Transcript
Welcome in Agile Mentors.
We're back for another episode of the Agilementors podcast.
I'm here as always Brian Milner and today I've got the one, the only Colin Fisher with us.
Welcome and Colin.
Thanks so much for having me, Brian.
Uh, very delighted to have Colin with this.
If you haven't crossed paths with Colin before you're in for a treat.
There's just a lot of stuff here that I think you'll find really interesting.
Primarily here that what I want to point you to is he's the author of a book called the collective edge which is really an amazing book about group dynamics
and how groups and teams work together.
It distills down just a ton of research that's happened over the years and makes it really accessible and readable.
He has a PhD from Harvard.
And he's also on the faculty of the UCL School of Management.
In kind of looking him up previously, kind doing some further research, I found out that he is also a jazz trumpet player.
So that is really interesting.
I love that.
Do you still get to play very often?
Yeah.
I mean, it's amazing.
So I moved to London about 10 years ago and my kids are getting older now.
It doesn't feel as important to be at home every single moment now, you know, a 17 year old doesn' want to hang out with you quite as much.
So I've gone back out and playing in one band, a shout out to Swade Jazz Collective, where they just sort of think I'm another musician,
another professional musician who's out there.
And I try, you know, I talk in the book about going to this jam session at a club called Grow, and I, try and go there on Thursday night.
So if you're, if your in London on the Thursday, night looking for something to do, or last Friday of the month, look me up.
I may have some good things for you to come here.
I can promise you that the next time that I find myself in London on that timeframe, I am definitely going to be there.
That's going be awesome.
Yeah.
So I want to get us into our topic area because I know that there's a lot for us to dive into here, but I think Colin, what I wanna start with is just,
We have a lot of people that are trying to guide teams and maybe from a management level or leadership level, but maybe also from kind of a scrum master level.
Or project manager kind level of team.
And what I'm really want to start with is what do you feel like is the biggest misunderstanding that leaders have about how teams actually work?
I mean, there are so many, I had to write a whole book about it.
Right.
But I mean, I think the most common problem.
So if we're starting kind of at the biggest level is just people, um, get very focused on either the technical aspects of their jobs.
And especially when you're doing this kind project based work, you know, there's a lot of focus on the project itself.
and then people when there are problems, people get focused.
On individuals.
And that there's a serve attribution of, you know, things, especially going poorly to, oh, there is some kind of problem with an individual or there some
kinda problem between, uh, two people.
That the reality though is that a lot of this stuff is at the group level.
It's stuff about the structure of the, and it's about, the norms of it.
So if I've got you paying attention to the.
And that, you know, if you're listening to this podcast, that you probably somebody who's looking to think kind of at that group level,
You're already ahead of the game.
Cause so many people are just, sort of unaware that.
Group dynamics might be something they need to be paying attention to.
Yeah.
I mean, I think you're right.
When I, think about the leaders I've interacted with, uh, you know, and they, they talk about, the problems they're having with their teams.
It's, it's very much, i've got this thing I need to get done and there's a problem that's taking too long.
This person doesn't understand what they need.
And so what you are saying and what, what are you trying to focus here on is that there is a larger kind of structural problem here that is the group dynamic
that really is kind more core.
Is that kind what your, your saying?
Yeah.
I mean, the group, groups are sort of the hidden driver of almost everything that's, that going on in organizations, but especially if you're,
you know, if in agile, or if your in scrum, your own software development, You know you guys are at the forefront of, doing this kind of team-based project
organizing that, everybody else has been trying to copy another lines of work for a while.
But I, so I think, you know, there's some things that that gets really right, but there are also some very common problems that just emerge over time because
we're actually our, our although we are social creatures and where our brains are designed for us to live in groups.
We're not designed to work in bureaucratic organizations that have the kinds of pressures and that they do.
And so a common thing like, you know, when we want to have a group, we wanna include a lot of people.
We want us sort of get everybody who we possibly could involved in things.
But that one of the main findings from research on groups is that there's an ideal number for real collaboration, a number of that you would want a collaborate with.
And that this comes out of research where my mentor, Richard Hackman, had did a study where he was asking groups of different sizes out in the world.
Do you think your group's too big or too small?
So you know, you would rate, yo, what, What size is your.
No, to what extent do you, I think it's two big, two other extent.
You think.
And the important thing there is where those lines cross.
Where do we think?
It's just right.
and that that number, which I'm trying to get people to call Hackman's number after, after my mentor is 4.5 people.
So that we want that that's where the kind of sweet spot for collaboration is.
And I think most, for most people, this would be intuitive if I'm saying like, Hey, I want you to have organized a dinner.
Where there's one rule at that dinner, you have to, have only one conversation.
You can't splinter into subgroups.
Can't have little sub conversations.
Everybody's got to bet that diner has to just have focus on that single conversation And so if we say that it's like four or five people,
you know, we're all going to get to talk.
We're going get the contribute.
Were all gonna be heard and understood.
But now if I say, that dinner's got 10 people.
Like maybe, right?
Like we, You can pull that off.
That's not impossible, but it can be a lot harder.
Yeah.
All of a sudden, if you've got 15, 20, 25 people There's no way, right?
We can't do that.
And yet when we have these meetings, even in, you know, agile and, and scrum methodologies where it's like, usually at the forefront of these things,
we've, We do all the time.
We've got so many people that there's way everybody can contribute.
There is no, way.
Everybody can feel heard and there is way that everybody's going to get on the same page.
If you have, an hour long meeting, much less a much shorter meeting.
So.
You know, we set ourselves up for failure really right from the start with the number of people that we're thinking about collaborating with.
Yeah.
That's a great point.
I love that.
And it's, it, you know there's there has been lots of different numbers thrown out there over the years.
Right now scrum is, is saying it is usually 10 or less that are on a team, including Scrum Master and Product Owner.
But I think, when you're focused on the actual work being done, then you are talking about the developers in that group.
That's kind of closer to the number that you're talking about here.
Amazon used to have the two pizza team kind rule of, you should be able to feed a team with two pizzas.
So yeah, there is something I agree that's magical about a smaller size.
And I love your analogy because that so true.
When you go out to dinner with friends or anything else, when the group starts to get too big, it splinters.
And that splintering happens naturally in a work environment as well, because these three or four people work together all the time,
but they don't talk to the other three of four.
People cause they're doing their own thing.
So you have the natural split in teams anyway.
Um, is there, I know I get this, asked this question a lot of times in class.
Well, if it's 4.5 is kind of the ideal, Is there a lower threshold that, you know, are two people, a team.
Two people can't, I mean this, this is hotly debated amongst scholars.
Generally like two people, can have a lot of the attributes of, of a team.
And I think, you know, we, a of times when we're teaching about these things, well, will teach like there's this really hard dividing line between a group
and the team, but in reality, This is a continuum.
Right?
Like we're on a continuum of more or less groupiness and like these real teams of 4.5 people who are like, you know, a basketball team or a jazz ensemble
or these kinds of teams, those are the groupiest groups where they have all the attributes of groupness that we would want.
And that when you get into dyads, they, have some of them, but not as many.
Most people would say like we really get in to most of the groups dynamics once we have three people.
And it's harder to have some of the things we talk about as important in group dynamics when it is only two.
Some of those things just won't happen as much.
Agreed.
Yeah, I absolutely agree.
All right, so let's kind of carry it forward then.
If we've got our 4.5 people that we want and we got a project that want to have them focus on, how do we set that group up for success?
What's the keys?
If I'm that leader, what can I do to enable them to get off on the right foot and really have a strong foundation?
Yeah.
I mean, that's so important.
So that getting off to a good start, when you compare like how much of the variance in, in group performance, can we explain from stuff that happens before
the group exists, stuff happens right in that first meeting and then everything else that happened after that.
The results are really striking.
So I'm going to, again, hearken back to Richard Hackman here, which is coming up a little more than it usually does.
He had the way of talking about this, what you called the 60-30-10 rule.
And the, 60 30- 10 rule says that 60% of how a group is going do is determined before it ever meets.
That, and those are by things of who's going be on the team.
What tasks is that team going, to be charged with?
Are those goals communicated well and do people understand what they are and what the, what its importance is.
And so that stuff usually happens before a group ever meets, but those are the most powerful drivers of group performance.
But then 30 is actually what happens in that very first meeting at the launch.
and that's because we do form our impressions of.
What are groups going to be like very, very quickly, but that the kind of norms of behavior and our personal orientation towards that group also tend to
form in that first meeting.
And it's really sticky.
It's not that you can't change it at all.
it gets progressively harder to change.
and so it, it it easy to imagine when it like, you know, where am I going sit?
You know, are we going to make small talk before the meeting or are, we all gonna stare at our phones and pretend we were not in the same room together?
You, you know those kinds of norms we see, but there's also more important stuff like who's talking a lot and who is not talking at all.
You do, is this a group that's going be important to me is, or is one where I feel like I'm kind of peripheral and I don't understand why I am here.
And so those things are also forming in that first meeting.
So to get your group off to a good start, the most common thing, and I'm sure you've heard this from 10,000 different perspectives.
The problem is that people have different perceptions of what they're trying to achieve.
What is the goal?
And that.
Communicating that goal really clearly so that we know the end point.
We know what mountain we're supposed to climb.
we are not trying to go to different places.
That's really important.
But it's also really critical that people understand why it is important, you know, for the organization, the team, and for them personally.
And often that's why they specifically are there.
Now if you're in, if your in a domain that has really strong roles, like, you know, find the trumpet player up on stage with a jazz band.
I know I am there because of the instrument I'm holding.
There's a lot of it's determined by the context, but when we get into new kinds of tasks, stuff we haven't done before and stuff,
that's all more uncertain.
That's where you really have to tell people because it is not determined just by their job descriptions, why they're there,
what they are supposed to bring to that team.
And the best, the leaders are the ones who are communicating their vision for that, checking that with everybody else who's on the team to see if anybody
has questions, if anyone has different understandings of it, and that ideally giving people a chance to respond to that.
So that's one of the most important things.
But then there's another really basic thing that often doesn't happen and gets lost in the shuffle, which is Who is actually on this team and who am I
supposed to be collaborating with?
And I mean, you'd be shocked how often that teams don't get that simple thing, right?
Right?
Like when you have, yo, 10, 11 people showing up, but maybe somebody is not there that day.
Maybe some of those people are there for some reason.
That's not going to.
They need to continue to, be communicated with on the team.
And that it's so often it just like people don't know who they're supposed to be working with all that well.
And both of these things I think are things that leaders can do a lot about.
In that one military leader who I was talking to as part of going around talking about this book, said he was taught that the best leaders think of their
job as being the repeater in chief.
That they, they come in every day and they're like, this is why we're here.
This is what we trying to do.
Everybody's role is in achieving this.
And there's a lot of truth to that because just there is natural kind of coming apart that happens when you don't keep coming back to these issues.
And so, you know, the best teams are repeating these things.
They're putting it big in their shared workspace that, yeah, there are really clear indications of who's supposed to be paying attention to what.
And that those things often are the source of, you know, it's like you see somebody who's checked out, they may not know what they're supposed to be doing.
You see, yo, two people who seem like they are arguing about what the best way forward is.
They may have really different views of what goal we're trying to achieve it.
And a lot of these kind of surface level problems come back to these real basic things about the team.
Yeah.
This is really good stuff.
I agree.
And it's, you know, it gets to kind of that, that whole Dan ping think about the purpose motivating the team and that sort of stuff as well.
A I don't want to, um, I want make sure that to dive into a little bit as Because we're dealing with individual human beings that are trying to work together
to produce something.
And when you have individual humans, you differences in personality, differences and culture and just personality traits and preferences and all that kind
of thing.
How can a leader take that into account and how do we help a team really blend When you've got a team of, I don't know, some extroverts,
introverts some verbal processors, and some that need quiet time to think, how do we blend that kind of really core differences in personality to get things done?
Yeah.
I mean, it's a great question.
This comes up all the time and it is something that researchers have been really curious about too.
And I think the answer really is surprising.
And that is even all these different kinds of people, these, different personalities, especially personality doesn't actually matter that much.
It doesn' matter nearly as much as you think because that we were really good as social creatures at trying to fit into a particular social culture that's there.
And that when it's really important to us and we know why we're there and what we were supposed to be doing, a lot of this stuff takes care of itself.
But the flip side of that is, and the reason I think this, this comes up a.
Is that another critical ingredient of teams is that they are valuing and actively seeking to understand the different knowledge skills and perspectives
of their members.
Now, perspectives might come into this idea of having really different personalities, but there's the research that, you know,
people have looked so hard to say like, Oh, this combination of introverts and extroverts is going to do better than, than some other way.
Or this is how we kind of get these, these who are different to work together.
But the answer to that always comes back to shared goals.
And norms that value speaking up, listening to one another and valuing these kinds of disagreements as valuable ways to say,
like, we're trying to solve a problem here.
We're, trying, to achieve a task.
And that the best way to make sure we doing that optimally is to consider different points of view and to, consider consider differences.
and so the teams that have these norms, that, have the strong goals.
tend not to have the kind of conflict between that are due to work styles and personality types.
And the ones that end up having that conflict, it's often because there's something else missing.
There's, something wrong with the structure of the team.
and so the remedy is not, to then say, let's develop special skills in navigating the conflict.
Between these people.
It's really, because that's sort of in that 10% of, the variance that you might be able to control as managing a team in real time.
And it's really to say like, all right, those problems are emerging.
Let me first check the 90% of the variance that, that I should have been attending to and get that part right.
So that's not to, say this never happens.
Like there's of course people who, for a variety of reasons, don't like each other, will struggle to work together.
But you know, first, if you have a ton of people, those people on your team or in your organization, you may have other problems with your recruiting and
hiring processes that you're getting a whole bunch of.
People that can't work together over and over, but it's much more likely.
I can almost, I struggled to come up with an example where it doesn't come back to.
These people didn't understand what they were supposed to do.
They didn' understand their role on the team, or they just weren't actually given very important work.
Or they weren' given signals from their leadership in the context that their perspectives were not valued and were important.
And that almost everything comes back to those issues.
Yeah.
Great, great point.
And you know, it's, you bring up the whole area of conflict there and the friction that will naturally occur when you have these kinds of differences and
people working close together.
Um, and I, I just curious to get you to talk a little bit about that, that that whole realm, because I think there, there is sort of a misunderstanding
a bit.
Up from folks that that is something to try to avoid that.
You know, you, want to kind of ignore or dismiss.
So you're going to to get past any differences that you have so that You can get back on target with whatever it is that your,
your there to talk about.
And, I've heard some people make some analogies in the past, like you wouldn't do that in a relationship with your spouse.
Like you would just say, but we can't ever fight.
Fights are important so that you establish that humanity kind of bond between each other and trust and you know, you go through things.
So when you see conflict kind as a part of that team dynamic, how do you, see that playing a role in the formation and what should teams do when they encounter
kind that friction where, Hey, I want to do this.
No, this is the right way to go.
So if it's, if, it that kind of disagreement, disagreement about the task and saying, I think this is the best way to do it.
I, think it a different way.
That's good.
that's a sign of a healthy team where people are sharing their, their honest views about what the way forward is.
And as long as the team maintains this orientation of it, us against the problem.
We're okay.
But once it turns into it's me against you, and this is me trying to get my way and you arguing to.
Or even worse when it turned personal and I'm saying, you know, Brian, he always say things like that.
Like those are real.
Those are warning signs and that that is uniformly bad for, for team performance.
So we, researchers divide the world into task conflict and relationship conflict.
And sometimes also consider status conflict separately from that.
So arguing about the social hierarchy, but the task conflict can be good.
The problem is that, you know, when emotions run hot and we really care about, the project, we care, about to work.
Sometimes that starts to spill over into these other forms of conflict.
And that's what you've got to be on the lookout for is where whenever it turns personal, whenever, it's about a contest of wills or one person being right
and the other person, being wrong.
That's the beginnings of dysfunction.
And that is something that I, at least as a team leader, when I'm leading a, I have zero tolerance for conflict going off in that direction.
and often when there's a contentious issue that we're bringing up, you know, whether it's hiring, anything where I suspect we are going to have some disagreements.
You know, again, I become the reminder in chief and say, Hey, you know we're all just trying to do what's best for, for the team here.
Let's all try to solve this problem.
We're going to disagree.
let's make, let us have some ground rules for how we are going do that disagreement.
But I really do want to know what, what you all think.
And, and for us to really hash that out, we not all going get our way at the end of this.
There's, there's going have to be some give and take.
But that that's, that how we come to the best decisions.
And so you, you know, whatever the reminders you need to give your team are that you're setting those ground rules, your setting,
those expectations and that are doing this consistently because it only, it takes once of something devolving into, uh, a fight that sometimes people,
people don't, uh, forget easily that there's a lot of psychological research that suggests bad, stronger than good.
So whenever, whenever something bad happens in your team, you're going to have to do at least four or five times as much positive stuff to offset that
negative event.
Yeah.
I want to ask you about one last little area here too, before I let you go in our last minutes, because I feel like I'd be negligent if I didn't because
in today's work environment, just about every team has some kind of a hybrid or remote component to what they do.
And I'm curious what your research kind have showed on that and how, if we are in one of those situations, which a lot of us are,
How do you go about trying or what can we do to try to strengthen our team or make our.
A stronger, you know, higher performing team when we're never together, when were always seeing each other like this.
Yeah.
I mean, hybrid, I think we have to be clear about two different things.
Right.
One, one kind of hybrid.
Is sometimes we're in the office.
Sometimes we were remote.
And that means, you know, sometimes were meeting, meeting in, across the computer screen from each other.
When we are all meeting across a computer stream, the problem that we facing is what, what psychologists call psychological distance.
that we just seem a little less human to one another because we're programmed to perceive other humans when they're nearby us,
when we can see all their nonverbal cues, and we see their bodies and just physically being able to hear, see, smell all these things,
other human.
That makes people more real, but then that has this other effect of We view people more individualistically.
So we, I can say like, Oh, understand Brian.
And I come really like zero in on your idiosyncrasies in a way that when we're virtual, our brains tend to view other people,
more abstractly.
And that the problem with that is that sometimes when we view people more as abstract generalizations, we tend to treat them worse.
That we treat the more like their tool that we're comfortable sort of ignoring or disregarding them in ways that would not do if we were in person.
So if you're a leader and you are having a lot of virtual only meetings, that's what you fighting.
You're trying to reduce that psychological distance.
And that sometimes that is things like, you know, most of us, don't blur our backgrounds as much as we used to, as, we've kind of gotten used this world
because that makes us feel more psychologically close.
It looks more like we're in the room together.
Sometimes that means we do little catch-ups at the beginning and we were all finding the boundaries of how much time do teams want to spend on that?
Because we also don't like being on our computers, staring at video screens all the time either.
So I think different teams can find different ways of doing that.
I've seen teams that do show and tells.
Have seen in teams where they just, you know, do really quick check-ins at beginning.
They have optional times for people to kind of do meet and greets before.
And those are all ways of reducing that psychological list.
So, you know, that's one, kind of one set of things.
And I also think like, we have a lot of opportunities with meeting virtually because we can get Different expertise in the room that we could if we're
reliant on who could physically be there in The Office.
We can communicate through different media that like, especially when you're doing digital work, you can actually do work together in a way that's sometimes
actually harder in A room when You're all sitting there In a room together.
So there's a lot of opportunities with it too.
But the, the other kind of hybrid and that people kind use the word interchangeably is hybrid meetings and hybrid.
Meetings means some people are there face to face and some.
You know, on, you know online and then these, uh, digital environments like zoom and though the research on those is much less optimistic.
Yeah.
So to say, yo, teams tend to figure out how to operate when they operate in a consistent communication and information environment.
So if we do the same thing over and over, you know, we're always meeting in person.
We're going to develop kind of norms and ways that we, solve problems.
If we always meet online, We are going develop ways of solving problems, but if.
Keep switching it up all the time.
And especially if, switch who's online and who is in-person, it's much harder for us to, develop those norms of operating.
And that the research shows actually that like, there's not as much of a disadvantage to meeting online as, as a lot of people had feared,
especially for teams that do it consistently over time, that they tend to kind of start to figure stuff out if they're well-structured in the ways that
we talked about in first place.
But that the teams that struggle the most are the ones that keep switching.
They keep.
How they meet, they keep, what the medium is.
And those teams are, you know, hybridity, the hybrid of that meeting is a real cost.
Yeah.
So the consistency matters, right?
It's just that, that consistency can, can as you said, it's about team norms.
If you're switching all the time, then there's nothing that feels normal.
It just feels like.
a chaos.
So yeah, I mean, this is really fascinating stuff.
And I cannot recommend the book high enough to people who are listening.
The Collective Edge is the name of the books again, and we'll put links in our show notes for this.
But Colin, anything else, any, that people want to get in touch with you further or find out more, is there anywhere you would send them to kind of stay
in contact with?
Yeah, that's great.
Please check out my website, colin m fisher.com.
I write a free sub stack newsletter and, uh, I'm on all over LinkedIn more, probably more than I should be.
So find out what I am up to in, in any of those places.
Perfect.
Thanks Colin so much.
Really appreciate you taking the time to share your wisdom with us.
Oh, thanks so Brian.
It was a lot of fun.
