Coutu, D. (2009). Why Teams Don’t Work: An Interview with J. Richard Hackman. Harvard Business Review.
J. Richard Hackman, the Edgar Pierce Professor of Social and Organizational Psychology at Harvard University, shares his tips on how to create a successful team. According to Hackman, a
team’s success depends on clarity of membership, compelling direction, defined structure, organizational support, and executive coaching through each stage of the project.
One thing I love about this article is the way Hackman breaks down the myth of guaranteed team success. Thoughtful team building and organizational support can lead to cohesion, collaboration, ideation, and transformation. However, competition and a lack of coordination can beat team cognition into a bloody pulp. Instead of serving the team, each member works to serve themselves.
Hackman discusses the need for a leader to “find a balance between individual autonomy and collective action”, (Coutu, 2009). We all participate in a creative process differently, and some of us benefit from solo ideation before group brainstorming sessions.
Hackman also debunks the theory that long-serving teams get stale over time and lose their effectiveness due to comfortability. However, he has found that teams create transactional memory over time which enhances their performance.
For example, actors working in ensemble theater companies like Steppenwolf and Lookingglass Theatre build trust to take chances with their creative material. Mary Zimmerman’s staging of Ovid’s Metamorphosis in a square pool of water at Lookingglass Theatre was only possible with the trust and participation of all members.
The most fascinating tidbit I gleaned from this article was the importance of having a deviant on a team. A leader needs to appoint someone on the team to ask the difficult questions: why are they doing this project at all? What’s the point? Are we going in the right direction? Without the presence of a deviant, groupthink can impact decisions without weighing all factors. “In many cases, deviant thinking is a source of great innovation”, (Coutu, 2009).
Hackman encourages leaders to embrace their quirkiness and improvise like jazz musicians to keep the team moving along.
L2: Demonstrate the ability to assess complex organizational environments and achieve communicative goals.
L4: Apply communication-centered scholarship to strengthen communication effectiveness.
D2: Utilize communication to embrace complexity and difference.
Keywords: clarity, direction, structure, support, autonomy, collective action, ensemble, improvisation, and transactional memory
