For too long, apparently, team ‘chemistry’ has been synonymous with alchemy. We’ve all approached teamwork – to paraphrase McKinsey – as an art, when it is really a science.
Myths abound, they say, especially when it comes to the question of… Why Some Teams Succeed and Others Fail.
But a researcher asked this question long ago – and used the scientific method to seek answers, for the benefit of teams, and industry at large.
That someone was our founder, Dr Meredith Belbin. He spent almost a decade researching teams in the 1970s.
He and his team formulated hypotheses and then tested them out with real teams in real time.
He did this by setting up business simulations and making meticulous, coded observations of each team every thirty seconds as they played. It was the original pen-and-paper ‘big data’.
Dr Belbin published his findings in his groundbreaking book, Management Teams: Why They Succeed or Fail, which introduced Belbin Team Role theory to the world.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll examine McKinsey’s findings in the light of Dr Belbin’s work.