We’re still incredibly limited in what behaviors do and don’t increase a teams productivity. I’ve worked in groups where some of the least productive people were also maybe the most valuable. Very strong in keeping cohesion and moral up inside the team. Whether it was the way they smiled or greeted people when they saw them or the way they just knew how to spot someone who was tangling with a problem and instinctively knew how to nudge that person away from the edge. I still cant even slightly pin down precisely what people like this bring, but I know I know this …thing… exists and it’s something important.

And when given the choice I’ve seen teams almost battle to get these “low producers” into the group even though their output wasn’t top-tier.

I don’t know how we measure for these slippery traits without falling into woo traps but until we figure out what to look for, great team building will remain an art.

We’re nowhere near a point where we can accurately measure the weird and chaotic quirks that make up a top-tier team. Building a team is still far more of an art more than a science.

I get letting a person or two go who have clearly demonstrated they’re not a good fit, but I can’t help but wonder how much of the kool-aid this company has drank to think firing this many people based on weird data measurements was at all a good idea.