Get Small For Bold Outcomes
“A small team of a+ players can run circles around a giant team of b and c players.” Steve Jobs
Delivering products and services at scale, to a consistent level of quality and delivery requires well-engineered processes and a large team to execute with clear roles and responsibilities. This is where the modern corporation excels.
Such a well-oiled process machine can be a significant source of cost and execution advantage, enabling higher returns, reducing volatility and furthering investments in even better refinements.
However, it can also lead to an unwieldy, bureaucratic, myopic, slow to change organizations with multiple layers of decision-makers and a bias towards large, multi-functional teams in all situations. To a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Bigger Is Not Better For New
The Ringelmann Effect is the tendency for individual members to become less productive as the size of a group increases, driven by a loss of motivation and increased complexity of coordination & communication. Large teams are also more risk averse, where getting everyone on board requires placating fear-based concerns, resulting in consensus thinking.
However bold outcomes have rarely come from consensus or risk aversion. And frankly the market or customers doesn’t care to conform to the desired view of the committee.
Jeff Bezos has famously stated that if “you can’t feed a team with two pizzas, it’s too large.” This is the practice of the most innovative companies, to keep market-facing teams small.
The small teams model offers significant advantages over large teams.
Small Cultivates Ownership
On smaller teams, each player can have an out-sized impact, creating a far more motivating environment. People increase their efforts, wear multiple hats and display greater grittiness in getting things done.
In addition, smaller teams develop tighter bonds and commitment to mutual success. They rely on each other to get things done, driving a higher level of throughput and focus.
Small Is Creative & Nimble
Small teams are a magnet for the explorers, the curious, the creatives, the risk-seekers, the givers. Those individuals with the characteristics that better lend themselves to experimentation, unconventional thinking, novel possibilities.
Small teams can move with speed and flexibility in formulating hypotheses, testing and learning. These teams make decisions quickly and execute quickly. The excessive and time-consuming deliberation typical in large teams can also result in “bigger” decisions and therefore more expensive in failure. Small teams tend instead to make many, small consequence decisions that are easily and cheaply reversible if wrong.
Small Is Outside-In
Because small teams don’t have to spend an inordinate amount of time building consensus with each other, they naturally spend substantially more of their time with customers.
Fewer people generally mean fewer distortions of customer feedback, less aggregated bias. The faster cycles of test-&-learn reinforce the centricity of the customer in determining what the solution needs to be rather than what would be determined by committee.
Next-Generation Requires Small
As the pace of change continues to accelerate; speed of learning, nimbleness and quick decision-making will be the hallmarks of winning companies. As small teams are far more fit for this environment, companies may need to dramatically shrink the size of their market-facing teams so they can better focus, simplify and speed-up responsiveness & execution.
Sean O’Toole is a Partner with Forge > Outcomes. We have your roadmap to become a Next-Generation Company.
