Now, some characteristics of firms managed via the commitment style are predictable, or at least unsurprising, and one can readily see how they’d support outperformance. Among them are: A high sense of trust internally and between the firm and its customers; generous investments in training (implying confidence by the firm that people will make the investment pay off by sticking around); high and spontaneous (not mandated or managed) levels of teamwork; and last but perhaps most importantly, what students of the dynamics of teams and industrial psychology call “psychological safety”—confidence that one’s ideas and perspectives will not be dismissed out of hand and that one’s status is not in jeopardy if the firm chooses to go in a different direction than you suggested or advocated.
“Psychological safety” is worthy of extended discussion on its own, but suffice to say nothing—nothing—seems to make real, consistent difference to team performance other than psychological safety. This is a strong claim, but Google, among other firms (and Google is into deep data like no one’s business) have discovered it on their own.
Team members can be diverse or homogeneous, fast friends outside the office or relative strangers, all introverts or all extroverts or a mix, all based in the same department or random departments, (you name it), and there’s no detectable correlation with results. Psychological safety seems to drive it all.
Still, I can hear some of you muttering that this touchy-feely stuff is all quite swell, but when the rubber meets the road what you really need are some high-wattage rock stars to take prisoners and get stuff done.
Baron and Hassan would beg to differ, and from a counterintuitive vantage point. I suspect they agree in their heart of hearts that talent carries the day, but how you locate, cultivate, and retain that talent is really the challenge, so we give them the last word:
Good employees are always the hardest asset to find. When everyone wants to stick around, you’ve got a pretty strong advantage.
An interesting study with connections to the last post on “depth”, and to an ASE theme: stewardship as a business virtue. Certainly the aspiration to “commitment” conflicts in no way with the recruiting and supporting excellence. Quite the contrary. But it distinguishes a preference for and commitment to members who are excellent from an obsession with what is or can easily become celebrity.