31 ms·

>he reported some unexpectedly poor results The results are only unexpectedly poor if you assume individual ability directly composes into team ability. I thin

>he reported some unexpectedly poor results The results are only unexpectedly poor if you assume individual ability directly composes into team ability. I think this was a common assumption in the 1980s, but I believe that managers nowadays will not be surprised by these results.

munch117 3y ago
Managers won't be surprised ... if they've read the 1981 book. I think most people would be surprised to find negative correlation between individual ability and team ability, unless they've read this book or something like it. Weak correlation, perhaps, but outright negative correlation is truly surprising.
- jayd16 3y ago
  It's also obvious in sports that star players don't always work well together. If you're a fan, you see the storyline play out often. Teamwork is important.
- KittenInABox 3y ago
  I don't even manage, I just watch team sports, and I know that you can put together star players and the team just falls apart. Sometimes also, when you cut an underperforming player your star player also spontaneously crashes in performance.
  - shiroiuma 3y ago
    The same thing happens with rock bands. Sometimes they tried to put together bands called "supergroups" with star musicians from other highly-successful bands, and the results were usually underwhelming. It's probably because many times, one of the "underperforming" musicians does various other important tasks that don't involve technical ability on their instrument. One example here is Nikki Sixx from Motley Crue: he's a competent bassist for that type of music, but definitely no virtuoso, but his big contribution to his band was in songwriting, not bass playing, and his songwriting is arguably one of the big things that made the band so popular and successful in its time. Also, sometimes certain people just work really well together, and one of them may not seem all that great on their own.
- CipherThrowaway 3y ago
  It's not clear to me that negative correlation was the finding. For example, the result does not show that teams of randomly selected high aptitude individuals perform worse than teams of randomly selected non-high aptitude individuals. From what I can tell, the only finding here is that teams with individual aptitude as the sole selection criteria performed poorly in competition against teams that had more traditional selection process. This would be an expected result for me.
derbOac 3y ago
Maybe although having worked in this type of environment relatively recently it seems the expectation persists in some places and might even be cultivated.

munch117 3y ago

Managers won't be surprised ... if they've read the 1981 book. I think most people would be surprised to find negative correlation between individual ability and team ability, unless they've read this book or something like it. Weak correlation, perhaps, but outright negative correlation is truly surprising.

jayd16 3y ago
It's also obvious in sports that star players don't always work well together. If you're a fan, you see the storyline play out often. Teamwork is important.
KittenInABox 3y ago
I don't even manage, I just watch team sports, and I know that you can put together star players and the team just falls apart. Sometimes also, when you cut an underperforming player your star player also spontaneously crashes in performance.
- shiroiuma 3y ago
  The same thing happens with rock bands. Sometimes they tried to put together bands called "supergroups" with star musicians from other highly-successful bands, and the results were usually underwhelming. It's probably because many times, one of the "underperforming" musicians does various other important tasks that don't involve technical ability on their instrument. One example here is Nikki Sixx from Motley Crue: he's a competent bassist for that type of music, but definitely no virtuoso, but his big contribution to his band was in songwriting, not bass playing, and his songwriting is arguably one of the big things that made the band so popular and successful in its time. Also, sometimes certain people just work really well together, and one of them may not seem all that great on their own.
CipherThrowaway 3y ago
It's not clear to me that negative correlation was the finding. For example, the result does not show that teams of randomly selected high aptitude individuals perform worse than teams of randomly selected non-high aptitude individuals. From what I can tell, the only finding here is that teams with individual aptitude as the sole selection criteria performed poorly in competition against teams that had more traditional selection process. This would be an expected result for me.

derbOac 3y ago

Maybe although having worked in this type of environment relatively recently it seems the expectation persists in some places and might even be cultivated.