Is work a tug-of-war?

---

What’s the ideal or most effective number for a tug of war team, if in fact there is one? That’s the number where the maximum effort and impact is gained from every member. 

Apparently the ideal number is 4. 3 or under is insufficient, that is to say that it is still possible to achieve a more effective team and gain extra pulling power with the minimum amount of waste. 

When the number increases significantly members can coast should they wish to. They can feel that their individual responsibility is reduced to a level where no one will notice them easing up and making a little less than their maximum, sustainable effort – ‘social loafers’ (as the term goes) to more or lesser extent. 

When there are 4 members in the team, each has enough responsibility and ownership to feel that they matter and that any lack of effort will not just be noticed but will negatively affect the others. They are hence a more committed member of the team. 

There are parallels in the workplace.  Professional, business teams can or perhaps should work the same way – to use a mechanical analogy, every team should aim to achieve its maximum, sustainable power to weight ratio. 

Smaller businesses may have less resource than larger ones but they should be able to be more flexible, reacting to market conditions and adapting more quickly. To use the tug-of-war analogy, ‘social loafing’ is more obvious should it occur and as they tend to have smaller teams. Staff tend to have broader responsibilities and ownership so the collective ‘power to weight ratio’ should increase over that of a larger business as a result. 

So if smaller businesses can genuinely be more effective relative to their resource than larger ones then this should perhaps be embraced to provide a key competitive edge? 

Larger businesses may be less flexible and less able to react quickly to change but their increased resource should enable them to build robust processes and invest in the future more readily. In such an organisation though responsibilities may be more spread, it can be easier to relax and do a little less work if and when it suits with a lesser chance of being spotted reducing the effective power to weight. 

Perhaps the ideal for a big business is hence not just to enjoy the larger and broader resource but to try and act like a smaller one with smaller more flexible and effective teams but with much greater resource?