What Google Learned About Teams

This was a long article about how a team at Google did a very long research project on how teams worked together and what made teams ‘better, or worse’. At the beginning of their research they had a lot of good information, but they coudln’t really come up with why some teams were better than others. The data they had showed the differences between the groups, but it wasn’t really leading them down a path to solid conclusions.

“After looking at over a hundred groups for more than a year, Project Aristotle researchers concluded that understanding and influencing group norms were the keys to improving Google’s teams.”

This meant that they needed to dig deeper into the research to see what small things each group was doing, and maybe that would lead them to a better understanding.

“What interested the researchers most, however, was that teams that did well on one assignment usually did well on all the others. Conversely, teams that failed at one thing seemed to fail at everything. The researchers eventually concluded that what distinguished the ‘‘good’’ teams from the dysfunctional groups was how teammates treated one another.”

Deep down, they found the best results when they looked at the personal connections the teams had with eachother. Some teams showed more compassion that how people felt over others who were very smart, but only there for the ‘work’.

“By adopting the data-driven approach of Silicon Valley, Project Aristotle has encouraged emotional conversations and discussions of norms among people who might otherwise be uncomfortable talking about how they feel.”

“In the best teams, members listen to one another and show sensitivity to feelings and needs.”

This project which took a long time showed the researchers that treating people how you would liek to be treated ended up being a big factor in how a group came together to solve problems and how successful they were during that process.

Information taken from What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team