Even the Giants Can Learn to Think Small [NY Times] talks about how smaller teams are more agile and creative. The message: Keep teams small, give employees freedom and a sense of ownership, don’t focus too much on the competition, create a culture of experimentation, and use technology to enable remote teams.
By breaking huge business units into smaller, nimbler teams, companies stand a chance of rekindling the creative spark that got them rolling in the first place. After all, “small is the new big,” as Seth Godin, a prolific blogger and author, puts it in his 2006 book of that name.
It is a point of view shared by a diverse group of business leaders, management consultants and information technology experts. According to Philip Rosedale, founder and chairman of Linden Lab, the company that created and operates the virtual world of Second Life, companies seeking to foster creativity must find ways to break apart the bureaucratic hierarchies now smothering it. Optimizing a company for creativity involves helping individual employees of every rank develop an entrepreneurial spirit. In Mr. Rosedale’s view, the most creative work environment is one where every employee, regardless of job title, has enough freedom to develop that sense of personal initiative.
“Most companies erroneously focus on competition and on differentiation from their competitors,” he contends. “The business opportunity lies in turning creativity into productivity.”
Decentralizing the hierarchy opens the door to creativity, giving workers the leeway they need to make significant decisions without first jumping through executive management hoops. “The idea,” he says, “is to enable a creative environment where there’s a good degree of experimentation.”
Optimizing a company for creativity also optimizes it for small-group collaboration. And that opens the door to new information technology that lets team members work cooperatively from anywhere on the planet. “That’s the revolution that’s making all of this possible,” Mr. Rosedale says.
It’s great to see these ideas picking up steam and getting out there in the mainstream press.
Robby Russell
on 04 Aug 08It’s been our experience that bigger companies often end up outsourcing to smaller teams for their creative work and complex projects so that things can get finished. We’ve had clients that do this intentionally to keep a project away from day-to-day internal politics.
It’s always interesting when we interface with other internal teams that have been working on a project for several years with no end in sight due to internal b.s.
Merle
on 04 Aug 08There is also an article in a recent Computerworld extolling the virtues of Web 2.0 development methodologies.
Tim Jahn
on 04 Aug 08I’m a firm believer in small groups doing big things. With a small group, there’s no red tape or hierarchies or crazy unnecessary processes to hinder you getting anything done. A small group can accomplish much more because they can simply focus on the issues at hand rather than worry about how they’re going to fill out all the needed paperwork.
andhapp
on 05 Aug 08Book worth reading which talks about how some companies decide to stay small and efficient and productive…here’s the official website:
http://www.smallgiantsbook.com/
Keith
on 05 Aug 08We have 18,000 employees and our small teams provide quick, creative solutions to complex problems. The only issue is that once you’ve escaped a big team environment you’ve still got big business bureaucracy to deal with which can stall things a bit.
Simply creating small teams isn’t enough. Empowering them to “fast track” projects, ideas, or process revisions is equally important.
This discussion is closed.