Optimal team size

The trade-off between productivity and creativity. A team of one is the optimal productivity. However, increasing the diversity of opinions, knowledge, and experience will multiply the opportunities for creative solutions that may be more effective or efficient. However, each additional team member adds diminishing marginal contribution.


Consider the surprising discovery of social loafing in "tug of war." The following excerpt explains nonparticipating members :

Team size is an important determinant of the social loafing phenomenon, whereby individuals decrease their effort as the number of people in the group increases. Classic experiments by German psychologist Ringelmann at the beginning of the 20th century first documented a steep decrease of effort in men engaged in a tug of war (Kravitz & Martin, 1986). Where one man, on average, pulled about 63 kg, groups of three pulled 160 kg, and groups of eight pulled 248 kg. Hence, in groups of eight, the men put in about 49% of the effort they expended when pulling alone. Later experiments demonstrate that this loss in performance is, in fact, due to decreased effort, rather than coordination losses or other possible causes (e.g., Harkins & Petty, 1982).

This suggests that we create phases for our projects, where the number of participants change. Each phase has a different goal.

Phase 1 -Brainstorming : lots of diverse contribution during brainstorming solutions or even the arguments against solutions


Phase 2 -Implementation : lean team to get the work done

Therefore the optimal size depends on the goal. The optimal for creativity is endless, but is limited to your resources available and the ability to facilitate them and sift through the data they produce.

Implementation teams academically are 3-5, but you may need to consider 5-7 for various strategic reasons :

• include more disciplines in the solution
• creates more owner-participation and buy-in
• extends the training and experience to more people

Team-building exercise :

• MULTI-WAY tug of war

[UPDATE]

There are two additional points that may satisfy you. First, justifying the doubling of labor costs (from one to two) is very difficult and expensive! Second, that cost may well be justified through risk mitigation :

• second person trained for job
• second person available for anticipated future job growth
• back up person for holidays/sick time
• quality control (second pair of eyes and interpretation)

When planning output and labor scheduling, the first person always produces the most. Each additional person increases production at a decreasing rate. We stop adding people when the cost of the next person’s labor exceeds the marginal revenue gained by their additional output.

The overhead of teaming is very expensive. Time is lost to socializing, distractions, and lack of coordination. To carry it further, teams need to be facilitated, individuals with clear tasks do not.