Over the past couple of decades, a cult has grown up around 바카라 룰s. Even in a society as fiercely independent as America, 바카라 룰s are considered almost sacrosanct. The belief that working in 바카라 룰s makes us more creative and productive is so widespread that when faced with a challenging new task, leaders are quick to assume that 바카라 룰s are the best way to get the job done.
Not so fast, says J. Richard Hackman, the Edgar Pierce Professor of Social and Organizational Psychology at Harvard University and a leading expert on 바카라 룰s. Hackman has spent a career exploring—and questioning—the wisdom of 바카라 룰s. To learn from his insights, HBR senior editor Diane Coutu interviewed Hackman in his Harvard office. In the course of their discussion, he revealed just how bad people often are at 바카라 룰work. Most of the time, his research shows, 바카라 룰 members don’t even agree on what the 바카라 룰 is supposed to be doing. Getting agreement is the leader’s job, and she must be willing to take great personal and professional risks to set the 바카라 룰’s direction. And if the leader isn’t disciplined about managing who is on the 바카라 룰 and how it is set up, the odds are slim that a 바카라 룰 will do a good job.
What follows is an ed바카라 룰ed version of that conversation.
You begin your bookLeading 바카라 룰sw바카라 룰h a pop quiz: When people work together to build a house, will the job probably (a) get done faster, (b) take longer to finish, or (c) not get done?
That multiple choice question actually appeared on a standardized fourth-grade test in Ohio, and the obvious “answer,” of course, is supposed to bea—the work gets done faster. I love that anecdote because it illustrates how early we’re told that 바카라 룰work is good. People tend to think that 바카라 룰s are the democratic—and the efficient—way to get things done. I have no question that when you have a 바카라 룰, the possibility exists that it will generate magic, producing something extraordinary, a collective creation of previously unimagined quality or beauty. But don’t count on it. Research consistently shows that 바카라 룰s underperform, despite all the extra resources they have. That’s because problems with coordination and motivation typically chip away at the benefits of collaboration. And even when you have a strong and cohesive 바카라 룰, it’s often in competition with other 바카라 룰s, and that dynamic can also get in the way of real progress. So you have two strikes against you right from the start, which is one reason why having a 바카라 룰 is often worse than having no 바카라 룰 at all.
You’ve said that for a 바카라 룰 to be successful, it needs to be real. What does that mean?
At the very least, it means that 바카라 룰s have to be bounded. It may seem silly to say this, but if you’re going to lead a 바카라 룰, you ought to first make sure that you know who’s on it. In our recent bookSenior Leadership 바카라 룰s, Ruth Wageman, Debra Nunes, James Burruss, and I collected and analyzed data on more than 120 top 바카라 룰s around the world. Not surprisingly, we found that almost every senior 바카라 룰 we studied thought that it had set unambiguous boundaries. Yet when we asked members to describe their 바카라 룰, fewer than 10% agreed about who was on it. And these were 바카라 룰s of senior executives!
Often the CEO is responsible for the fuzziness of 바카라 룰 boundaries. Fearful of seeming exclusionary—or, on the other end of the spectrum, determined to put people on the 바카라 룰 for purely political reasons—the chief executive frequently creates a dysfunctional 바카라 룰. In truth, putting together a 바카라 룰 involves some ruthless decisions about membership; not everyone who wants to be on the 바카라 룰 should be included, and some individuals should be forced off.
We worked with a large financial services firm where the CFO wasn’t allowed on the executive committee because he was clearly a 바카라 룰 destroyer. He was disinclined toward 바카라 룰work, he was unwilling to work at finding collective solutions, and every 바카라 룰 he was on got into trouble. The CEO invited the CFO to stay in his role because he was a truly able executive, but he was not allowed on the senior executive 바카라 룰. Although there were some bruised feelings at first, in the end the CFO was much happier because he didn’t have to be in “boring” 바카라 룰 meetings, and the 바카라 룰 functioned much better without him. The arrangement worked because the CEO communicated extensively with the CFO both before and after every executive committee meeting. And in the CFO’s absence, the committee could become a real 바카라 룰.
You also say that a 바카라 룰 needs a compelling direction. How does it get one?
There is no one right way to set a direction; the responsibility can fall to the 바카라 룰 leader or to someone in the organization outside the 바카라 룰 or even to the 바카라 룰 itself in the case of partnerships or boards of directors. But however it’s done, setting a direction is emotionally demanding because it always involves the exercise of authority, and that inevitably arouses angst and ambivalence—for both the person exercising it and the people on the receiving end. Leaders who are emotionally mature are willing and able to move toward anxiety-inspiring situations as they establish a clear, challenging 바카라 룰 direction. But in doing so, a leader sometimes encounters resistance so intense that it can place his or her job at risk.
That point was dramatically brought home to me a few years ago by a participant in an executive seminar I was teaching. I’d been talking about how leaders who set direction successfully are unafraid to assume personal responsibility for the mission of the 바카라 룰. I mentioned John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., and I got carried away and said that people who read the New Testament knew that Jesus did not convene little 바카라 룰 meetings to decide the goals of the ministry. One of the executives in the class interrupted me and said, “Are you aware that you’ve just talked about two assassinations and a crucifixion?”
What are some common fallacies about 바카라 룰s?
People generally think that 바카라 룰s that work together harmoniously are better and more productive than 바카라 룰s that don’t. But in a study we conducted on symphonies, we actually found that grumpy orchestras played together slightly better than orchestras in which all the musicians were really quite happy.
That’s because the cause-and-effect is the reverse of what most people believe: When we’re productive and we’ve done something good together (and are recognized for 바카라 룰), we feel satisfied, not the other way around. In other words, the mood of the orchestra members after a performance says more about how well they did than the mood beforehand.
Another fallacy is that bigger 바카라 룰s are better than small ones because they have more resources to draw upon. A colleague and I once did some research showing that as a 바카라 룰 gets bigger, the number of links that need to be managed among members goes up at an accelerating, almost exponential rate. It’s managing the links between members that gets 바카라 룰s into trouble. My rule of thumb is no double digits. In my courses, I never allow 바카라 룰s of more than six students. Big 바카라 룰s usually wind up just wasting everybody’s time. That’s why having a huge senior leadership 바카라 룰—say, one that includes all the CEO’s direct reports—may be worse than having no 바카라 룰 at all.
Perhaps the most common misperception about 바카라 룰s, though, is that at some point 바카라 룰 members become so comfortable and familiar with one another that they start accepting one another’s foibles, and as a result performance falls off. Except for one special type of 바카라 룰, I have not been able to find a shred of evidence to support that premise. There is a study that shows that R&D 바카라 룰s do need an influx of new talent to maintain creativity and freshness—but only at the rate of one person every three to four years. The problem almost always is not that a 바카라 룰 gets stale but, rather, that it doesn’t have the chance to settle in.
So newness is a liabil바카라 룰y?
Absolutely. The research confirming that is incontrovertible. Consider crews flying commercial airplanes. The National Transportation Safety Board found that 73% of the incidents in its database occurred on a crew’s first day of flying together, before people had the chance to learn through experience how best to operate as a 바카라 룰—and 44% of those took place on a crew’s very first flight. Also, a NASA study found that fatigued crews who had a history of working together made about half as many errors as crews composed of rested pilots who had not flown together before.
So why don’t airlines stick to the same crews?
Because 바카라 룰 isn’t efficient from a financial perspective. Financially, you get the most from your cap바카라 룰al equipment and labor by treating each airplane and each pilot as an individual un바카라 룰 and then using an algor바카라 룰hm to maximize their utilization. That means that pilots often have to dash up and down the concourses just as passengers do, and sometimes you’ll have a pilot who will fly two or three different aircraft w바카라 룰h two or three different crews in the course of a single day—which is not so wise if you look at the research. I once asked an operations researcher of an airline to estimate how long 바카라 룰 would take, if he and I were assigned to work together on a trip, before we could expect to work together again. He calculated that 바카라 룰 would be5.6years. Clearly, this is not good from a passenger point of view.
The counterexample, by the way, is the Strategic Air Command, or SAC, which would have delivered nuclear bombs had that become necessary during the Cold War years. SAC 바카라 룰s performed better than any other flight crews that we studied. They trained together as a crew, and they became superb at working together because they had to. When you’re working together in real time and there can be no mistakes, then you keep your 바카라 룰s together for years and years rather than constantly change their composition.
