CASE # $5$: OPTIMIZING TEAM PERFORMANCE AT GOOGLE

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Google is well on its way to ruling the Universe. Whether this is its actual goal or not, Google$$s short$-$term and long$-$term success depends on the performance of its work teams.

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Realizing this, Google applied its immense human, technological and financial resources to finding out what makes top$-$performing teams so effective. Despite its legendary achievements, the company knew that teams vary considerably in terms of their performance, member satisfaction and level of cohesion and conflict.

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To understand why, Google did what it does best $$ collect and analyze data. Google created $$Project Aristotle$$ and spent millions of dollars to gather mountains of data from $180$ teams across the company. The only thing more surprising that what it found was what it did not find.$$

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WHAT DID GOOGLE EXPECT TO FIND?

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Google sliced and diced the team data looking for patterns that would distinguish the most successful from the least successful teams. It expected that some combination of team member characteristics would reveal the optimal team profile. Such a profile or pattern never emerged. Google examined seemingly everything, such as team composition, meaning team member personality, experience, age, gender and education. They also examined how frequently teammates ate lunch together and with whom, their social networks within the company, how often they socialized outside the office, whether they shared hobbies and the team manager$$s leadership style.

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It also tested the belief that the best teams were made up of the best individual contributors, or that they paired introverts with introverts and friends with friends. To the researchers$$ amazement, these assumptions were simply popular wisdom. In summary, the $$Who$$ part of the equation did not seem to matter. Even more puzzling was that two teams might have nearly identical makeups, with overlapping memberships, but radically different levels of effectiveness.

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WHAT DID THE COMPANY ACTUALLY FIND?

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It turned out it was not so much who was in the group, but the way the group functioned or operated that made the performance difference.

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Group norms $$ expected behaviors for individuals and the larger team $$ helped explain why two groups with similar membership function very differently. This finding was only the beginning. Now Google needed to identify the operative norms.$$

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Members of the Project Aristotle team began looking for team member data referring to factors such as unwritten rules, treatment of fellow team members, ways they communicated in meetings and ways they expressed value and concern for one another. Dozens of potential norms emerged, but unfortunately the norms of one successful team often conflicted with those of another.

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To help explain this finding, the Project Aristotle team reviewed existing research on teams and learned that work teams that showed success on one task often succeed at most tasks. Those that performed poorly on one task usually performed poorly on other tasks. This helped confirm Project Aristotle team$$s conclusion hat $$Norms$$ were the key. However, they still could not identify the particular norms that boosted performance or explain the seemingly conflicting norms of similarly successful teams.

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Then came a breakthrough. After intense analysis, two behaviors emerged.

$$ First, all high$-$functioning teams allowed members to speak roughly in the same proportion. $($Granted$,$ they did this in many different ways, from taking turns to having a moderator orchestrate discussions, but the end result was the same $$ everyone got a turn$).$

$$ Second, the members of successful teams seemed to be good at sensing other team members$$ emotions, through either their tone of voice, their expressions, or their non$-$verbal cues.

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Having identified these two key norms, the Project Aristotle team was able to conclude that many of the team inputs and processes were far less important or did not matter at all. Put another way, teams could be quite different in a host of ways, but so long as everyone got a turn when communicating, and members were sensitive to each other, then each had a chance of being a top$-$performing team.

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With this knowledge, now came the hard part. How to instill these norms of appropriate communication practices as well as building empathy into their teams$$ dynamics for all the work teams at Google?

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$1.)$ Define the Problem.

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$2.)$ Identify the Primary Cause of the Problem

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$3.)$ List all Ancillary Causes.

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$4.)$ Propose Recommendations to Resolve the Problem.