Google’s Best Teams Have One Thing In Common – And It’s Not What You Think

Spoiler alert: it’s not the individual skills and achievements of their members—just about everyone at Google is a rock star.

Many organization consultants claim that norms and culture are key difference-makers for performance. At times, one wonders if these consultants are really just relationship-junkies wrapped in powerful sounding promises of ‘optimized performance’ or ‘business at the speed of trust’.

They’re not. (Or at least, some aren’t.)

Google tells us why.

Spoiler alert: it’s not the individual skills and achievements of their members—just about everyone at Google is a rock star.

Google just spent two years analyzing what makes their most effective teams more successful than the rest. Spoiler alert: it’s not the individual skills and achievements of their members—just about everyone at Google is a rock star. It isn’t ‘dream teams’ composed of exactly the right people—engineers, PhDs, UI experts, and Rhodes scholars. There are no discernable patterns related to time spent socializing outside of work, shared hobbies, educational background, race or gender balance, or a magical mixture of introverts and extroverts.

Nope, Google found that, “Who is on a team matters less than how the team members interact, structure their work, and view their contributions.”

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Psychological Safety

Psychological safety is by far the most important characteristic of Google’s best-performing teams.

Psychological safety is by far the most important characteristic of Google’s best-performing teams. And, high levels of psychological safety enable and amplify each of the other four key characteristics they found—Dependability, Structure & Clarity, Meaning of Work, and Impact of Work.

When we’re playing it safe, there’s a lot less data available…

We’ve all been on teams with low psychological safety. In those circumstances, we manage perceptions of our competence, awareness, and positivity. We offer fewer divergent ideas, challenge fewer assumptions, and ask for fewer critical clarifications. When we’re playing it safe, there’s a lot less data available to turn into meaning, and a diminished ability to make collective (ie-better) meaning in the first place.

By contrast, people, “on teams with higher psychological safety are less likely to leave Google, they’re more likely to harness the power of diverse ideas from their teammates, they bring in more revenue, and they’re rated as effective twice as often by executives.”

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Competing for Control
We’re in our third meeting. A strategic consultant, vice presidents and senior account managers of two fortune 500 companies, doctors, researchers, and non-profit executives sit around the table. We’re developing a multi-agency approach to meet the health-related social needs of poor patients in Colorado. If we succeed, we’ll save boatloads of money, reduce healthcare utilization, and help hundreds of thousands of people who really need it.

…most of the action runs through him. He speaks first, last, and throughout.

The star of these meetings is John Bryant (not his real name). He’s articulate, engaging, and fast. Like his brother Kobe Bryant (not his real brother), most of the action runs through him. He speaks first, last, and throughout. He’s the C.S.M.—the Chief Sense Maker—a uniquely powerful position.

Without data, there is no credibility. But without a story, there is no meaning. Stories drive belief and beliefs determine action. The C.S.M. makes sense of what’s happening and exercises outsize influence as a result.

Now John is no Donald Trump. He’s not reducing complexity into nicknames (“Liddle Marco,” “Low-energy Jeb,” “Crooked Hillary”) and simplified concepts (“build a wall,” “winning”) from which no adversary nor any cogent policy has emerged. No, John is thoughtful and has a track record of helping people other than himself.

“As long as everyone got a chance to talk, the team did well. But if only one person or a small group spoke all the time, the collective intelligence declined.”

But it’s more likely he’s acting out of his own needs for control, inclusion, and affection than an understanding of what makes the best teams soar. Google researchers conclude in, ‘What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team’ that, “As long as everyone got a chance to talk, the team did well. But if only one person or a small group spoke all the time, the collective intelligence declined.”

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Now What?

Effective culture is a competitive advantage in every way.

Effective culture is a competitive advantage in every way. Increasing psychological safety is the least expensive and most effective way to get more value from the people you’ve already got—while improving their job satisfaction and reducing turnover at the same time. It also turns employees into even stronger advocates to attract the talent you need.

…kicking off every team meeting by sharing a risk taken in the previous week — improved 6% on psychological safety ratings and 10% on structure and clarity ratings…

Google will protect their IP as they turn their research into action and outcomes. But they’re sharing some of their methods now. “Of those Google teams, the ones that adopted a new group norm — like kicking off every team meeting by sharing a risk taken in the previous week — improved 6% on psychological safety ratings and 10% on structure and clarity ratings. Teams said that having a framework around team effectiveness and a forcing function to talk about these dynamics was missing previously and by far the most impactful part of the experience.” (ibid.)

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Here’s your team ‘ice-bucket challenge’:

Explain why psychological safety matters for performance, in four sentences or less,
Share recent risks you’ve taken not only to learn about each other but to emphasize the value of taking risks on your team, and…
Contact me, or someone else who’s great, to help your teams take flight.

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