RINGELMANN EFFECT – More is Less!
Krishnakumar Ramanathan
Managing Director and Group CEO S & S Power | Acrastyle | Hamilton Research and Technology | At the intersection of Engineering and Management lie infinite possibilities!
I explore Management and Leadership based on my experiences, reading, and reflections. Views are personal. Sources are cited. Feedback is welcome!
At corporate outbound events, a game of tug-of-war is quite popular. People enthusiastically line up on both sides, with some banter about balancing strengths with weights on either side. And then it starts and ends after a while, amidst a lot of laughter everywhere.
During the game, not everybody pulls with their full effort – because It is difficult for an individual to gauge whether the team is gaining or ceding ground, and to adjust their own efforts with the team’s progress. So many of them – especially towards the tail end of either side, just make a token effort. This is the Ringelmann Effect at play!
As in the above game, in corporate environments too, with larger teams, work gets more fragmented. The group productivity reduces due to two main factors:
Motivation efforts: a regular employee may not know whether his/her efforts are even being seen, recognised, or helping the organisation move forward. So naturally, they do tend to perform less than their potential
Coordination efforts: Like in a game of Tug-of-war, everyone in an organisation must pull/resist at the same time. As it depends upon multiple employees, coordination suffers and hence productivity does, too.
What can leaders do to enhance productivity and keep the Ringelmann effect to a minimum? A few pointers:
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To summarise, the Ringelmann effect looks at reduction in productivity with increase in team size, mainly due to coordination and motivation issues. This phenomenon needs to be understood by leaders as a human problem (and not ‘social loafing’) that needs to be dealt with a human touch, through improved communication, rewards and recognition, and better coordination.
I hope you enjoyed reading this one and look forward to your feedback and thoughts as we build a conversation around this topic. Do let me know what you think!
Warmest regards, Krishnakumar.
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LinkedIn Top Voice |Project Manager -EPC Projects Management Experienced Professional with expertise in Project Management, Stake Holder Management, Order Management and Engineering with Customer Centric focus.
1 个月Krishnakumar Ramanathan "Great insights on how the Ringelmann effect impacts team productivity and the actionable steps leaders can take to combat it! Effective communication, recognition, and coordination are truly key!"
Motor Design | Engineering | EPC Projects | Commissioning | Installation | Leadership | Siemens | Ex-Thyssenkrupp Industries |
1 个月From employees pov, this can hamper career progression, learning opportunities, and workplace relationships. So to avoid this employees must take initiative, clarify the roles n responsibilities, set personal goals, get feedback from peers and managers, and also start engaging in meetings. This will help them to boost the productivity and progress in career. Thanks once again for sharing insightful leadership learnings
Mentor to budding HR Professionals, Passionate to enable People & Organizations
1 个月Krishnakumar Ramanathan as usual, you have touched a very important topic. The team is as good as the Leader. If the leader contextualises well, sets the right expectations and rewards the the members in a fair manner, then this situation can be potentially avoided. Else, it could become like the game of tug of war, everyone will take credit for win and it would be very difficult to identify the person who did not play the part well.
Assistant Manager @ Excel Power Engineering
1 个月Very informative sir
Aspiring Global Chief Excellence Officer| My views are personal, shaped by over 36 years of life experience| Follower of Radha Swami SantMat
1 个月Krishnakumar Ramanathan Enjoyed reading as always! If we change the scenario from the corporate world to Volunteers performing social activities. I have witnessed the reverse effect. There people are driving energy from each other and perform better than what they could perform alone. Keys factors remain the same, Motivation - which comes from within. What you had observed in such cases?