PART 02: READY? AIM! // ASSOCIATES

03 Assemble the Smallest Effective Team

When you want to communicate and collaborate with others, the smaller the group, the better. All else equal, a discussion between five people will be more effective than a discussion with 15. If you explore the research on the optimal group size for discussions (especially decision-making discussions), you will find numbers ranging from four to twelve. Based on my experience, a conversation with twelve people is rarely effective, even when they can theoretically add value to the discussion. Artificially limiting the interaction to four people, on the other hand, is too restrictive and might create a considerable overhead in some scenarios. If I had to bet on a limit, it would be seven people, which also keeps showing up in research and anecdotal reports. But whatever the number is, there is a broad consensus that there is a limit to how many people can participate in an effective discussion. And the number is smaller than the number of people we are used to seeing in many of our workplace meetings. 

While practically all of the research is done in the context of meetings, I extend this rule to any form of communication where we aim to co-create, whether via email, chat, or face-to-face. Regardless of the platform, the fewer people participate in a conversation, the better, as long as all else is equal. We have already established that Near-Time Communication has many flaws. The more people participate in the allegedly “asynchronous” discussion, the more damaging the impact of these flaws is. Near-Time Communication platforms are not designed for deep conversation in the first place, and as the distribution list grows, the signal-to-noise ratio becomes unbearable. 

There’s a delicate balance we must maintain, though. If we focus exclusively on having the smallest forum possible, we will end up talking to ourselves. We need our associates because their different perspectives are essential to co-creation. Reducing the forum to the minimum should not come at the expense of having all the required information and talking with people with different experiences and knowledge. That is why we need to assemble the smallest effective team. This balance is not always trivial to achieve. The key is being deliberate and understanding the tradeoffs. Adding people automatically (or mindlessly forwarding invitations and messages) is obviously ineffective, as is keeping a strict limit without considering the potential value each associate brings to a specific interaction.

Controlling the number of associates participating in each interaction is supported by how we approach communication in general. Instead of thinking about isolated activities such as a single meeting, an email, or a message, we think about communication flows— a series of interactions designed with one initiative in mind. When we think of communication as a process instead of an isolated activity, we gain more flexibility in designing it. 

One way to balance the size of the team and the need to hear different perspectives is to split the communication flow into a sequence of interactions, each with fewer people. Overall, throughout the flow, all necessary parties are actively engaged. If you are a Project Manager and would like to discuss mitigating a significant risk in the project, you can split the communication flow into two parts. The first is to collect different options for mitigating the risk from the technical domain experts, and the second is to discuss the leading options with the management team to pick one of them. Apart from keeping each discussion in this flow smaller, each participant invests their time only in the interactions where they can actively contribute. By thinking about the size of the forum, we are forced to design a more effective communication flow. 

Another way to control the number of associates is to create a layered communication flow. Recall the new Customer Support system we discussed in the previous chapter. Let’s say we came up with a list of 15 potential associates. Having all 15 associates discuss the underlying process at once would be ineffective. But what if we split the discussion into disciplines? One discussion will be held with the representatives of the Customer Support groups to try to understand their needs. A second discussion will be held with representatives of the sales teams to understand their view of the process and so on. Once we understand the different needs and perspectives, we can meet with one representative per discipline to discuss any gaps or conflicts between the various interests that might surface. 

You might argue that with this approach, we need three or four discussions instead of one. However, these smaller discussions are more focused and efficient. They create less friction and save time for most of the associates. This might be a good approach even if the list of potential associates is not extensive; it becomes absolutely essential as the number of participants grows. 

Effective communication isn’t about reducing the number of interactions — it’s about making each interaction more meaningful. We aim to find the smallest, most effective team for each interaction and have as many such interactions as needed to realize our initiative. 

In many organizations, having discussions with smaller teams might initially seem strange. Some might feel this contradicts the desire to be transparent and make discussions and decisions visible. While transparency and visibility are essential, it’s important to distinguish between reaching a decision and communicating it. These are two different initiatives. In-depth conversations rely on assembling a small team; communicating the decision obviously requires a broader distribution, but it’s not really a discussion. Questions might be raised and answered, but the deep collaborative thinking needed to reach a decision was already done. 

Another challenge you might face is team members feeling excluded and undervalued. Explaining the rationale for keeping decision-making forums small will obviously help. However, you can also design communication flows such that the people involved change over time. This way, additional people can affect decisions while the number of participants in each conversation remains controlled. 

Less is not always more, but when it comes to effective, in-depth interaction, only so many people can be involved. Luckily, we have all the flexibility we need by designing communication flows that include multiple interactions. We are not trying to limit the different perspectives heard or make the discussion shallow. On the contrary, a series of smaller interactions allows for more views and ideas to be heard and seriously considered. In Generative Communication, depth is a crucial factor.