Unveiling the Art of Team Size: Striking the Balance for Success

People often ask me, what is the ideal team size? This enigma has formed the crux of several research papers/opinion piece over the years scrutinising the intricate balance of ideal team composition. In this post, I'll attempt to answer the question by posing a different question. 

Before I go into the optimum size of teams, an important distinction needs to be made between groups and team. While often used interchangeably, these terms bear distinct characteristics that shape their functions. Groups are individuals coordinating their efforts, may lack a shared goal and shared responsibility and often focused on individual contribution. In contrast, teams rally around a common purpose, boasting shared goals, responsibilities, and a collaborative approach. Teams yield collective outcomes, and their process involves collaboration, communication, and unified effort.  

For example, in a marketing department, individuals from different sections, such as social media, content creation, and market research, would come together regularly to discuss their progress and upcoming tasks. While they exchange information and updates, each member primarily focuses on their individual tasks and responsibilities. Each member might not feel collectively/individually responsible for the outcome of the marketing department goals. This scenario represents a group, where individuals coordinate efforts but do not share a common goal or hold shared responsibility for the overall marketing outcomes. 

Consider a product development team working on creating a new software application. This team consists of software engineers, designers, user experience experts, and project managers. Their shared objective is to develop a functional and user-friendly application that meets customer needs. They collaborate closely, discuss ideas, and leverage each member's expertise to ensure the application's success. The software engineers might write the code, the designers contribute to the user interface, and the user experience experts provide insights for optimal usability. This team works together to achieve a common goal, where each member shares responsibility for the application's final outcome.  
In short, a group of travellers sits in a train, each absorbed in their own journey. But when the tracks ahead are blocked, a team forms as they collaborate to find a way to clear the path and continue together. Or if you are a Ted Lasso fan, think total football.  In a typical soccer match, players often have specific positions and roles, operating as a group with individual tasks. However, in total football, players seamlessly interchange positions and responsibilities, functioning as a cohesive unit or team.  Once, the question of whether it is a group or team is answered then the size becomes important.  

So, what is the optimal team size, there are several research on this, a quick google search will provide you with a variety of response but the range from 3 to 11, with several literature citing an optimal number of five (4.6 to be exact from the original research- Hackman and Vidmar 1970). Several research also cite the sporting world with player numbers ranging from four to 15 with core play or coordination happening between three to five people at any one time.  

Given the analogies presented above, ideal team size depends on the task interdependence and the extent of collaboration required. The higher the need for task interdependence and collaboration, research suggests that the smaller the team, and vice versa. Communication is essential for collaboration, and a way to determine how successful your team could be is by calculating the extent of communication needed as determined by the size of your team. There is a communication formula used to calculate the layers of touchpoints necessary as the team size grows.  

Number of team members (number of team member - 1) 
                                            2 
If there are two people in the team then you need one touchpoint, with three people, you need three, with four you need six, with five you need ten and so on. This causes a difficultly in coordination with a consequence on productivity which is known as the Ringelmann effect. The Ringelmann effect or social loafing is the tendency for individual members of a group to become less productive as the size of their group increases. This doesn’t mean every organisation must have a small team, and with decreased productivity being the drawback of larger team, the panacea should be clarity in performance metrics in reaching the shared goal. In fact, research suggests that in situations where there is uncertainty in ways to measure performance, team sizes will invariably be larger. Again, this does not suggest that where there are clear performance metrics overly large teams should be formed, as there are other drawbacks of large team beyond performance that an organisation need to pay attention to.  

Research has shown that large teams may foster the emergence of counterproductive behaviours and diminish the quality of group experience (Aube et al 2011). Counterproductive behaviours are grouped into four. Parasitic behaviours (putting forth less effort than others; conducting personal business instead of working etc), interpersonal aggression (say hurtful remarks to their co-workers, make mean jokes about their co-workers, talk behind their co-workers’ backs etc), boastfulness (publicly take the credit for the team’s successes, act as if they were better than others etc), misuse of resources (waste resources available in the team, use the available equipment without respecting safety etc). The quality of group experience is a determinant of the willingness of to remain in the organisation which is important for retention and affects the amount of effort team members invest in their tasks.  

In conclusion should the question be what is the ideal team size or is the question, do we have clear performance metrics and sufficient communication touch points to cater for our current team size whether small or big to support retention and avoid counterproductive behaviours? 

Reference
Aubé, Caroline & Rousseau, Vincent & Tremblay, Sébastien. (2011). Team Size and Quality of Group Experience: The More the Merrier?. Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice. 15. 357-375. 10.1037/a0025400. 

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