Small teams evolutionary advantage
AKA how a fact that you are a mammal defines your workplace.
Big organisations,they are visible,powerful and in your face. Much like dinosaurs.
Mammals small size is what saved them/us from extinction 60 million years ago when a huge meteor struck earth.
Fortunately they/we were small enough to hide in the underground burrows and live of insects and aquatic plants until the earth’s surface cooled down.
That seems like a teachable moment — dominantly us (mammals) were kept alive because we are a warm blooded species and because we needed less resources to survive and reproduce .
Because of this trait today, we live in the Age of Mammals.
Up until that moment dinosaurs ruled the earth for 200 million years.
Mammals = small companies / teams / tribes?
Being small is associated with “positive” terms like:
lightweight
swift
nippy
zippy
agile
nimble
smart ?
It’s a fact that small teams execute , communicate and do things faster. Anyone that has worked in startup-like environment can confirm that.
Many anthropologists agree that the number of stable relationships humans can maintain is 150. When the group is that big over 42% of the groups time is devoted to social grooming — so as the team gets bigger it spends more of it’s time on itself. Thus making it inefficient.
Are we simply wired to work in smaller teams / tribes ?
It’s embedded deeply into our culture to root for the underdog .
Because they have that determination ,motivation and a “nothing to loose” attitude.
When a “huge meteor hits” and winter comes they can go into hibernation mode and weather out the storm.
How to stay small when you grow big?
The strategy that Jason Fried (Founder & CEO at http://basecamp.com ) employs is definitely something worth taking a look at.
He believes in small teams, usually two or three people, with no project manager but instead just people working together with as little “social grooming” as possible.
“When everything’s in one place, everyone knows where things are, where things stand, and everyone can be self-sufficient.” — Jason Fried
We need to be aware of our evolutionary heritage and CEOs around the world need to realize that squeezing people in huge companies and teams just doesn’t work. It’s soul-sucking and against our nature as mammals.
