Dunbar’s Number + Agora
Research finds that when a company reaches 150 people, communication and culture starts to change. Agora helps alleviate this challenge, and is changing the game for company-wide communications.
Small teams are great. Everyone is able to share ideas, delegate tasks, and collaborate easily. Starting out, when messaging, branding, and missions are most important, having a small, cohesive group is an asset. Large companies have a harder time forming a cohesive group. Large groups require organization, specialization, and high-level communication. Clearly, many established companies and organizations have a system in place. Still, many struggle with establishing a common mission, keeping employees engaged, and sourcing ideas from everybody. Companies transitioning from a small team to a large one face this challenge head on — as described in this Quartz article. Why is this transition so hard? Why does the challenge continue to exist for large companies?
Research shows that the optimal number of people in any given group is 150. Dunbar’s number, as it is known, is the “suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships.” This was the average size of hunter-gatherer societies, and is the average parish size of the Amish. Past this number, it becomes difficult for a group to share one set of rules or work together collectively. Humans simply tend to think in smaller groups. Naturally, larger groups require different modes of communication and rules. For a company looking to create a sense of community, while maintaining a certain level of output, Dunbar’s number poses a challenge.
Agora is one solution to the people problem created by Dunbar’s number. Here’s why.
1. It’s scalable.
Agora works for a small team of 6; it also works for a community of 600. The ways in which it organizes ideas and conversations become more useful with size. Because conversations are based on ideas which can come from anywhere, nobody has to be in the same room to be heard. Still, these conversations and ideas can happen in contextualized spaces, so only the people that need to be included are there.
2. It’s idea-based
Many companies turn to project-management softwares when the team gets too big to divvy up tasks all together. These softwares all work great when it comes to delegation, but few actually allow employees to share what they think. Ones that do are still oftentimes only driven by a project or a single design challenge. We believe that people have ideas every single day that should be incorporated into companies. Where do ideas come from? Discussions- which, hopefully, coworkers are already having. Agora makes it easy for a company to grow and improve by catching these ideas out of thin air and allowing them to develop within a company-wide workflow.
3. It’s contextualized & organized
One of the biggest challenges any company faces is organization. No group can succeed if it’s a mishmash of people trying to decide what to do when. Teams form to handle specific areas of work. This all happens because of Dunbar’s number, and it’s why successful companies tend to rely on organized groups. However, this structure can hinder progress and communication. Agora allows large organizations to maintain structure while sharing ideas and updates between silos. Ideas from an engineering team can easily find their way to sales, and vice versa, without becoming a free-for-all. Conversations that have context become more meaningful and serve a higher purpose.
Any company looking to grow, that has grown quickly, or simply wants to feel smaller, can benefit from Agora. People love the idea of a startup mentality, with everyone at the same desk making big decisions. Since that can’t happen with 100 or 1000 people, we have found a way to at least make it feel that way. We can’t change the fact that Dunbar’s number inhibits our social ability- but we can change the way we deal with it.
