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Another way of looking at Dunbar numbers is that five is the number of your most intimate friends and partners (“clique”) and is a number that, not coincedentally, corresponds with the limits of our short-term memory. Fifteen is the number of people with whom we can have deep trust in the face of almost any turn of events (“sympathy group”). Fifty is a familial grouping, a small tribe with whom we can securely travel in a dangerous country (“band”). One hundred fifty is the optimal size for a group of people living together in a community (“friendship group”); it corresponds to the number of people who individual characteristics and behaviors the human brain can effectively remember. Five hundred is the number of people with whom we can remain nodding acquaintances (“tribe”). And fifteen hundred is the limit of our long-term memory, the total number of people to whom we can mentally attach a face if we hear his or her name (“community”). …

By the end of the 1980s, HP had more than forty divisions, all of them consisting of about 1500 employees - and was regularly creating new ones. The company even developed a standard architectural design for its divisional facilities, accommodating for a maximum capacity of … 1500 employees.


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For example, a leader who smiles and laughs will trigger similar laughter in his or her team - a process that also helps in team bonding. And bonded groups almost always perform better than their less-well-bonded counterparts. Not surprisingly, top-performing leaders have been shown, on average, to elicit laughter from their subordinates at least twice as often as their les-successful counterparts. …

It seems that the better we behave, the better people around us behave as well.


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Turnover is a problem in groups in which the members perceive each other as too different. The added stress of dealing with the “other” will drive some people to seek the safety of being with people more like themselves in other teams. The best to counter this centrifugal force is to foster social identity - that is, to cultivate the process by which a person’s self-concept becomes derived from his or her membership in the group. … Experiments show that people who highly identify with their team express a stronger desire to remain in that team despite the presence of an attractive exit option. …

In 2001, the Harvard researchers Robin Ely and David Thomas studied three professional service firms and found that each dealt with diversity with a different way of framing the challenge:

  • The integration and learning perspective - the first company framed diversity as a mechanism for helping teams enhance their capacity for adaptive change. (“Your differences in experience will help us react quickly to a rapidly changing marketplace.”)
  • The access and legitimacy perspective - the second company framed diversity as a way to better connect with an increasingly diverse marketplace. (“Your differences in cultural backgrounds will help us understand the global marketplace.”)
  • The discrimination and fairness perspective - the third company framed diversity as a means to ensuring fair and equal treatment of all. (“Our differences ensure that there will be no bias against anyone.”)

According to Ely and Thomas, only the integration and learning perspective provided the necessary rationale and guidance for harnessing significant benefits from diversity.


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Unconsciously or not, novelists and screenwriters understand this, and so they keep the number of major characters in any story down to about a half dozen. If in the course of the narrative they add one character, they compensate by losing one, or putting on in the background. As a result, whenever we encounter a small team of people in a book or onscreen, that team almost always exhibits the familiar 7 +/- 2 composition, which further reinforces that size of team in our consciousness.


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If you find yourself with a project that will demand a nine- (or even worse, a ten- or eleven-) member team, seriously consider bumping up the team size to 15 +/- 3 - and use those additional members to implement an internal management superstructure to the project. The added cost is almost always worth it. …

As for running the 15 +/- 3 team after it is under way, the basic rules of management theory apply: Work through your subordinates but maintain a connection with all the team members; continuously monitor the team’s health; recognize hard work and achievement; defend the team against outside challenges; manage the budget carefully; and shepherd the team through major challenges and transitions. If you’ve built the team properly, it will take care of the rest.


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… here are four key lessons we hope leaders will use for team recruitment:

  • Diversity: look past surface differences such as race and gender, and focus instead on real differences in culture, life experiences, skills, and thought processes. The larger the mix you have of these qualities - as long as the members can build a team culture that will keep them together - the greater the chance the team will be successful.
  • Proximity: teams work better the closer the members are to each other. That’s true even in the age of virtual work teams. So if you can’t put the members in the same room, then find communication tools to close the gap.
  • Size: bigger isn’t better for teams; in fact, it usually makes them worse. Determine the smallest-size team for the task at hand and recruit for that size, or a size not much larger.
  • Hierarchy: layers of management increase efficiency but not necessarily productivity. Keep the leadership of the team to the smallest number of managers and the fewest layers of control. The best teams have few leaders and a flat organization with little hierarchy. Eschew titles.


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Nevertheless, our experience is that other than a few (tragic) people, everyone enjoys a story, and most people also like to tell them. So the manager of a team has three duties in this area:

  • Create a setting in which team members not only feel free to tell stories but are encouraged to do so.
  • Help the process of selecting and repeating those stories that aid in the health and productivity of the team, and that are reflective of the team’s desired culture.
  • Establish occasions and settings in which these stories can be regularly shared, especially with new team members.


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When you do reach that end, formally announce that fact - and then Celebrate. … Just remember to cover the following in the course of the celebration:

  • Recount their achievements.
  • Remind them of the team’s beginnings, how they didn’t know each other and how close they’ve become since.
  • Reminisce about the high points (and the low points overcome) in the team’s history.
  • Most of all, recognize the work of every team member individually, both before the rest of the team and one-on-one.
  • Retreat at the right moment. Every leader plans the beginning of these events; smart ones plan the ending - especially the part about exiting quickly and on a high note.