Creative Reaction

Signal vs. Noise had a very interesting post last month on the size of groups, giving a number of examples of how things simply break down once the size of a group grows beyond ten or twelve people.

At the heart of the post is an interesting essay by George Walford, which comments on a book, The Corporation Man, by Antony Jay and published in 1975.

Quoting the essay, “A committee works best with about ten members; if it grows much beyond that size the extra people do not take a fully active part. Nearly all team games use a group of about ten on each side. Juries have 12 members… In an army, organization often decides life and death, and under this pressure armies, too, adopt a basic unit of about ten… in fact every long-standing successful army, has built up its larger formations from squads or sections of about this size.”

In this concept, called a “ten-group”, the group is “small enough for the contribution of each member to make a noticeable contribution”.

“This (ten-) group is bound together by a common objective, and that the bond of trust and loyalty thus formed can become an extremely powerful uniting force; that the group needs to decide on (or at least take part in deciding on) its own objective, and to work out for itself how that objective shall be achieved.”

“In order to function it needs mutual dependence, a common objective and a single criterion of success for them all; as the hunting band fed or went hungry together so members of the modern ten-group must receive praise, blame and material rewards collectively for the unit to function at its best.”

There are numerous applications of this; committee size, group size, meeting size, company size, team size… Any others? Leave a comment!