3 thought experiments about the value of relationships within groups
And a reflection on how we define collective success…
Thought experiment #1
Imagine there are 3 different teams trying to solve the same challenge. You have to bet which of the groups is more likely to be successful.
- Team 1 is made up of 5 highly skilled people.
- Team 2 is made up of 5 highly skilled people who know each other well.
- Team 3 is made up of 5 highly skilled people who know each other well and have a deep sense of mutual care, trust and psychological safety.
Which team would you bet on? Why do you think that team is more likely to succeed?
Thought experiment #2:
Imagine there are 4 different groups of change makers, each one of them working on their own inspiring initiative to make the world a better place. Without knowing what the individual change makers do, which group do you think is most likely to shaping the world in a net-positive way?
- Group 1 is made up of 50 inspiring change makers.
- Group 2 is made up of 50 inspiring change makers who are in the same Whatsapp group.
- Group 3 is made up of 50 inspiring change makers who have deep trust and mutual care.
- Group 4 is made up of 50 inspiring change makers who have deep trust and mutual care. As a condition of being part of this group they are required to work on a shared collective goal (which might be connected to their individual projects or not).
Which group would you bet on? Why?
Thought experiment #3
Imagine a large group of change makers, each one of them working on their own inspiring initiative to make the world a better place. Without knowing what the individual change makers do, which group do you think is most likely to shape the world in a net-positive way?
- Group 1 is made up of 5000 inspiring change makers.
- Group 2 is made up of 5000 inspiring change makers who all have attended a big summit and are part of a virtual social network.
- Group 3 is a made up of 5000 inspiring change makers who have a shared sense of purpose, who have been getting together regularly over many years, some people with strong ties of mutual care, some people with lose ties.
Which group would you bet on? And why?
Make it your own: You get the gist of it and you can easily adjust the thought experiments to include other parameters. For example, “leadership” would be an interesting dimension to bring in. What if one group has a strong leader?
Reflections
I’d love to hear what these thought experiments brought up for you. You can easily adjust the thought experiments with new parameters and make them your own.
For me the thought experiments are a nice reminder of the obvious: that groups with relationships will outperform groups without relationships. But my bigger reflection was about the definition of collective success / impact (especially of purpose-driven groups).
I realized through this exercise that there are two ways of defining the collective impact of a group. Let’s go back to the prompt of thought experiment #2: “Without knowing what the individual change makers do, which group do you think is most likely to shaping the world in a net-positive way?” I see two different ways of interpreting this prompt:
- Collective impact is the joint effort of all the people in the group towards one shared goal.
- Collective impact is the cumulative effort of all the individuals in the group in their own projects. As individual change makers are more successful, the overall impact of the group grows.
- Or a variation of the two.
I think there is a lot on this distinction and I will need a longer post (and some thinking time) to unpack it properly. Intuitively, I see a real learning opportunity here. Most purpose-driven communities and networks started, run or financed by organizations are focused mostly on joint collective efforts. Collaborative Action. In my personal opinion, organizations vastly over-index on joint efforts, but underestimate the power of cumulative individual efforts. Probably because it’s almost impossible to measure.
What did it bring up for you?
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