December 27, 2019
I've been reading research on two things: (1) the Organisation and Behaviors of teams that make them most productive and (2) principles and methods for Decision Making. I'm sharing my notes and observations on the first part - Team Organisation and Behaviors.
A clear and agreed team vision is key. One large meta-analysis covering 30 years of research found a clear vision to be one of the strongest factors relating to an independent evaluation of team creativity and innovation. Have a team vision.
Both internal and external communication significantly improve a team's performance. The "external" part is hard: it can be suppressed by controlling managers and neglected by more passive members. I have often needed to remind my teams the importance of everyone "meeting customers" and "seeking feedback from stakeholders". Make sure teams interact with the outside.
Task-related conflict correlates positively with performance if the team has a culture of openness. However if the team has a closed style, it can negatively affect performance. Obviously I recommend an open culture. So don't be afraid: question, discuss, it leads to better results.
Optimal team sizes are between 5 and 9, no larger. This jibes well with my experience. But the team needs to be empowered and autonomous: there's no point in having a small team team who is told what to do by another team/person. (see the two points above)
Agreed roles and responsibilities matter. A Team Charter explaining the vision, goals, and values of the team is positively correlated with performance. Make sure everyone knows basic roles and responsibilities and create a team charter.
For high complexity and ambiguous tasks (like the ones in the "knowledge economy") shared authority and shared leadership works best. Don't centralise or hide decision making from the team, let people take initiative.
Goal interdependence, the extent to which individual goals are mutually supportive and aligned with the wider goal, is highly correlated with team success. Task-interdependence however is not. Excessive task interdependence suggests poorly designed work and can lead to conflict. Give individuals (or pairs) enough autonomy that they're not blocked by others, but have their goals align.
Job-relevant diversity, i.e. cross functional teams and different relevant professional backgrounds, positively impacts performance. However there is no evidence that team demographic diversity (sex, age, ethnicity, etc) does the same - to be clear: there's other reasons to support demographic diversity. Make sure the team has a diverse professional skill set.
It's hard to generalise research in this field. But the alternative is to do things based on no evidence. So I'll revisit the research every few years. Until then I recommend the above.
Profs Scott de Rue and Maxim Sytch's course on "Leading People and Teams" and numerous academic articles in that course.
Profs Hulsheger, Anderson, and Salgado's review: "Team-Level Predictors of Innovation at Work: A Comprehensive Meta-Analysis Spanning Three Decades of Research"
Prof Daniel Kahneman's book "Thinking, Fast and Slow"