Insights from Book: "Team Genius: The New Science of High-Performing Organizations" (Part 4)

This continues from Insights from Book: "Team Genius: The New Science of High-Performing Organizations" (Part 3).

PART 4: The Keys in Team Formation and Functionality

(I) The Keys in in Team Formation

Forming teams can be as easy as publicising the intentions of the group to be formed and getting interested people from a corridor. However, Team Genius pointed out that there are some algorithms in getting the right people in the right team:

• Diversity: Look past surface differences such as gender, race. Focus on read differences in culture, life experiences, skills, thought processes.
• Proximity: The closer members are in terms of social distance, more productivity can be leveraged. If there are instances where members can't be placed in the same room, find communication tools to close the gap if possible.
• Size: Always determine the smallest size for the task. Recruit the tram of the size or not too over the numbers. (see below)
• Hierarchy: Layers of management increases efficiency but not necessarily productivity. Keep leadership to the smallest number of managers and the fewest layers of control. For a mid-size team (see below), There should not be more than 2 levels of leadership. It would be very helpful if members know each other well on a personal basis.
• Resist the desire of team members to recruit friends into the team. Even if the person is talented, it might reduce the diversity in the team unless it is a conformity that it won't likely happen.
• Someone from a healthy team in the recent past, or a proven leader coming off a "successful failure" is a good suit of a leader for the team, for they have the necessary experience and knowledge that they pick up form the former team that are applicable to the current.
• Resist the strategy of letting the leader choose his own team (since often than not it's his/her preference and this might just create homogeneity in the team in terms of ideas and way of work)

(II) The Proven Size of teams

Team Genius stated out some of the proven perfect numbers for a good team:

Small, delicate teams: 5- (+/-)7

Mid Size teams: (+/-)15

For large size teams, the author put 150, 1500 strong as a point of saturation for teams, which is based on the amount of control that the leadership of the type can handle, especially for communication. 

One thing to note is that the amount of communication nodes increases exponentially with the amount of members in the group (just like how permutation works). The author effectively used the example of Hewlett-Packward company in the 1960s to explain the numbers, as the founder cum director started to realise that he cannot relate well to his employees to effectively convey concise and personalised instructions once the numbers go past 150. (It's the point that even remembering names and work division would be hard for an average person on the ground)

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