True story (that contains chickens but is not about chickens)
A scientist hatched a plan that she thought would increase egg production. She’d select the highest-producing group of hens and let them loose with the finest strutting cockerels to produce a breed of super-hen that would take egg production to the next level.
Oh, and because she was an actual proper scientist, she also kept a coop of normal chickens so she could compare and contrast.
Two years later…
The control group of average chickens was doing just fine. They were all feathery, plump and cracking out eggs like there was no tomorrow.
The super-flock was depleted. Only three chickens remained because the rest had been pecked to death. Oh, and the three survivors were bald.
Here’s the egg-splanation…
It seemed that the super-chickens had only achieved their success by suppressing the productivity of the rest of the flock. Basically, they had achieved top bird status by taking more than their fair share and/or obliterating the opposition. When you put all the top birds together, it’s a bloodbath. Literally! They were so busy trying to be chief chicken that they stopped laying eggs!
Which got me thinking about the world of work, politics, society, and education…
For the past 50 years, we’ve run too many organizations along the super-chicken model. We’ve thought that success is achieved by picking the superstars, the best and brightest, who we’ve then given all the resources and all the power and it just ain’t working.
If the super-chicken model doesn’t produce a healthy work culture, what does?
If you study high performance teams there’s always a high degree of ‘social sensitivity’. This is a fancy way of saying they are skilled at listening, nurturing and caring about each other. The quality of relationships matter. In groups that are highly attuned and sensitive to each other, ideas can flow and grow, and people learn quickly.
When people spend time together, they build ‘social capital’, interdependence and trust. In practical terms it means that time is everything, because social capital compounds with time. So teams that work and spend more time together get better, because it takes time to develop the trust you need for real candour and openness.
And what’s the missing ingredient in the modern workplace?
Time, that’s what.
If you value your team, if you want to build something world class, if you want to create a culture of psychological safety, if you want a team that’s buzzing with creativity and energy, drop us a line.
Because that’s what we do.