Change Here Now by Adam Brock

Author:Adam Brock [Brock, Adam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781623170646
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
Published: 2017-03-21T00:00:00+00:00

Management experts Marcia Blenko, Paul Rogers, and Michael Mankins recommend seven as the optimal group size, claiming that each additional member beyond that reduces the effectiveness of the group’s decision making by 10 percent.63 Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, has taken a more whimsical approach with an internal policy called the “two pizza rule”: no working groups larger than you could feed with a couple pizzas.64

It’s one thing to understand the ideal size for an action group, but that’s just the beginning. At least as important is the group’s composition. What skills and personality types are represented in the group? Are they the right ones for the job? A helpful ecological model for thinking through this challenge is the polyculture, an association of species that mutually support one other. A classic polyculture, grown for thousands of years in North and Central America, is the “three sisters” of corn, beans, and squash. In this polyculture, the corn provides support for the climbing beans, while the beans add nitrogen to the soil to help fertilize the corn. Meanwhile, the squash acts as a groundcover, protecting the soil from the hot sun and preventing weeds from sprouting. And the three plants, when eaten together, provide a nearly complete source of nutrition for humans.

In many cases, people are the same way, especially when we’re working toward a common goal. Each person brings a different set of skills and perspectives to a situation. In the best cases, those skills and perspectives balance each other out perfectly, and the group becomes greater than the sum of its parts. While people’s skills aren’t as static as those of plants, we often find ourselves playing similar roles in groups. With tools like team analysis, we can systematically track those roles and assemble groups designed for maximum effectiveness. While the archetypes we come across are many and subtle, it’s still worth calling out some of the most common characters. The following list is adapted from one articulated by Starhawk in The Empowerment Manual, along with several other roles I’ve come across in my own work.

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