Comment on “Smart Innovators Value Smaller Teams Over Better Processes”

While many see leadership and followership differently, the truth is both rely on one another. It’s no secret that organizations have placed an emphasis on the importance of teams during the turn of the century. The truth is that while teamwork is popular, few organizations can create teams that are effective. Schrage explains that when there are too many people on one team, the team over-powers the task that the team was originally assembled for. In smaller teams shared leadership, where leadership is viewed as a role assigned to every team member, derives. Essentially, employees lead one another. However, more than just a small number of people are needed to foster productivity in teams. It is the job of each member of the team to hone their skills in transformational leadership, where specific types of behaviors engage followers, and in managerial leadership, activity that helps guide the production as well as the well-being of employees to support the current objectives of the team. Together, these forms of leadership create a stable, micro-focused environment increasing productivity. As an emphasis on teams continues to grow, it’s important that companies do not lose the ultimate purpose of teams: to find solutions for the company’s overall success.

In this article, it discusses the differences in large teams vs small teams. The whole point of the article is to decide whether your large organization needs a smaller team or a larger team to complete the task given to them. With the new technology and different innovative resources that companies are gaining, they have tended to need less people in their teams. The phrase “smaller is beautiful” really stood out to me. There is a common understanding that smaller teams tend to have an easier time with cohesion and getting the job done due to not having to worry about cramming a bunch of different types of people for one project. However, if a team is too small it can become a lot on individuals and can cause stress and tension. There needs to be a balance of a happy medium; where the team is not too large but not too small either. For the organization to be efficient, it needs to analyze the the tasks and decide what will work best for the company and individuals. The term “slow growth” also caught my attention because I feel like organizations tend to want to quickly grow and get to their end goal quickly. Slow growth allows for more opportunities and a stronger cohesion to form. It also could allow for innovation to grow progressively along with the team. It refers back to the famous term, “slow and steady” or the story where the tortoise beats the hare in the race. With less people, the opportunity for growth, strength, and efficiency are possible.

The Lockheed Martin SkunkWorks works because when an organization becomes more innovative it requires more people and this means the team sizes begin to grow which is generally a bad thing, so SkunkWorks combats this by keeping teams small so that they can work to complete tasks bigger then themselves rather than a large team of people working on completing something that does not necessarily require all of that attention. The article then goes on to mention the difference in slow and fast growth and how they mean the opposite of what you would expect. They mention that the slow growth of small teams is usually much more valuable than fast growth of a larger team and typically indicates that something is wrong or should be altered for more valuable results. While not everyone has adopted this strategy some corporations agree with this “lean and mean” mentality which has since been developing and proven to deliver small teams that are still incredibly powerful and incredibly innovative. Another advantage to keeping teams small is it makes learning and applying new things easier since the smaller groups tend to become closer and develop stronger bonds with one another compared to a larger team.

This article clearly showed us that there is not always a need for a large group over a small concise team. With technology and innovation even larger companies have started to move back to smaller teams, but why is that? I believe smaller teams mean more accountability from each team player, responsibility is managed differently as efficiency will be much better as if there are fewer people in a process the faster a thing can get done. It is really important that before analyzing which team size will fit you best that, the business analyzes the tasks and the processes to accurately identify and assign the team to its former tasks.

Skunkworks is successful because they have adopted Coco’s Chanel adage of “elegance is refusal”. By keeping their teams small, the organization can remain agile and effective without sacrificing brainpower. There is a common understanding that smaller teams tend to work better together because they are able to coordinate their efforts much more effectively. More benefits that come with working within a small team is enhanced collaboration, trust, quicker coordination, and efficiency. The methods used at Skunkworks work because the organization is placing more responsibility of smaller teams rather than trying to quickly grow and expand the team. The lean mentality is slowly taking root in corporate America because they have seen the success of the nimble Skunkworks groups that can effectively incubate and execute projects, leading to overall success for Lockheed Martin.

This article does a great job of highlighting the differences in the effectiveness of large vs. small teams. The writer, Michael Schrage, challenges organizations to look inwards on their team sizes and determine if they can successfully scale the team’s influence and deliverables. He states that as more innovative technology is integrated into the workplace, the need to add people onto a team decreases. Schrage also believes that a key indicator of performance is slow growth, as a fast-growing innovation team means either the wrong people were hired or that the wrong challenge was picked. Initially, I disagreed with this since typically organizations want to grow as fast as possible in all directions. However, I now believe that with the right people in a smaller team is more effective than a bigger one of dysfunctional people. With a smaller team, trust and cohesion are increasingly higher and team dynamics are overall better. He states that small teams are growing in innovation, power, and influence. This article has clearly opened my eyes and I think a lot of corporate America needs to read this and reevaluate their team’s performance as a lot of teams could do much, much more with fewer folks.

Innovation, idea sharing, and actually getting to the core of the problem and the solution, are far easier in smaller teams, which is why the Lockheed Martin SkunkWorks method works so well. With the boom of technology, teams are able to communicate faster amongst one another with more flexibility and resources at their disposal to achieve the problem quickly. By creating smaller teams with smarter individuals, those individuals are allowed to express their ideas and collaborate more effectively as they do not have to seek the approval of everyone on a massive team. I have seen this principle work simply in school. In a larger lecture size class, there is very little idea sharing and innovation, however, when individuals within the larger class are split up into groups of three, ideas flow rapidly and there is a plethora of information and perspective being shared amongst the class. The key in this model of work, however, is making sure the teams are built with the right people. Everyone within the group must be deeply knowledgeable of the topic so he or she is able to speak about it eloquently without any additional explaining needing to partake. Then, the group can discuss their individual ideas on the manner, which in turn creates the strong innovation that has been seen in successful businesses.

Based on the article and fellow students’ comments, the concept of small teams and the methods between the members of Skunkworks and its practices, a smaller team works far more efficiently with the material at hand. Because Skunkworks deals with top secret material, it makes sense that not only are the teams created small, but that it is encouraged to remain small, in order to protect what’s being created, as well as encourage loyalty to both each other in the team, as well as a desire to keep the company intact. On the topic of operating top-secret clearance and material, a larger group could ensure that we produce far quicker, but in the event that a individual or individuals go rouge, it results in more loose ends that the company would need to clean up. Loyalty would be harder to maintain as well amongst a larger group because in the event mentioned above, everyone would have a high sense of distrust amongst each other, due to the actions of few. Plus the larger the group, the harder for individuals to feel united to each other in the beginning, as the lack of close relationships is practically non existent.

A saying that I believe is a perfect way to sum this ideology up is “less is more.” For many years different companies and organizations have felt that the more people working together the better the results will be. While this practice may have worked many years ago, I believe that with the help of technology it has allowed big groups to be cut in half. With having smaller groups, it allows a large group of people to be given a task that is much smaller allowing many more tasks to be done on an everyday basis. The reason why I believe Lockheed Martin skunk works is by realizing niches and micro focusing will truly create better outcomes in the future. As time goes on and the business world changes it will be interesting to see what new ideologies are created and what companies will follow it.

The LockheedMartin SkunkWorks works because they use the theory that smaller groups work better. This is because communication is more efficient and allows for the group to be more active in collaboration. Previously there was too much communication but now with smaller teams, management is able to delegate and trust the smaller teams, then they bring the information to you. The article makes it important to note that, it’s not just that people are working in smaller groups, but a goal must be measured for their success and they have to have the right people in the group as well. This is a big focus of what makes SkunkWorks so important, but also because this innovation is possible with the right people. Smaller groups have everyone pulling their own weight and allow for each member to take control of their own specific task while contributing to the group. A huge theme with all the companies mentioned was their ability to be agile once they allowed for smaller teams to form. Along with that, smaller teams create a more focused vision where everyone can learn their task.

The approach that Lockheed-Martin Skunk Works and many other organizations are now utilizing for innovation is the “smaller is beautiful” method. This idea supports the fact that more innovation and higher quality deliverables are derived from smaller groups of people. The article puts it as transitioning from football and soccer, teams of 11, to basketball, teams of 5. The priority of many organizations has transformed from making the innovation process more efficient for the small teams rather than making the team efficient for the innovation process. The so-called “exploitive” strategy that is becoming extremely popular because the smaller groups of people can work together more cohesively and effectively rather than groups of 70 plus working on an innovation project. The use of smaller teams also frees us management’s responsibility of micromanaging the larger more grueling innovation teams that required much more supervision. Management tries to keep teams so small that they even deny adn set aside talent rather they bring people in as needed for their skills. This allows for incremental growth of the innovation team rather than exponential which usually occurs when deadlines are approaching. The slower the growth of the innovation team, the more successful the organization will be in the long run. The more personal and connected a tight knit group of innovators is the more prosperous they will be.

A very difficult question to answer when creating a team is how big should the team be to be most effective. It may seem like an easy answer to say that the more brains or hands tackling a problem, the more efficient the work will be. While this can be true, it is also true that having too many brains or hands on a project can hurt the people getting the most work done. One example of this is how some large companies can become so complex with the layers of workers, you will have many workers working on a project while at the exact same time their boss, and that bosses boss are also all working on the project. All the different groups have different ideas of how to get the job done and all the different groups have different levels of pressure hanging onto the project. What Lockheed-Martin did was they made groups working on projects as small as they could be while still being efficient. They also made sure that the pressure to get the project done correctly was equal all around, with each team member wanting to achieve the end goal every member of the team became a leader.

Kelly Johnson’s Lockheed Martin SkunkWorks has proven to be efficient because it challenges the concept that companies need larger innovation groups in order to be successful. These smaller groups of about 5 instead of 10 or 12 allow idea to flow more freely since they so not have to be visited by twice as many people in the group. They have focused on leaning how to successfully manage these teams taking the emphasis from “how do we successfully scale the team?” to “how do we successfully scale the team’s influence and deliverables?”. By shifting the focus on production rather than employee increments, they are looking for production from every employee and not just treating them like a number. Another notable effect from this idea is how to measure. Normally, growth would mean success, however, growth in these innovation groups also means adding people because the other ones are failing to produce in a given assignment or project. The SkunkWorks has proven to be effective and turns the traditional way of thinking of, “bigger is better” on it head to focus more in the efficiency side and, “going small to get big”.

Working in teams is something that has been emphasized and implemented in almost every workplace in America. The Lockheed-Martin Skunk Works is the idea that smaller groups are way more efficient and effective than working in a much larger group. It has been a new focus for “the organizational priority [to make] innovation processes and culture subservient to the small teams rather than making small teams serve the innovation process.” When you have a smaller team it is easier to have one focus or the same goals. When a group gets larger, like to 70+ people it’s harder to keep everyone focused on one common goal or accomplishment. It also seems that people are now looking to have only a handful of highly productive and innovative people, instead of a really big team with only one-third of them producing great ideas. When a larger team exists there is more room for people to slack, fall behind and interfere with the innovation process, whereas, if the team is “lean and mean,” their efforts can just be towards producing good work because the accountability is there. This approach has obviously seen success in many organizations like Facebook, I am intrigued to see if this trend continues and the productivity it creates.

As companies transition from large teams to smaller groups, we will increasingly see more efficient work and less specialized roles. When companies have large groups of workers it creates unnecessary competition with in the company. Additionally, this hurts company culture and overall employees are not as close with their coworkers, which hurts team unison. The article mentions what slow and fast growth should look like for a team. Slow growth for a smaller team is actually desired, because it means that the team is growing and succeeding successfully as a unit. While, fast growth often means that a team is not succeeding to the desired level causing them to hire newer employees to make up for this, which can further disrupt growth. While, smaller teams are definitely beneficial it can create stress for certain members of the team if a coworker cannot complete a task. With these larger companies moving to smaller teams, it is definitely smart to continually check in on employees mental health, while additionally analyzing success levels of these smaller groups. Finally, I would advise centering these smaller groups in environments that can maximize success and interaction.

Lockheed Martin Skunk works because they see the value in promoting the success of a tight knit small group rather than a large group with less specialized or specific roles. The article promotes how smaller groups are better for these companies for a variety of reasons. One being that making the team smaller makes the innovation process more efficient. If you look to strictly make the innovation process more efficient, it often affects the success of the team. The smaller teams also lessen competition, making workers often less stressed and produce more quality work rather than rushing through it to try and “beat” someone else. Having groups the size of a starting 5 on a basketball team rather than 11 of a football team, lets ideas be able to be bounced off people and thought more thoroughly, rather than having to go through 10+ people where the ideas often lose authenticity and become redundant. Less is more in the concept of this article. And although it sounds counterintuitive, slow growth is good growth because it proves how the team is working successfully and in unison with one another and not rushing through the innovation process. All in all, this works because people work better when they are, not overwhelmed by too many people, are able to work in their own space and a reasonable pace, and finally when they are surrounded by a few people with whom they trust and each specialize in a specific area where they can all offer small tidbits of information to help better the overall innovation process for everyone.

This article brings to light a very strong point which we should start to strongly consider in today’s business world: larger does not necessarily mean better. Smaller can be stronger, faster, and even more innovative. I appreciated how the author emphasized that smaller organizations especially have a knack for innovative team culture. In many of today’s business organizations, this is a concept with which we are all somewhat familiar with. However, it seems to be quickly emerging as a necessary step to success. Another advantage of smaller-scale organizations, and one that has allowed for Skunk Works to thrive, is the focus of smaller, niche-focused groups within a larger organization. This sub-divide of groups allowed for them to “serve the innovation process” which ultimately worked in their favor.

The article immediately reminded me of Jeff Bezos’s 2 Pizza rule, where teams are seen as more efficient when they’re smaller. They are able to communicate better, and don’t take more than two pizzas to feed. Smaller-scale teams have to ability to make quicker decisions and focus on what’s really important to get the job done. Even in large organizations, small teams support one another. I found it interesting when the article noted the key performance indicator is slow growth. It means that the individuals are carefully selected so they can produce the best results. The phrase “going small to get big” got me to reflect on organizations I’ve been a part of. Truthfully, the smaller the team was, I found highly qualified individuals, sometimes even experts, that were able to make precise decisions. The use of small teams in all types of organizations is a good model because it creates an environment where there are better work relationships. Individuals are held to a higher standard when they’re accountable, rather than getting lost in a big group with lower levels of accountability.

One might think that more minds behind a project results in that project being done better than with fewer minds. However, the article and the managers of Skunk Works promote the idea of keeping teams smaller for longer. Keeping teams smaller and only increasing in size gradually allows for greater focus among the people in the group and greater opportunity for discussion about solutions. It is interesting how the article mentions that new and innovative technology also promotes smaller teams because of the teams ability to make use of that technology and minimize the people that need to be added to the team.
I suppose that the problem for maintaining the focus of a large group stems from the idea of social loafing, in which a person in a large group is less inclined to put forth good effort and contribute to a project. While I think this partially depends on company culture and the task at hand, it is important that everyone on the team knows their defined role and its responsibilities. When someone in a group is unclear of their role or completely left out of task delegation, this almost promotes social loafing and is a clear indication of a team being too large for a specific project. So my takeaway is that a team needs to be large enough to efficiently and effectively achieve group objectives, but not too large to the point that some people do not have the capacity to contribute anything notable.

Michael Schrage’s article raises a great point on how more companies are focusing on creating core teams as a priority rather than better processes. Dividing the work among smaller teams is a means of creating better engagement and productivity among workers. Last summer, I worked at an internship that followed this type of plan. Working in the HR department, I was grouped with 3 other interns to focus on certain projects for the company. We were able to work closely with each other to make decisions for onboarding processes. I found it easier to communicate with my group and divide tasks amongst each other. After doing the work, we would meet up with our director and the other group to present what we have done so far and how we will move forward form there. I find it easier to work in smaller groups rather than bigger teams. Sometimes bigger teams can become hectic and all over the place. Teamwork seems to be better when the groups are smaller. It is also easier to keep in touch with a small group. Because of this, the collaboration and innovation increases. People can gain support from their team and understand each other better.

Michael Schrage’s article brought up a point that I wholeheartedly agree with. The trend of smaller teams is an idea that should keep being implemented in the business world now and in the future. While there are situations where larger teams are preferred, In most cases, smaller teams are the solution. Working in a smaller team provides more efficient work because being a part of a small, tight-knit group gives you the trust to let everyone else to work on their assignments and for you to simply focus on your own work. There is also a right and a wrong way to implement teams within an organization. A common problem, especially in large organizations, is the neglect of these smaller teams because of how many of them there are. This ultimately leads to an increase in team size when it isn’t needed. Schrage also mentions another problem where organizations have started to lose focus on the team itself and more on the deliverables they provide. Implementing teams has to be done the right way, or there will be a lack of focus and efficiency. The proper way to do, as Schrage says, is “going small to get big.” The team must grow slowly and appropriately with the results of innovation that they provide.

Lockheed Martin works because smaller team sizes encourage innovation, increase velocity, and increase focus. The sizes of teams in a corporate environment are crucial and they can range in the number of members depending on the size of the company. Technology has a big impact on creating a good team because the more improvement in technology it minimizes the need to add more team members. The number of milestones a focused team can accomplish is almost limitless. Many companies like Facebook and Google encourage this strategy because it has been shown to be very effective. Top-tier management is typically more resistant to let the great innovations of these teams grow exponentially so they typically keep the teams working hard to stay small. Team leaders and top-tier management focus on how to scale the team’s influence and deliverables. I disagree with this perspective because even though the team’s power will increase, they will still need a leader to steer them in the right direction. I think when one team has shown that they are able to deliver impressive results it encourages other people to be on that standard or surpass it and yield amazing results. I think the top-tier management could feel threatened, but it is up to them to rise to the occasion with the team or to be replaced.

Lockheed Martin Skunk Works and many other large companies around the world have started to trend towards smaller and more tight-knit teams rather than larger ones. In the past, organizations delegated larger teams to various tasks thinking that more minds would generate greater success. Recently, larger organizations are creating smaller teams and giving them greater responsibility and more resources to solve problems and create initiative. GlaxoSmithKline, a large pharmaceutical company, “is betting that smaller size assures faster velocity and greater agility for innovation decision.” The idea is that smaller teams will have better communication and smaller, yet more powerful ideas that will get the job done faster and more complete. Lockheed Martin provides examples about how organizations tend to make teams bigger when deadlines are approaching in saying “team sizes relentlessly drift upward. A nucleus of seven can easily leap an order of magnitude to 70+ within six months if certain milestones are hit. That’s bad.” In the process of making teams smaller and more effective, the emphasis has shifted to scaling teams influences rather than simply scaling the team. Slow growth in this trend toward smaller teams is extremely important because it assures that the right people are chosen, and the right initiatives are sought. Overall, the trend toward smaller teams is impactful and helps production in large organizations through slow growth and decisiveness.

This article does a great job of explaining the differences between large and small teams, along with the effectiveness they both have. The article challenges organizations to reflect on themselves and determine if they can successfully scale the team’s influence and deliverables. The author talks about how innovative technology is becoming more useful in the workplace which causes the need for large amounts of people on a team to decrease. In today’s quick-moving day in age, I believe that assembling the right people in a small team is more effective than a large team of dysfunctional people. In a small team, trust and cohesion are higher and the overall team dynamics are better. The use of small teams in businesses is growing because of the success that has been yielded from doing so. This article has given me a new perspective on team sizes and effectiveness, as now I think a lot of corporate America needs to experiment with smaller teams to see how it goes.

Smaller versus faster. On the surface, one would think that a larger team would be more capable of getting more done than a smaller one, but the opposite is true when it comes to innovation. When teams are too large several issues arise. Company culture and camaraderie are lost as people become more distant due to the number of people involved in certain tasks. For a large team to be successful, each member must implement a process to work in unison. This may be good in a production line but it leaves room for no innovation to occur at all. Small teams focus on a goal and set out for themselves, what is the best way for them to achieve it. In large teams, a sense of competition comes about much easier, on smaller teams, each member is completely reliant on one another to complete the task. Another advantage that a small team has over a big team is that they are more agile as the article states. This is because they can come to decisions much quicker as consensus is made among a smaller group of people. Small teams seem to be the path forward for companies looking to excel in innovation in the future.

This article makes a few very good and interesting points about teams and innovation. The main take away i got from this article is that the bigger the team does not make for better innovation, it is actually the opposite in most cases. This is a very interesting topic because when most people think of innovation they would think that having more people, more minds, would lead to more and better ideas. but companies are seeing that having a smaller and more intelligent team actually delivers those results they’re looking for. For many of these companies they are turning away top talent in order to keep the innovation team small which just goes to show the lengths they are willing to go for the team. When companies focus on smaller teams they need to make sure the teams morale and the teams are working in tangent to achieve their goals.

I think that this article described the necessity of what at team need to be. Teams can be many different sizes and have many different purposes. This leads to their overall success as a team. While this reminded me of the “two pizza” rule that Jeff Bezos proposed for his team size, I think that larger teams are necessary for certain tasks. Knowing how to distribute people into different tasks based on the tasks is a very well-thought-out business move. This is what can lead to overall company success. As long as the small teams are not too small that they need to sacrifice quality and are drowning in work, and the large teams are not too large that there are too many cooks in the kitchen, and work isn’t able to be equally distributed, teams should be able to handle anything thrown their way. This will also increase the confidence of the team and bring them closer together in the quality of their work. I think that in the article we had to read, it describes that this is one of the reasons why the Lockheed Martin Work works. So much unique and proper things were done in their situation.

The article shows us how smaller groups are better for these companies for various reasons. Helping display how the Lockheed Martin skunk works. Facebook’s Zuckerberg is a big supporter of small teams and something who has obviously benefitted by this strategy of having smaller teams. Google super-charged its innovation engine by encouraging individuals and smaller groups to innovate hard. Apple’s Steve Jobs was notorious for insisting that focused innovation required focused teams. All these companies focus on the aspect of extreme focus and innovation through smaller, more detail-oriented, and successful teams. Smaller teams allow for less competition, the innovation process becomes more efficient, and ideas stay authentic and do not become redundant or off their original track. Less is more in all aspects of this article. Smaller teams also allow for workers to not become overwhelmed by multiple assistants and bosses constantly lurking waiting for mistakes to be made. I personally believe smaller teams allow for more freedom and better connections on the team as it is smaller it allows for ideas to spread and be discussed much quicker. All these factors show how the Lockheed Martin skunk works and why smaller teams are more beneficial for companies all across the United States in particular.

LockheedMartin Skunk Works works because the implementation of smaller teams is more efficient. When a team is composed of a team leader and 5 or 6 role members that each have a clear cut responsibility, then the efficiency of the team will be much higher than if there is a team leader with 60 role members that collaborate on similar jobs. According to the article, organizations across the globe are beginning to build smaller teams due to their high efficiency. The large teams of the past are no longer the norm in the modern world. Some other advantages that incentivizes organizations to build smaller teams include agility and impact. Smaller teams are more agile than bigger teams for obvious reasons. The smaller the team the easier it is for the entire team to rotate objectives. Smaller teams have a higher impact because when a team is composed of smaller numbers than each member takes on more responsibility which leads to a higher impact on the assignment per person. Smaller teams are also more able to specialize on certain roles, leading to more consistency within a project, as opposed to a larger team where there may be a disconnect between several different pieces.

I think this article is really important as to how we look at teams as a whole and their evolution over time. We have learned over the years that smaller teams tend to work better together instead of having more people on the same goals. It’s almost like the saying “too many chefs in the kitchen.” I feel this describes the situation perfectly. It talks about how if there’s too many people with different ideas and wants for how things should be done, there won’t really be anything getting done. Smaller groups build trust, leadership, and friendship through working on projects and assignments together. This way, you get workplace relationships between employees, and you get a culture that is centered around working together and not feeling overwhelmed.

It is becoming more and more popular in organizations to utilize small teams to complete projects. Some of the largest tech and pharmaceutical companies are implementing this strategy to give teams the ability to react more quickly when it comes to the important decision making process. If there is a large group, there is to many people trying to input their own variation of a solution. With less people, it is easier and quicker to hear everyone out and come to a reasonable decision. Management thinks about the value added proposition per team member added. They realize that at a certain inflection point, the value added begins to decrease and become a negative. However, on the other hand, management must not leave the teams to be understaffed. In innovative tech companies especially, product offerings are always changing and becoming more complex. If the team is too small, they can be overwhelmed with the demands of management and consumers. It is up to management to decide if adding more members to the team will help or hurt in the development of the project.

Lockheed Martin’s team strategy works not only because tech giants like Facebook and Google use it to be successful, but because it makes sense logically. In the past, companies would assign major projects to big groups to give everyone a fair and manageable workload. It makes sense at first thought, however, there is a major culture disconnect because with massive groups everyone doesn’t know everyone and it creates a less productive meeting environment as well as fewer ideas flowing around the room. With large groups like 60 people, it is hard for everyone to be comfortable sharing bold ideas to the entire group. For that reason, Lockheed Martin’s method works best. When teams are split into smaller groups, like 5-12, they are more likely to have a closer bond and be able to have healthy arguments and banter. They would speak up and give each other more constructive criticism and throw in more ideas while being comfortable voicing their opinion when they think something is a bad idea. These smaller group sizes result in a much more successful and productive project. Even though not all companies will adopt the Lockheed Martin method, it is something to consider moving towards for many companies looking to succeed.

This article was very insightful into how small teams can function equal to or better than larger teams. The example about Lockheed Martin was a perfect way to support this idea. They talked about how smaller teams instill more trust in each other and raises the commitment level from each of the members. These are two key aspects of high functioning teams and can be much more easily produced in smaller teams. I like the example we talked about in class on Tuesday 11/9, Jeff Bezos’s two pizza rule. It stated how the largest team that anyone should have should be able to be fed by 2 pizzas. I think this was a clever way of showing what industry leading professionals view teams within organizations. Amazon is a multinational conglomerate that employs thousands of people and if the owner believes that 16 slices of pizza should feed the biggest team, that says a lot. I agree with this idea because having been apart of many teams in my life, there is no adequate substitute for a tight-knit group of team members. The trust and belief in one another is second to none and it usually results in success in many forms.

Smaller group projects are becoming more and more relevant in the small and large business scenes. I believe this is because it is far more easy and efficient for everybody on the team to provide input, with less people. Less people also makes it easier to take all opinions into consideration. A leader can hear all opinions on a decision, and act accordingly, which can’t really be done in a large group. This is why Lockheed Martin works so well. They work hard to keep it small. They strategically placed specific people in smaller groups to ensure that they can collaborate and achieve the goal at hand. Big groups tend to alienate people, and not everybody may want to or can express their opinions on the task at hand. Overall the smaller groups help the development of a task by taking in all necessary information from a smaller number of group members

This type of teamwork is quite an interesting view on how innovation should be managed from this point forward. The only flaw I find with this mindset is that management will need to begin to understand the type of people they are hiring at a much greater level in order for this to work properly. If they hire people who don’t understand the company’s vision, or who struggle to mesh with other ways of thinking, then this will only create tension and misdirections among the company’s progress. This, of course, is a two way street which requires management to create well diversified teams that work together, and that they don’t feel the need to micromanage. This method works because people who are not in the C-Suite are just as capable of accomplishing great things as those who are paid the highest salaries. Innovation and a progressive way of thinking are attributes anyone is capable of possessing, they just need the opportunity to do so. This system allows people at any level to express that they have just as much potential and creativity as anyone else at the company. Speaking from an analytical perspective this method works because it creates a safe environment for people to have the power to express their ideas and innovation without the fear of failure, or needing to speak beyond their comfort level based on position level.

The Lockheed Martin skunkworks is successful because they can use smaller groups to complete bigger innovation projects. Smaller teams call for more effective communication which results in greater understanding and efficiency across the board. With these small teams concentrating on big innovations there is no waste of brainpower that you would find with large teams. People in smaller teams can more easily trust each other which in return will enhance the team atmosphere. I will say that with the growing social media and technology calls for this type of corporate strategy trend which we are already seeing. Corporations want to be using every resource most efficiently and having small teams working big projects obviously is investing less for bigger returns. These companies will need to be more selective with their team and how they make sure individuals will be able to perform together. However, smaller groups have most likely made the hiring processes more selective so I’m confident they corporations will make sure they are picking individuals more than capable of the goals. Altogether, smaller teams improves communication, enhances trust, and increases productivity in comparison to big groups within innovation projects.

TThe Lockheed Martin Skunk Works is a perfect example of how bigger is not always better. Much like Jeff Bezos’s two-pizza rule, working in smaller teams can be more efficient than working in larger teams. Although there are many benefits to working in smaller teams, there are also some negative aspects. In an example like Lockheed Martin, the projects have not gotten smaller, but the group working on them has. This puts a lot more responsibility on the individuals, which can create a lot of stress. And if the person is not a proper fit and can’t handle stress well, they tend to crumble under pressure causing harm to the completion of the project. So it is a managerial responsibility to find the right prospects for the job. It is almost like a jig-saw puzzle when working in small teams. Every piece plays a vital role in the overall completion of the puzzle, and without it would leave the puzzle unfinished. In my own experience, I have worked in a smaller team that works on a big project that used to have a much larger teamwork work on it. I have found that communication is much faster when working with a small group, and things tend to get completed more quickly when there are not as many opinions as there would be in a larger team.

This article is quite insightful as it explains how there is a cultural shift in focused innovation in global enterprise. What really captivated me was how nowadays these big tech companies are focusing their resources on smaller teams of employees rather than larger groups that go by the dozens. The reasoning for this is because agility and working space within the workspace is a key to effectiveness. What I would like to add to this is that when you are working with a smaller group, you’re able to generate more trust within this group making their corresponsive tasks feel like even more of a personal responsibility for them. Since the group is smaller, then each employee is going to hold a much larger amount of responsibility in contrary to what a bigger group would, where everyone would have to hold each other accountable. In larger groups this would lead to disorganization, which is lackluster for a working environment. Another key to success and efficiency in small teams in the workplace would be slow growth. Slow and steady wins the race, and as we’ve seen with such large companies like Facebook and Apple, tight and organized teams are growing in power, influence and innovation

The culture shift from big teams to small teams seems to be affecting a lot of companies but none as much as Lockheed Martin. Lockheed Martin uses Skunk Works to show that bigger is not always better. By working in smaller teams, employees learn to trust each other and become a family which improves their communication and trust in each other. Smaller teams become closer to each other and hold each other accountable which allows for greater innovation. With innovative technology such as social media smaller teams can extend their reach without adding members. A smaller team also allows for faster velocity and greater agility for greater innovation decisions. Grander teams may rush to meet the deadlines, but smaller teams take a slow growth perspective and carefully critique each other’s work until it is the best it can be. Small teams have the ability to scale their deliverables and influence, which is much different than scaling the number of members on the team. If an innovation team is moving too fast with their deliverable, either the challenge was too easy or the company hired the wrong people. Business is a very detail-oriented field and if the deliverables are coming out quickly, the team may not have taken as much time looking into the details of the task.

This article discusses the emerging theme of highlighting smaller teams to core responsibilities within organizations. With ever-growing companies and more and more projects and technology being applied within companies, you would think that this would require a greater number of people working in the organization. However large companies are applying more responsibility to smaller teams. The idea is that having these smaller teams will actually increase productivity and efficiency and ensure quicker decision making. It expedites communication and increases team connectivity. Management within these teams also fight to keep teams smaller. Not only does it streamline the team’s work, but it also simplifies the managers work and allows them to focus more heavily on each individual rather than having the individual fade into the pack. The Skunk Work method is successful because it puts greater emphasis on placing greater responsibility on the teams rather than focusing and emphasizing growing the team. Again, it allows for more focus on the individual. Technology also allows for small teams to succeed. When organizations use the technology at their disposal, they are actually able to assign less of those tedious small tasks to people which allows them to fulfill their potential. Technology also allows for streamlined communication within these teams and from team to team within the organization. There are many reasons that small teams work better than large teams and this seems to be the trend that will never leave.

Smart innovators value smaller teams over better processes because it creates a certain team dynamic where members can focus on smaller tasks to get the job done quicker which assures faster velocity and greater agility for innovation decision. Having a larger team where there is a huge amount of inputs and opinions to be accounted for makes the decision making process longer and more dense. The innovation process of smaller teams is more focused and creates greater impacts. More innovative technology and advances minimizes the need to add more people to the main team. The organizational priority is making innovation processes and culture subservient to the small teams rather than making small teams serve the innovation process. By having a small and intimate team, jobs and responsibilities can be easily delegated and allows each member to know who is doing what. Personally, working with a smaller group on a school project is easier than working with a larger one because it allows for better collaboration and organization. Talking with a few others on the project rather than multiple prevents miscommunication and disorder. Some organizations spend too much time, energy, and money in trying to expand and grow but fail to focus on the simpler and smaller things which ultimately hurts them in the long run.

It’s interesting to hear about how companies handle their team size and how big of a factor it plays in optimizing work performance. I have experienced rapid team growth in one of my internships and what the article says about it is true from what I witnessed. When too many opinions come into play in the decision making process it can be the opposite of innovative. I love how the article mentions that the best way to think of people with information that could help the decision making process as “resources”. These people are great to check back in with especially when the information they specialize in is needed for the discussion. However, they should stay as resources and not so much “a part of the team”. It is obvious that some projects do need more minds to come to a solution but like this article mentioned, it is all about the pace in which more people enter into the team. Thought should be put into whether a person should be a key stakeholder in the decision which means that time is needed to make that decision. All in all, every situation is different but it is crucial to think about what every member can contribute to the success of a team.

The Lockheed Martin Skunk Works is an example of the benefits of staying small in business. Schrage shares with us his observations that staying small in some businesses has proven highly successful. This business dynamic of staying on the smaller side can empower teams and streamline operations. Individuals can become empowered through a building of mutual trust that is more easily built in small groups. This empowerment has employees become more involved and engaged with more responsibilities and pride in their work. Small teams can have an element of transparency that helps openness and communication. This becomes shared leadership building team trust. Developing a greater comfort level among peers creates a positive working environment with people “owning it” and not trying to pass off work. A simple structure helps activities from becoming convoluted and tangled. A team does not have to “jump through hoops”. They can change directions or gears relatively quickly and therefore become more adept and faster at their innovations or profits. This flexibility can be advantageous in time management and lowering of expenses. It is interesting that Schrage futuristically shares with us in his article written in 2011 the usage of “cleverly using digital and social media to extend their reach” when 10 years later in 2022 our organizational cultures have vastly been changed by social media outlets.
Thus, Bigger is better is not always the case.

A team that shares similar values is vital to help cultivate new and innovative ideas. To formulate an effective and engaged team, staffing fewer members is often the most effective way to influence communication among teammates. Developing trust with every member in a large team is often difficult when faced with completing an assignment on time. In addition, the room for error and miscommunication skyrockets with every addition to the team. Assigning more responsibilities to smaller teams creates a sense of urgency to perform efficiently since select individuals are in charge of the entire outcome of a project. Utilizing social media and the latest technology has made performing tasks simpler and more structured than ever before. This has allowed business professionals to connect and brainstorm at a rapid pace, increasing productivity throughout the entire organization. Smaller teams must also take the time to examine every detail of an assignment before officially submitting it. Accomplishing a difficult errand properly while working in a team environment is not an easy task and requires hiring the right people. It is the managers’ duty to always make sure their co-workers and colleagues are placed in teams where they can openly share valuable insights with each other.

Lockhead Martin is the perfect example of a small company that knows how to be productive and get work done. The Skunkworks example shows how to deal with a lot of moving parts and still come through in the end. This was able to be done through trust and teamwork. When you trust the people around you to get the job done it allows you to just focus on your task at hand. This eliminates distractions and allows for work to get done faster and more effectively. The company also did a great job utilizing technology and social media. These were also key contributors to the teams success. Overall, it all came down to the smaller teams getting the job done. This allowed the company to combine all the small moving pieces into one whole complete project. This can also be atestment to the managers being great leaders. The managers job to guide everyone in the right direction was not only impressive but necessary in order to complete the project on time and on budget.

This article does a great job of explaining the old saying, “too many cooks in the kitchen.” In economics, this is the law of diminishing marginal returns. What this means is that when there are too many people working on one thing, their work becomes less and less efficient. Having large groups of people try and complete one task usually ends in failure, arguments, and frustration. The small team innovation model is a shift that many companies are doing. Large organizations are using smaller teams for better innovation and more efficient work. By giving smaller teams greater responsibility and resources, focus can be higher and teamwork is more efficient. The Lockheed Martin Skunk Works is a great example of this. Smaller teams allow for clearer communication and stronger team bonding. Having a team that can communicate and is connected allows for better collaboration. The Skunk Works method works because their teams are doing just this. With more responsibility, teams are able to focus on their goals and work together. They are taking advantage of their size and working together in a small collaborative environment. This increases productivity, efficiency, and effectiveness while promoting positive team dynamics.

The LockheedMartin Skunk Works works because smaller teams are able to be productive, agile, and carry on more responsibilities when compared to larger teams. The saying “going small to get big” rings incredibly true as many of the world’s most successful and innovative companies—FaceBook, Google, Apple, GSK—prefer smaller teams. Less enables more because individuals in smaller groups are able to innovate harder and faster when there are less moving parts. On the other hand, many large organizations struggle with having larger teams that grow quite easily because there are so many silos to account for in the business process.

In fact, it is believed that a fast-growing innovation team means that either the wrong people were hired or that the wrong challenge was selected. The slow growth of teams allows them to build a consistent culture while staying “mean and lean”, while the fast growth makes it difficult to find a mission for so many members. I believe that working in smaller teams and growing slowly is essential to success in truly any endeavor. For instance, I play baseball at CUA. It is much more productive and easier to improve when there are 5-10 hitters at the batting cage rather than 20-25. This is because it allows each individual to get more reps and develop relationships with their team members. This rings true in the business world as well.

The LockheedMartin Skunk works because of teams that are focused and are hired correctly, only success follows. This method starts first with hiring a great team in small numbers. The employees must be able to complete the task they are given and positioned in a way that benefits the team with ideas. The manager/leader of the team has a big responsibility to create a team that works well together to create a healthy team environment. Now the reason a small team works better than a much larger team is because of communication and error that follows. The goal is to have no errors but miscommunication in a team will lead to that. Imagine trying to pass important valuable ideas but are instead lost in their email by other teammates who are also emailing the same person. This becomes inefficient for the company, therefore having a small team of people will lead to everyone being on the same page. Now using digital and social media will only minimize the need to add more people to the main team because of the ability to reach both inside the company and out very efficiently. Having a small team that focuses on every project given will only reciprocate a successful closed project.

Staying small in business nowadays is the way to go. In the case of the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works, we see a smaller team being much more innovative and successful in their tasks. When you branch from a group of 4 or 5 to a group of 40 or 50, you lose the ability to discuss the essence of what you are doing and why you are doing it. In business it is important that there is correct motivation behind what is done, and a smaller team helps everyone to stay on the same page. Smaller teams provide a significant advantage in brainstorming, productivity, efficiency, understanding, and knowledge than a team with a large number of people. We see in this article how larger teams can often be a disadvantage to the Companys future and how motivation and understanding lack when there are numerous people who can get the job done. To be in a tight knit, fluid group with people who you trust to work just as hard as you will is a very special idea. It helps put the fun back into what we are doing and it helps to emphasize why the work is being done. I personally enjoy working in a smaller team environment for several reasons. The first and most important is that I get to know those who I am working with which is something you can’t buy with a paycheck.

Small teams are becoming more and more popular in the business world because they create the best possible balance of having a group of people to bounce ideas off of while not having too many points of view that nothing gets done. These small teams are also a great way to develop stronger relationships with the people you are working with and it is easier to align everyone’s values, strengths, and weaknesses in a way that things operate smoothly. Like many organizational behavior topics, I saw many parallels between this and sports. For example, the article discussed how the “median size of the core innovation group has dropped from a football/soccer eleven to a basketball five.” Coming from a football background, it is difficult to get all eleven people on the exact same page on every play, but it is needed to be successful; if one person is not doing their job, everything falls apart. Also, this serves as proof that there is so much more to building a team than simply taking the most talented people and expecting them to work well together; there has to be some sort of method to choose a small group who is able to work together efficiently and learn from each other.

This was a very interesting concept that I had not given much thought to prior to reading this acrticle. Many may think it counterintuitive that a smaller team will be more productive and able to innovate better than a larger team could, but in a lot of ways this actually makes plenty of sense. Not only does a smaller team cut down on the bueracracy of gettting everyone’s thoughts and aligning the values of everyone within the team, it also allows the members of the team more freedom and felxibility in their work. While one may think this reduction in manpower would lead to decreases in productivity, this is actually not the case thanks to advancements in technology that allow a singular person to be much more productive. These technological advancements have also allowed individuals the opportunity to connect and utilize others like never before, meaning that even if these people aren’t necessarily on the team, they can be called upon as needed to support the team in its work. Lockheed Martin has found great success by cutting down on the sizes of groups and allowing these smaller groups to thrive in this type of environment, as they have experienced lots of successful innovation as a result of these smaller teams. The one thing that these organizations need to make sure they monitor, though, is that these small teams innovations and goals align with the desires of the organization’s C-suite, as they can very quickly steer into a different direction from what the C-suite desires if they are not frequently monitored.

In the article, “Smart Innovators Values Smaller Teams Over Better Processes” it talks about the importance of smaller teams when compared to larger teams, specifically in the Pharma industry. Having smaller teams results in more efficient communication which intern reduce that likelihood of mistakes. Although this article was written in 2011, it still stays true to its core messages. A great example of this outside the Pharma industry is Tesla’s AI engineering team, which is made up of around 150 people and outperforms other competitors whose engineering teams top 5000 people. A smaller group allows for a more rapid paced work place where responsibility falls on the individual rather than a group of people that all deny making the said mistake. The final point that I want to reflect on is that with smaller teams it is crucial to find the right employee to fill that spot. Without the best person for the job, smaller teams can regress back to the levels of larger teams.

Smaller teams and workgroups can only benefit the performance. Many times we think by adding more workers and resources it can only benefit the group because more help is more efficient with getting a job done, but Lockheed Martin goes to show that a group that works well together can overpower and be more beneficial to a companies success due to it’s trust levels and accountability culture. Nowadays, technology and Artificial Intelligence has made human jobs not as needed, therefore these smaller capacity of workers trying to tackle a certain task is more reasonable and more effective. Being transparent and collaborating on certain issues or hick-ups during a task is what makes the outcome successful, and these collaborations with small groups is the best way for business to get done.

This article discusses how crucial it is for teams to have the ability to work together and collaborate to help lead a business to further success. Top management needs to delegate their work to smaller teams and trust them to get the job done efficiently. Teams need to have the proper resources from management to continue to innovate. Sometimes, having smaller teams leads to more trust within the team and allows for more of a collaborative atmosphere compared to larger teams. When the article mentions, “smaller is beautiful” it really resonated with me from examples I have experienced in my life. When I have the opportunity to work in smaller teams on projects, with people I trust, I feel more valued, comfortable, and confident in my work. The collaboration is more complete and everyone is working together to achieve the same goal: success. This article highlights the differences between small and large teams and how both operate. For businesses to continue to innovate and grow, smaller teams are the way to go. Having fewer people focus on one specific topic creates trust between management and employees.

What Lockheed Martins’ Skunk Works has done, which has proven successful for several other companies, is embrace smaller teams. This means instead of having groups of 15-20 people working on a project or brainstorming an innovation, you will have 5-10. This allows for more content to be exchanged because communication is proven to be at an all-time high in more intimate settings. People feel more comfortable speaking in smaller groups than in larger ones due to fear of judgment or public speaking. Larger groups allow for the clashing of “big personalities” and for some people to slack off or not contribute. This also puts an easier task on the management side because this means they don’t have as high of responsibility in terms of supervision. It is much easier to oversee the work of 5 people than it is 20, and management will likely have a lot more trust in a small group that has built strong relationships and where everyone is working together. Jeff Bezo adopts this strategy as well in what he calls the “two pizza rule” where no team can be larger than a group that can be fed by two pizza pies. This is an ingenious way of thinking because innovation relies on long-term, slow growth, which is most likely to be achieved by a group that communicates and shares ideas in an effective way.

The article aims to highlight the advantages of smaller, more focused teams, over what might be considered more normal bigger teams. This is because managers are realizing the importance of teams needing to be able to collaborate in order to come up with the desired outcomes. We learned about this also with Jeff Bezos’ 2 pizza rule. It really allows for more freedom of thought, and team members are able to have their voices heard. Also, the idea of the intermediate group I found to be very interesting. Having a group of people who are not considered teammates, but act as support resources for the core is something I had not considered. It does make sense though. Organizationally, you allow the lower group to support the senior group, so that the senior group can focus on the tasks at hand. Cutting that intermediate group out of the team saves time that would otherwise be spent in a large group meeting.