Operation Improvement Inc.

Re-organization and teams are the perennials in the management improvement garden. Popping their heads above ground every weak financial spring, hope springs eternal for these two old favorites. While these venerable strategies do occasionally work to rejuvenate an organization, it isn’t magic. Understanding that fact is the key to more than occasional success.

With teams, the intent is to bring people together and charge them with a common purpose in the hope that they will somehow be more productive than individuals. For true believers, the somehow is guaranteed by faith and philosophy, but there are those of us who have seen teams perform worse than the proverbial “one good engineer.”

Teams can be rationally formed, or they can be malformed. They can be too big, be organized badly, or composed of the wrong people. Just as competent individuals are the building blocks of successful teams, properly formed teams are the building blocks of larger organizational structures. (In this strict use of the word, thirty people cannot form a team.)

In this article, we will focus on the issue of staffing a team. In another time and place we can discuss in more detail why teams need to be small (no more than six individuals), why the team leader is expected to be a working member of the team, and why the team leader is not the same as a supervisor, manager, or coach. (A supervisor may be responsible for 2–4 teams.)

Teams have intrinsic inefficiencies. Team members need to communicate and to closely coordinate their actions. Consequently, team communication and team meetings are often considered boring, time-consuming, and a necessary evil. The larger the team, the more these overhead costs drain productivity.

Teams can still be outstanding producers despite this innate disadvantage. They just need to be formed in such a way that they exploit one of several established principles of productivity.

1. Division of Labor. It has been known for generations that cooperating specialists can be more productive than generalists, if there is sufficient work to keep the specialty occupied. If there is not sufficient work, then the specialty work is absorbed into the closest skill match.

You can take advantage of this principle by staffing a team with different backgrounds and skills. A team with a diversity of skills can maximize productivity if there is sufficient work to justify each specialty.

2. Many Hands Make Light Work. There are many jobs that are unpleasant, tedious, and boring. Nevertheless, they must be done. A single good trooper who is assigned to swamp-draining duties may intellectually appreciate that every job is important, but a long, dreary task can sap the morale and productivity of the best.

This kind of assignment generally calls for similar backgrounds and skills. A friendly peer is the best kind of team member to have by one’s side when there is an undesirable assignment to be slogged through.

3. Perspectives Generate Ideas. Once again, here is a reason to staff a team with individuals selected for their different backgrounds and skills. There are times when we are idea-poor and are looking for a fresh approach to a market, to a new product, or for a problem solution.

Teams of like mind tend to hash over the same old talking points and repeatedly converge on the same solution. Worse, as a result, they may deem their conclusion the best alternative because they do not have the benefit of a radically different perspective.

4. Safety in Numbers. A team can be more productive than individuals if teams are formed as a risk-reduction strategy. Think of this as adding a co-pilot or a spotter in any task where a single misstep or sudden loss of a key individual can be catastrophic.

Similar backgrounds and skills would be characteristic of this kind of team. Here the advantage is intangible, and a manager would need a good quantitative understanding of risk to fully appreciate what is bought by adding redundant team members.

What is the conclusion? Don’t expect a team to be somehow more effective or motivated than the enthusiastic and committed individual. Form teams for a reason. Have an idea as to how a team might be more productive in a given situation. Then, staff the team accordingly, with individuals selected for either their common or complementary abilities. If you can’t make a case for a team, then don’t forget the effectiveness of “one good engineer.”

Copyright © 2025 Operation Improvement Inc. All rights reserved.