The ‘Two-Pizza’ Rule for Teams

Per the research of the late J. Richard Hackman:

The ideal size for most working teams: 4-6 people. No work team should have more than 10 members. Team performance problems exponentially increase as team size increases.

Per Bob Sutton:

Size begets complexity. Complexity begets greater ‘cognitive load.’ As teams grow in number:

  • maintaining relationships becomes more difficult
  • members spend more time in coordination chores and less time doing the work
  • members must divide their attention among more colleagues

Per Sutton, Intuit’s best practice around development teams is to have no more than the number of people who can be fed by two pizzas. In addition to providing a memorable tip for team effectiveness, Intuit simultaneously confirms why teams in the Midwest tend to consist of fewer members than teams on the east coast.

Source: Bob Sutton, ‘Why Big Teams Suck.’

Positive Thinking – Boon or Bane?

Contrary to popular belief, positive thinking might harm you more than it helps.

Oettingen & Mayer prompted 80-odd students to rate the extent to which they experienced positive thoughts about graduating from school and finding a job. Following-up two-years later, researchers found the same students who indicated positive thoughts were less successful (applied to fewer jobs; received fewer offers; earned less money).

Heather Barry Kappes posits that positive thinking may ‘dull the will to succeed.’

More recent research suggests a possible connection between expressions of positive outlook in mainstream media and later results. Sevincer, et al examined twenty-one inaugural addresses of US Presidents. They found that Chiefs who “waxed optimistic about the future saw a rise in unemployment and a slowdown in economic growth during their terms in office.”

Oliver Burkeman observes that “Ceaseless optimism about the future only makes for a greater shock when things go wrong; by fighting to maintain only positive beliefs about the future, the positive thinker ends up being less prepared, and more acutely distressed, when things eventually happen that he can’t persuade himself to believe are good.”

What does this mean for leaders, especially vis-a-vis the prevailing confidence in positive psychology?

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From, Adam Alter’s, “The Powerlessness of Positive Thinking.”

References:

Oliver Burkeman, The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking (Faber & Faber, 2013)

Gabriele Oettingen & Doris Mayer, “The Motivating Function of Thinking About the Future: Expectations Versus Fantasies,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (Vol. 83, No. 5) 2002: 1198-1212.

Sevincer, et al, “Positive Thinking About the Future in Newspaper Reports and Presidential Addresses Predicts Economic Downturn,” Pscyhological Science (25.6) 2014.

 

Achieving an efficacious online brand community

Online brand communities are popular vehicles for gathering consumer intelligence (e.g., pre- and post-purchase information) and fostering brand affiliation (e.g., generating buzz, increasing loyalty). However, effectively (and efficaciously) managing these communities remains something of a mystical art akin to voodoo, relying as much on luck and happenstance as on strategy.

An MIT study of such communities sought to identify some causality with respect to what actions community managers can take to produce positive outcomes. The study concluded that online communities require constant attention if they are to increase a brand’s sales.

The mere existence of such a community does not “strengthen relationships and drive sales. Rather, it is the exchange of high-quality information on these sites that drives a strong customer response.” Community members who “obtained higher levels of relevant, frequent, lengthy, and timely information” experienced a stronger relationship with the corresponding brand. No single one of those dimensions of communication was sufficient on its own–“only members who received higher levels of all four…ultimately made purchases from additional categories of products and…bought more products from the same category.”

Female board members and the bottom line

As of April 2012, 15% of Fortune 500 boards have one or more female members. Organizations with boards which are characterized by 30% gender diversity “outperform those with no women by a wide margin measured through multiple metrics” [Source: SmartBlog on Leadership].

This poses a chicken-or-the-egg conundrum: are organizations more efficacious because of their gender-diverse boards or are more efficacious organizations more likely to be more equitable in their recruitment of board members?