MODERN BUSINESS
to both appreciate the insight and
understand how much work went into
having it.
Google recently completed a
comprehensive study19 into what
makes a team productive.
They concluded there were five factors:
1. Psychological safety – people can
and do speak up
2. Dependability – you do what you
promise to do
3. Structure and clarity – goals are
clear and the process for getting there
is known
4. Meaning of work – everyone is here
for more than just a paycheque
5. Impact of work – the team can
34 ModernBusiness
October 2016
see how their contribution makes a
difference.
So they are the facts of the study.
But to really appreciate the work
that went into it, and the twisting
and turning the researchers did
to find the five aforementioned
factors, you need to hear the story
of the discovery of the insight. The
discovery story adds meaning.
New York Times reporter Charles
Duhigg does a wonderful job of telling
this story. Of course, you wouldn’t
relate all the detail in Duhigg’s article20
in an oral telling of the story, but the
plot points provide a handy guide to
what you might cover. Here are some
of the things I would tell before sharing
the results of the Google study.
Back in 2012, Google kicked off a
study codenamed Project Aristotle
to understand what makes a great
team. The research team started
by reviewing a stack of academic
literature on teams, then applied what
they found to 180 Google teams, but
they couldn’t find any patterns. Also,
in the past, Google had thought that
putting the best people together would
simply allow magic to happen. But
the researchers’ initial investigation
showed that ‘who’ was on the
team wasn’t the determining factor
regarding performance.
The researchers then started searching
the data for anything on group norms:
those things that a group does that
denote its habits, its patterns of
behaviour, its culture. This avenue
of inquiry explained the patterns
of performance better than the
characteristics of the team members.
Then the team uncovered the idea of
psychological safety in the literature
and it was as if everything fell together.