The Romance of Teams

Isn't it interesting that some of the most committed advocates of online collectives tend to be consultants − loners, people that make a living off the predictable failures of corporate teamwork?

On the other hand many people that have to collaborate to produce things on a daily basis will surely be inclined to sympathise with dissenting crowd-wisdom sceptics, like David H. Freedman, who recently warned us that "the effectiveness of groups, teamwork and consensus is largely a myth...and the technology of ubiquitous connectednessis making it worse."

This argument strongly echoes that of Jaron Lanier's now notorious Digital Maosim essay: "When you make it easy for everyone to put in his own two cents, with little filtering or accountability, the scum tends to rise to the top."

Freedman cites research indicating that groups acquire a false confidence in poor decisions and tend to consist of individuals that don't try as hard as they would on their own, adding that in most collaborative projects "consensus steadily grows until a majority is reached, at which point people who have confidence in their dissenting, higher-quality opinion are likely to bow to the group." I know all of this to be true. Many of the meetings I have attended over the years appear to have been called precisely to diffuse responsibility in this way.

I especially warmed to the conclusions of Amsterdam academic Bernard Nijstad who divided twelve individuals into a brainstorm group of six and another half dozen people tasked with coming up with ideas on their own. All twelve eventually deemed the group session to have been "more productive" but in fact it was the individuals that came up with the better ideas in Nijstad's test.