Why Do We Work In The Grid?

In 1882, the French Frenchman made a "pull rope" experiment, and found that team performance was nearly 1/4 worse than that of individual action. This phenomenon is known as the "Lin Ge man effect".

In modern workplace, this effect is particularly obvious if the contribution of individuals in the team can not be measured.

Qualified job seekers must be a good team member who can seamlessly integrate into the company's dynamic team.

This is a saying that we are all familiar with. Nowadays, almost all job advertisements have such a saying.

But this blind worship of teams is actually wrong. There is no conclusive evidence that teamwork is particularly productive.

In fact, the result may be the opposite: it will cause employees to lose motivation and reduce executive power.

This is not a fresh discovery.

In 1882, French engineer Maximilian Lingerman studied the efficiency of horses, cows, machines and people. He found that men in the team did not perform as well as they did when they were alone.

Lin GMAN gave 7 men to pull a rope separately, and then formed a team to pull the rope.

When they act alone, they can pull up 85 kilograms of weight, and when they form a team, each of them pulls only 65 kilograms.

That is to say, in teamwork, their performance is nearly 1/4.

This phenomenon is known as the "Lin Ge man effect". However, for a long time, it has not been clear whether the team members are less motivated than others, or is it a coordination problem?

For example, to effectively pull a rope in the form of a team, everyone should find the most appropriate position to make full use of.

If the best position is not found, the force between the team members will actually cancel each other.

Team work in offices may also have the same problem.

If any task is not clear in a project, the process of cooperation may be rather difficult.

In order to further explore the causes of performance deterioration, Harry Ingham, a social psychologist in the United States, repeated the rope test in 1974, but made some minor adjustments.

This time, the participants were blindfolded when they pulled the rope. They were asked to pull the rope two times. The researchers told them to pull the rope individually, once.

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But in fact, the two time is action alone.

The experiment solved the problem of coordination, and the result of the experiment is exactly the same as that of a century ago.

When participants think they are in a team, their efforts become smaller.

This proves that when people work in teams, their efforts are less than when they work alone, especially when they are not clearly identified in the team.

The so-called team work will eventually evolve into "good, other people will do". This is a real phenomenon. Sociologists even create a term "social inertia" for this phenomenon.

"Social inertia is common in everyday work."

Christian Saizvan, general manager of Setzwein IT Management, said the company specializes in projects and temporary management, "in a more difficult way."

The performance of individuals is often better.

This is especially serious when the task of everyone in the team is totally unclear or unclear.

"Only when the results of people gain special value for him, will people work harder."

Saizvan said.

With solid leadership, we can make good use of this knowledge.

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To form an efficient team, managers should let team members know what their respective responsibilities are in the whole project.

The individual contributions should be affirmed, especially when they are not particularly creative, or their tasks are not particularly difficult, Sai Wan Wan explains.

"Teamwork is an important part of the modern workplace."

Goetz Miller, a management consultancy Geemco, said, "but it is also important that individual efforts in teams are equally important."

Leadership must ensure that individual contributions are visible.

Miller said: "although there is no need to create unnecessary competition consciousness among team members, we should pay special attention to avoiding success and contribution to the wrong people."

Experts suggest that team leaders should set clear personal goals for members of the team.

"What needs to be emphasized again is that you can't create a competitive atmosphere in your team, so that members can obstruct each other."

Miller said.

In a cross domain team, there is only one expert in a specific field. Such a team is particularly good because it is easy to measure everyone's contribution.

In many companies, however, praising personal efforts is a taboo because it is important for team success.

Employees who work in such companies have their own choice: they can take time, because they know that there is great pressure not to do too many things, let alone how boring the work is, or they can stick to work in a team that each person's work results can be measured in a certain way.

But it is clear that before the creation of another team, bosses should think about the problem in depth and in the long run.