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I agree that there are elements like this that make intuitive sense. What I am saying is: After at these years on military/boardroom slides... what does Dunbar

I agree that there are elements like this that make intuitive sense. What I am saying is: After at these years on military/boardroom slides... what does Dunbar's tell us? How has it influenced how we do anything? What should or shouldn't be organized in smaller/larger groups? How? It just feels like a lot of popular social science tidbits give us a great introduction with no follow through. What was the point of all those slides?

bjelkeman-again 5y ago
To me it fits into the experience that as a team goes through growth, you need to adjust your team communications/management as you grow. Roughly: 7 people, 15, 35-42, 100ish. Where the Dunbar number is just the top number. (Which tells me I need to pull out Vern Harnish’s Scaling Up, again).
- dalbasal 5y ago
  Ok, but where does Dunbar add insight. What would be different in our approach without Dunbar?
  - bjelkeman-again 5y ago
    It confirmed my observations about teams of 100+ people. It serves a purpose for me as a way to start discussing the issue of communications and management within a team. Not a huge thing, like many things. But it is a useful pice of a puzzle that works, for me.
  - WorldMaker 5y ago
    That's a bit of a chicken-and-egg question here, too. Armies have been organized around no more than 100/150 people in a single "unit"/"team" for millennia, prior to any of Dunbar's research much less "Dunbar's Number". There were a lot of observed practical concerns that led to that number, some of which are unrelated such as top-down command structures, but some of which would be direct observations of similar (if not the exact same) phenomenon that Dunbar studied. In this case Dunbar's Number gives us far more insight into why armies have organized that way for millennia than the other way around (telling them how to organize). One group discovered it practically and Dunbar theorized about if that was just a practical local maxima or if it was a more global maximum. What becomes different in our approach post-Dunbar's Number is the added perspective of: not only has this been proven to work in millennia of military practice, but in theory we know it is a theoretical barrier in far more social situations than just those that also have confounding factors like top-down management.

bjelkeman-again 5y ago

To me it fits into the experience that as a team goes through growth, you need to adjust your team communications/management as you grow. Roughly: 7 people, 15, 35-42, 100ish. Where the Dunbar number is just the top number. (Which tells me I need to pull out Vern Harnish’s Scaling Up, again).

dalbasal 5y ago
Ok, but where does Dunbar add insight. What would be different in our approach without Dunbar?
- bjelkeman-again 5y ago
  It confirmed my observations about teams of 100+ people. It serves a purpose for me as a way to start discussing the issue of communications and management within a team. Not a huge thing, like many things. But it is a useful pice of a puzzle that works, for me.
- WorldMaker 5y ago
  That's a bit of a chicken-and-egg question here, too. Armies have been organized around no more than 100/150 people in a single "unit"/"team" for millennia, prior to any of Dunbar's research much less "Dunbar's Number". There were a lot of observed practical concerns that led to that number, some of which are unrelated such as top-down command structures, but some of which would be direct observations of similar (if not the exact same) phenomenon that Dunbar studied. In this case Dunbar's Number gives us far more insight into why armies have organized that way for millennia than the other way around (telling them how to organize). One group discovered it practically and Dunbar theorized about if that was just a practical local maxima or if it was a more global maximum. What becomes different in our approach post-Dunbar's Number is the added perspective of: not only has this been proven to work in millennia of military practice, but in theory we know it is a theoretical barrier in far more social situations than just those that also have confounding factors like top-down management.