This Team is Not a Well-Oiled Machine. And That’s the Point.

By Phillip Sandahl / 4 minutes of reading

What’s wrong with being a “well-oiled machine?” you might ask. “Isn’t that the goal? Smooth-running, friction-free, rolling along”. Here’s the basic problem with that picture: it’s out of date. It applies to a work environment that passed into history at least a generation ago. Only the mindset remains. The structure of work has changed from assembly line to relationship. In an industrial age a mechanical model for getting the work done made sense. The mental […]

This Team is Not a Well-Oiled Machine. And That’s the Point. Read More »

How to Create Google’s Perfect Team

You would expect Google to do the search for “what makes great teams?” better than most anyone. These masters of search and analysis were on a quest some years back with that question in mind. Google was motivated by research that shows that software engineers that work together in groups “tend to innovate faster, see mistakes more quickly and find better solutions to problems”. This references a New York Times article by Charles Duhigg, entitled,

Team Building

This Team is Not a Well-Oiled Machine. And That’s the Point.

How to Create Google’s Perfect Team