When Teams Prevent Greatness

Our society reveres individual greatness. We root for the Kobe Bryants and Peyton Mannings of the world, we are mesmerized by the likes of Meryl Streep and Steven Spielberg, we follow every move made by Warren Buffet and Elon Musk. Individuals have a special place in our world, and we attribute much of society’s success to unique people—Einstein, Newton, Da Vinci, Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr.—instead of the teams and movements behind them. It goes without saying that there is often an army of people that drive an individual to success. But individuals, acting alone, can do extraordinary things.

In business, we aim to hire all-stars for our organizations: individuals who have proven to be excellent in their field, whether it’s java programming or market research. But then, all too often, we put our all-stars on a team and watch them deliver mediocre results. The truth is there is rarely a situation where a few average people can outperform one all-star, at least not in creative work. Worse, teams tend to “revert to the mean,” such that the best individuals often perform no better than average.

Why do we love teams so much? It may be because, despite our love of individuals, we’ve been conditioned to believe that more is better. Consider the two fundamental laws of networks. Both Metcalfe’s Law and Reed’s Law show that as a network of people grows in size, the value of the network increases substantially. Metcalfe’s law is often explained with the fax machine example: A fax machine is useless if there are no other fax machines. But as the number of fax machines grows, the usefulness of each individual fax machine increases exponentially.

With humans, we often find the opposite is true: the value of a contributor decreases disproportionately with each additional person contributing to a single project, idea, or innovation. Groups of humans in creative projects simply don’t follow network laws. Human performance looks more like a power law than a network law. In a power law, the largest impact comes from the smallest part of the population. There are numerous examples of power functions, including Stevens’ law, Keplar’s law, the long tail, Zipf’s law, and the Pareto principle (or 80/20 rule). Power laws explain a wide variety of events across countless subjects: from earthquakes to income distribution to word frequency and even Amazon’s book sales. Virtually all complex systems follow power laws within the system itself.

Interestingly, our brains at their best also adhere to power functions. The brain is a complex network of around 100 billion neurons connected to one another 100 trillion times. Generally, the brain follows a network law: the value of a neuron is exponentially more valuable as the overall neural network grows. But when the brain becomes highly active, it reverts to a power law where a spike in activity is followed by a lull. Informally called neuronal avalanches, these spikes have been linked to knowledge transfer, memory, communication, and computational power — in short, intelligence.

It's no surprise that what is true for the brain is true for people. Our intelligence is incredibly complex and as a result, a great individual can far exceed the value of many mediocre minds. Teams only work when each member of the team has distinct responsibilities. Otherwise, you’re just diluting individual creativity. There have been several attempts at crowd-sourced novels, but exactly zero of them have been bestsellers. Can you imagine another sculptor chiseling his ideas into Michelangelo’s David? What about asking Gary Kasparov to play doubles chess with an average chess player, or even with Deep Blue?Mediocre minds can destroy the contribution of a great mind.

Worse than that, great minds can collectively destroy the value of each individual mind. It doesn’t make sense to put two quarterbacks on the field, even if they are both superstars. Too many cooks in the kitchen never works, even if it is Nobu and Puck; it spoils the broth, as the saying goes. But assigning one person to create the appetizers, one to make the main course, and one to provide dessert can make for a great dinner. The same is true with the stuff of thought—many neurons, one brain is far superior to many brains, many people.

To be sure, there are plenty of times when groups are better than individuals. Manual labor, rote thought, even ideation sessions, all cater to greater numbers. A CEO needs a team around him or her, as does a quarterback. But two CEOs, two quarterbacks, are too many.

Next time you find yourself managing individuals who are underperforming in a team, try giving them individual projects that are well suited to their areas of expertise. And if you find yourself stuck in a team with someone whose function is exactly the same as yours, don’t despair. Try dividing the work into unique parts so each person can perform as an individual.

Managers are often tempted to form a big team to address a big problem, but that line of thinking only helped to create Dilbert, Office Space, and Saturday Night Live skits that mock leadership. Great managers know better.

Photo Credit:Snap, Flickr