — that can’t really be optimized.