What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team
In this page we will talk about A woman named Julia Rozovsky
Like most 25-year-olds, Julia Rozovsky wasn’t sure what she wanted to do with her life. She had worked at a consulting firm, but it wasn’t a good match. Then she became a researcher for two professors at Harvard. So in 2009, she chose the path that allowed her to put off making a decision: She applied to business schools and was accepted by the Yale School of Management.
When Rozovsky arrived on campus, she was assigned to a study group carefully engineered by the school to foster tight bonds. Study groups have become a rite of passage at M.B.A. programs, a way for students to practice working in teams and a reflection of the increasing demand for employees who can adroitly navigate group dynamics. Every day, between classes or after dinner, Rozovsky and her four teammates gathered to discuss homework assignments, compare spreadsheets and strategize for exams. Everyone was smart and curious but then thay have some problem and julia will break up from her frind.
So Rozovsky started looking for other groups she could join. A classmate mentioned that some students were putting together teams for ‘‘case competitions,’’ contests in which participants proposed solutions to real-world business problems that were evaluated by judges, who awarded trophies and cash. One of her favorite competitions asked teams to come up with a new business to replace a student-run snack store on Yale’s campus. Rozovsky proposed a nap room and selling earplugs and eyeshades to make money. Someone else suggested filling the space with old video games. There were ideas about clothing swaps. Most of the proposals were impractical, but ‘‘we all felt like we could say anything to each other,’’ Rozovsky told me. ‘‘No one worried that the rest of the team was judging them.’’ Eventually, the team settled on a plan for a microgym with a handful of exercise classes and a few weight machines. They won the competition
In the past our grandfathers did not even dream to find the information in collages and libraries, now adays we are living in a golden time because now we can know who is the effictive person by the data that was descovered. After search it was found that when the person works alone the productivity will not be as much as when the employees work with their managers.
Working in groups is one of the most excellent ways to increase the productivity, after search it showns that to improve your company, you have to make the employees work togather in groups not alone. The study to increase productivity was applied to find out when a team can have excellent relationships for work and found that effective people tend to eat together to gain experiences and share information.
Researchers on the Aristotle Project begin by reviewing academic studies in search of how teams work. Did they have the same interests or were they being given the same kind of rewards? Based on these studies, researchers examined groups within Google: How often do they communicate during work? Did they have the same hobbies? Did they study the same major? They also looked at how long teams stayed together and whether gender balance had an effect on the team’s success. Regardless of how the researchers ranked the data, it was nearly impossible to find any evidence that the team’s composition made any difference. “We looked at 180 teams from across the company,” Dubey said. “We had a lot of data, but there was nothing to show that a combination of personality types, specific skills, or backgrounds made any difference. The“ who ”part of the equation didn’t seem to matter.
While they were trying to figure out what made the team successful, Rozovsky and her colleagues continued to peruse research by psychologists and sociologists that focused on what are known as ‘group norms’. The rules are the traditions, behavioral norms, and unwritten rules that govern how we work when we meet: a team may conclude that avoiding conflict is better than developing discussion; Another team may develop a culture that encourages strong arguments and rejects group thinking but when they meet, group norms usually override individual tendencies and encourage respect for the team.
Aristotle’s Project researchers began looking into the data they collected. Some groups said that team members constantly boycotted each other and that team leaders reinforced this behavior by interrupting others themselves. In other teams, leaders enforce an arrangement of conversations, and when someone cuts off a teammate, group members politely ask everyone to wait for their turn or turn.
Understanding and influencing group standards were the keys to improving Google Teams. But Rozovsky, now a principal investigator, needed to know which criteria were the most important. Google search identified dozens of behaviors that seemed to matter, except that sometimes the criteria of an effective team contrasted sharply with those of another equally successful group. Was it better to let everyone speak as much as they wanted, or should powerful leaders end winding discussions? Was it more effective for people to openly disagree with one another, or should disagreements be underestimated? The only thing worse than not finding a pattern is finding a lot of them. What criteria successful teams share? Rosovsky and her colleagues ask.
Psychologists have made great progress in systematically identifying and measuring intelligence in individuals. We have used the statistical approach they developed for individual intelligence to measure intelligence systematically. From groups. In other words, the researchers wanted to see if a group question arises in a team that differs from an individual’s intelligence.
Ruzovsky’s study group at Yale was depleted because norms - fights over leadership, penchant for criticism - put her on high alert. Whereas her team’s criteria - enthusiasm for each other’s ideas, banter and enjoyment - allowed everyone to feel relaxed and energized. You can direct employees to be sensitive to what their colleagues are feeling and to notice when someone seems upset but it is often the people who work at Google who have become software engineers because they wanted to avoid talking about emotions in the first place.
Rozovsky and her colleagues had figured out which norms were most critical. Now they had to find a way to make communication and empathy — the building blocks of forging real connections — into an algorithm they could easily scale. In late 2014, Rozovsky and her colleagues who specialize in number analysis on the Aristotle Project began sharing their findings. They have been collecting surveys, conducting interviews and analyzing statistics for nearly three years. They were hoping that publishing their research within Google would prompt employees to come up with some ideas of their own. When team members were asked to rate whether the team’s role was clearly understood and whether their work had an impact, team members gave moderate to poor ratings. These responses annoyed Sacaguchi, as he did not pick up on that exasperation. He wanted everyone to feel good about their work. The team was asked to gather, off-site, to discuss the survey results. He started by asking everyone to share something personal about themselves.
There was nothing in Project Aristotle’s research that getting people to open up about their struggles was critical to discussing group norms. But for Sakaguchi, it made sense that psychological well-being and emotional conversations were linked. As individuals, when we need to establish a bond. And those human connections are as important at work as anywhere else. In fact, they are sometimes more important.
In order to be fully present at work, to feel “psychologically safe,” we must know that we can be free enough, sometimes, to share the things that frighten us without fear of accusations. We have to be able to talk about what is messy or sad, to have difficult conversations with colleagues who are driving us crazy. We cannot just focus on efficiency. Instead, when we start the morning by collaborating with a team of engineers and then sending emails to our marketing colleagues and then moving on to a conference call.
Aristotle’s project encouraged emotional conversations and discussions of standards among people who may be uncomfortable talking about how they are feeling. It’s easier to talk about our feelings when we can point to a number. “ The technology industry is not just one of the fastest growing parts of our economy; It is also increasingly the world’s dominant commercial culture. The fact that these statistics are not entirely original does not mean that Google’s contributions are of no value. Indeed, in some ways, the “employee improvement” movement has given us a way to talk about our concerns and aspirations in more constructive ways. It also gave us the tools to quickly teach lessons that managers took decades to absorb. Aristotle’s project is a reminder that when companies try to improve everything, it is sometimes easy to forget that success is often built on experiences - such as emotional interactions, complex conversations, and discussions about who we want to be and how our teammates feel us - that it can’t really improve.
If this happened earlier in Rozovsky’s life, you probably wouldn’t know how to deal with these feelings. The email wasn’t insulting enough to warrant a response, but even so, it really upset her. It was something that she felt needed to be addressed.
Thanks to Aristotle’s project, she now had a vocabulary that explained to herself how she was feeling and why it was so important. She had charts and charts telling her that she shouldn’t let go of it.