Google's Team Project

Around seven years ago, Google went off (2012) in search of something that they felt would be a worthy project.....they wanted to know how to build the best team.

I know.....it sounds pretty hokey and if you were going to guess the outcome....it'd likely be some 1,700 page study, with no real value.  That's what most PhD-level studies deliver in the end.

But oddly enough, Project Aristotle (that was the name for it), came back recently, and the study laid out five pieces of what makes a team function or work:

1. Basic simple risk assessment.  Whatever the team members felt was the goal....it had to have reasonable risks assigned to it, or the potential for failure was not a big deal.  Once you crossed the line and said your job, or your career were in jeopardy....you met and exceeded the invisible line that existed.

2.  There was a quality of work known to the members of the group.  'Good enough for government work' couldn't be the end-result. 

3.  There was a known beginning and end to the team effort.  In simple terms....there was a clear path ahead, and someone sat there to create a defined end-point.

4.  Curiously, there had to be some reward attached to the project.  They didn't come out and say it.....but all of this was marginalized in terms of a 'gift' at the end, then why do it?

5.  Finally, they came to realize the group's project had to be part of some bigger end-result.  The team left it's 'mark' on the job.

At one point in my military life, I arrived at an organization in transition....it was a division without a compass, a map, or adequate leadership to latch onto the group. Over the course of a year, this group picked itself up.....laid out goals...'gifted' performances....and became noted for taking enormous taskings. 

Looking back over twenty-five years ago, I can say that we had three distinctive characteristics at work: (1) extreme risk acceptance, (2) never turning away a single customer, and (3) letting the lowest level guy to be lightly mentored, while he/she were were actually loaded with taskings beyond their normal level. 

Will Google make use of their team 'discovery'?  That would be a curious end-result.