Small teams get more done with less because communication overhead is low and agency is high in each individual. Big teams tend to struggle because people don’

Small teams get more done with less because communication overhead is low and agency is high in each individual. Big teams tend to struggle because people don’t know exactly what to do to move the whole shambling enterprise forward. It’s less about effort and more about coordination. Aside from the specific IC skills present, some understanding of the social dynamics and systemic outcomes of the teams ways of working needs to be sprinkled throughout the team to keep things on track. People tend to want to draw a box around their role so they have clarity in their work, but problems don’t conform to these boundaries, and often the hardest thing is framing challenges in the right way so that the team can make progress and avoid devolving into finger pointing or learned helplessness. Forget rewards for a second, just recognizing small actions and statements that have huge net negative impact on a team can be surprisingly difficult at scale.