CAREERS
If teamwork really does make the dream work, shouldn’t we put as much effort into it as any other skill we have to learn from scratch? Author Mikael Krogerus thinks so. And Natasha Lunn asks him where we should begin…
When it comes to teamwork, the cliché reminds us that ‘there’s no ‘I’ in team’. But the Finnish-Swiss bestselling duo Mikael Krogerus and Roman Tschäppeler may beg to differ. In The Collaboration Book, the authors introduce the idea that true teamwork requires each of us to deeply analyse ourselves, our desires, our flaws and our behaviour. It’s only then, they propose, that we can begin to understand what areas of our work we need to do alone, which we are better off collaborating with others on, and how to communicate the difference.
Their ‘41 ideas for working better together’ arrive at an opportune moment, when, as Krogerus reminds me, ‘Wherever you go, and on Instagram or Twitter, all we see is optimisation of the self.’ He maintains this line of thinking is still important – ‘we should work on ourselves’ – but adds, ‘Sometimes we forget that no man is an island, that it’s really seldom that we do something completely on our own. If you look at any achievement in your life, usually there was someone else involved somewhere in the process, even if they were just holding your hand.’
Perhaps, then, even if our natural instinct is to avoid the complexities of working with others, it would be foolish to give up on it entirely. Plus, since more of us are spending less time in physical workplaces, isn’t it more important than ever to make the most of those moments when we do sit in a room together? Here, Krogerus and Tschäppeler share their thoughts on how to do just that…
The two-pizza rule
‘Jeff Bezos came up with this rule not long after founding Amazon: a team should be small enough that it can be fed by two pizzas. Two pizzas feed roughly four to seven people. If you follow the two-pizza rule, you’ll be able to incorporate different characters in your team, gaining a diversity of ideas and perspectives while keeping things manageable and flexible. In small groups, people can’t hide behind anonymity or indifference, so everyone takes a greater share of the responsibility. There will also be fewer political shenanigans, because there aren’t enough people to forge secondary alliances. Finally, small groups make it easier to turn strangers into friends – since everyone has to interact with everyone else at some point.
‘According to organisational psychologist J. Richard Hackman, moderately sized teams also have the advantage that they make communication easier: the bigger the team, the more opinions there are, the longer the meetings and the greater the dissent will be, which slows down the whole decision-making process. Too many chefs spoil the pizza. Of course, the two-pizza r
