Team. We say it often. In our efforts in collaboration for systemic change, we spend a lot of time trying to find people with the right talents, and the right capacities.

But we pay less attention to creating the right atmosphere for a particular mix of personalities.

Sometimes the most significant lack is that we fail to pay attention during the process. Julia Rozovsky, Analyst, Google People Operations began a huge study for internet giant Google. The results were quite astonishing.

Author Stéphanie Thomson writes:

Their findings could not have been further from their initial assumptions. It turns out that the secret to a high-performing team lies less in the individuals that make it up and more in the wider team dynamics: “Who is on a team matters less than how the team members interact, structure their work, and view their contributions.”

Their findings on how all this works is something of which the Vincentian Family needs to take note.

You can read Stéphanie’s article here, and the Google study, “The five keys to a successful Google team,” is available here. The graphic below tells part of the story.