Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business

by Charles Duhigg

You can take a team of average performers, and if you teach them to interact the right way, they’ll do things no superstar could ever accomplish. And there’s other myths, like sales teams should be run differently than engineering teams, or the best teams need to achieve consensus around everything, or high-performing teams need a high volume of work to stay engaged, or teams need to be physically located together. “But now we can say those aren’t right. The data shows there’s a universality to how good teams succeed. It’s important that everyone on a team feels like they have a voice, but whether they actually get to vote on things or make decisions turns out not to matter much. Neither does the volume of work or physical co-location. What matters is having a voice and social sensitivity.”