There’s an old saying among sports coaches: “A champion team will defeat a team of champions.“
However, as much as we all admire the ideals of teamwork and connectedness there’s also the alternative notion of the “rugged individual” or the “prima donna” who stands out from the crowd and succeeds without help from anyone.
So which approach works better?
Consider this scenario.
Imagine you’re a VIP admitted to a hospital with a serious heart condition. You need a lifesaving operation and, because of your wealth and influence, you are given the option of having a world renowned surgeon flown in to operate on you.
In those circumstances we’d all go for the star performer over the resident medical team, right?
Maybe not.
Robert Huckman and Gary Pisano from Harvard Business School challenged the status of freelancing experts by empirically measuring the success rates of more than 200 cardiac surgeons working across 43 different hospitals.
They specifically examined the success rates (patient survival rates) of highly experienced freelancers versus more bonded surgical teams.
After analyzing more than 38,000 procedures they found the performance of individual heart specialists did improve significantly with practice and experience (one for the prima donnas).
But it was only at the hospital where they did most of their work.
When the same surgeons left their usual teams to work at different hospitals their success rates returned to baseline.
It seems working with a bonded team of colleagues (doctors, nurses, anesthesiologists) helps to develop interactive routines that harness the unique talents of each team member.
The authors concluded that elite performance is not as portable as previously thought and is more a function of the “familiarity that a surgeon develops with the assets of a given organization”- a nice way of saying stars only shine due to their colleagues.
Huckman et.al reinforced these findings by citing studies from other professional settings. For example in a study of software development projects, team familiarity (the average number of times that each member had worked with every other member) was a better predictor of project success and on-time delivery than total experience of individual team members.
In a study at NASA, fatigued crews with experience flying together made significantly fewer errors, when placed under simulated pressure, than fresh crews who had never flown together.
Key message
Positive psychology has always emphasized the personal wellbeing benefits of social relationships and connectedness to others. Now we can say connectedness makes good business sense too –improving organizational performance at the highest levels.
Psychologist and business professor, Adam Grant, summarizes the above findings saying,
“So once we get the right people on the bus, let’s make sure they spend some time driving together.”
References
Foushee, H.C., Lauber, J.K., Baetge, M.M., and Acomb, D.B. (1986). “Crew Factors in Flight Operations: III. The operational significance of exposure to short-haul air transport operations.” NASA Technical Memorandum 88322. Moffett Field, California:
Grant, A. (2014). Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success. Orion Books. UK.
Huckman, R., Staats, B., and Upton, B. (2009) “Team Familiarity, Role Experience, and Performance: Evidence from Indian Software Services.” Management Science 55, no. 1: 85–100.
Huckman, R., Pisano, G. (2006) “The Firm Specificity of Individual Performance: Evidence from Cardiac Surgery.” Management Science 52, no.4 : 473–488.
*In the 1950s movie ‘State Secret’ this scenario forms the plot of a cold war thriller. A leading American surgeon is taken to an Eastern Bloc country to secretly operate on the state’s dictator. But when the patient dies the secret police substitute a double and start eliminating witnesses (he really should have stuck with his own team!).
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