What is the best size of a team?

In a gray office, Chris stands in front of long glass tables with multiple computer stations. Have you noticed how if you have dinner with more than about five people, the conversation tends to fragment into smaller subgroups of a more optimum size. Maybe two or three. It's the same with teams at work, with large teams, it gets really difficult for everyone to listen to everyone else and almost impossible for decisions to be agreed. An illustration depicts seven diverse people in business casual clothing. A group of three stand far to the left. Another group of three stand far to the right. In the middle, a lone man stands holding a computer. Text above them reads, " More people equals misunderstandings, disagreements, problems." The more people you have, the more scope there is for misunderstandings, disagreements and gaps and overlaps in who's doing what. We return to the instructor. This was demonstrated by Max Ringelmann 100 years ago when he tested people pulling on a rope in a tug of war. He found that if you have a team of people, they all pull with less effort than you get from one person pulling on their own. Over a white background, a title reads, "Ringelmann effect." Underneath, text reads, "Individual productivity tends to decrease as group size increases." It's known as the Ringelmann effect, and it says that individual productivity tends to decrease as group size increases. We return to the instructor. This is partly due to communication and coordination problems leading to less efficient work and partly due to what he called social loafing. The fact that people can increasingly rely on everyone else doing the work and nobody will know. In a team of 10, you can get away with doing almost nothing, but in a team of two or three, it's going to show. Under the title, Ringelmann effect, is a line graph. Its title reads, "Histogram of Delivery Time." The x axis reads, "Number of team members 1-8." The y axis reads, "Effort exerted" and numbered 0-9. A red line represents expected effort and charts a straight path. The more team members equal an equal amount of effort exerted. A blue line represents actual effort. On the graph, this line curves effort exerted gradually decreases as more members are added. So teams of two or three are more productive than teams of six or seven. And with more than that, you gain almost nothing from adding an extra person. A list appears. Point 1: "Subdivide teams down." Basically it's better to subdivide teams down if you can. We return to the instructor. The research of Meredith Belbin, probably the world authority on teams -- And illustration shows a single circle with four diverse people. Underneath them is the name, "Meredith Belbin." -- concluded that the best size of team for solving problems is four. Smaller than that and you don't get as many ideas. Larger than that, you start getting these communication inefficiencies. Back to the list, Point 2 reads, "Match, the right skills and roles." After we've made the team the optimum size, the next thing to keep an eye on is how the skills and roles of the team members fit together. We return to the instructor. The pieces will never fit together perfectly and the sizes of the pieces will vary. So it's almost impossible to get fairness when the work gets divided up. And this gets worse when you have different types of job coming along. So sometimes there will be lots of work for the detail person or the creative person, and other times very little. So they may swing from overloaded to bored. And I think this is just built into the nature of teams, but it does need to be monitored and managed. I think there are five things you can do in order to make the best of this difficult situation. A list is titled, "Finding the Right Team Dynamics." Number 1: "Keep teams at the smallest size possible." Number 1 is always keep the team to the smaller size it can be. Number 2: "Have regular meetings." Number 2 is to have regular meetings where you all tell each other what you're working on. Number 3: "Ensure measurable accountability." Number 3 is make sure that each person has measurable accountability for some part of the task so that they can't hide. Number 4: "Distribute work fairly." Number 4 is to monitor how busy each person is and try to redistribute the work to keep it fair. Number 5: "Cross-train skill sets." And number 5, train people for several skills as much as possible so they can cover for each other when relative workloads vary. We return to the instructor. So how big is your team? And have you noticed these communication inefficiencies happening? Could you reduce the size of the team or subdivide it? And do you have regular meetings? Could there be clearer accountability for each person? And have you got as much multi skilling as possible for everyone in your team?