Team Size and the "Goldilocks Zone"

Gary Salton's latest research suggests that there is a “Goldilocks” zone for optimum team size and communcation efficiency.

His group studied 3815 teams using the iOpt methodology (which I have featured in this blog before). The results suggests that between 4 and 9 people covers 25% of the distribution but contains 60% of the teams.

Gary concludes that this clustering suggests that there leaders create these team sizes in the “Goldilocks” range to be optimal for their purpose.

There is a neat youTube movie attached to Gary's blog which shows how it all works - see http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=00zae1QgH5U.

Well, my own experience suggests that 4 to 9 is indeed a decent team size (and also a useful span of control for a manager). Nice to see science backing that up!

Read the full research on Gary's blog at garysalton.blogspot.com.

Has the time come for C.E.O. Version 3.0?

From New York Times Business, by Stuart Isett

The first iteration made its mark in the 1990s, as chief executives like Sanford I. Weill, Gerald M. Levin, John F. Welch Jr. and Michael Eisner built empires, not to mention their profiles, at the companies they ran: Citigroup, Time Warner, GE and Disney.

When the shares deflated earlier this decade after the burst of the tech bubble and various corporate scandals, a new cadre moved in: the Fix-it Men. They were lower-key leaders like Charles O. Prince III of Citigroup and Richard D. Parsons of Time Warner, whose job it was to repair the excesses and mistakes of their predecessors.

Now, management experts and longtime watchers of corporate America say the current environment demands, and is attracting, yet another kind of chief executive: the team builder.

“It’s someone who can assemble a team that functions as smoothly as a jazz sextet,” said Warren Bennis, a professor of management at the University of Southern California and author of many books on leadership.

Read the rest of the article ...