How many members does the right team need

Do you know Dunbar’s number?

With Stefano Susani in #ilteamgiusto we find ourselves exploring the very interesting theme of 📌 “Designing and forming a team”.

One of the most critical and much debated aspects is the size of the team itself. In principle, it is logical to assume that the sizing of the team must be done considering elements such as the complexity of the tasks to be performed and the resources available, time and skills for example.

However, just as intuitively, we know that as the size of the team grows, so does the complexity of coordination and the dispersion of decision-making capacity and responsibilities.

We want to provide an interesting starting point for tackling this complex choice in a vital phase for the birth of our #rightteam

In fact, the British anthropologist 📌 Robin #dunbar comes to our aid, who investigated the theme of social relations also from a quantitative point of view, summarizing the famous #dunbarnumber : he realized that the maximum number of people with whom we can maintain an emotionally relevant social relationship is 📌150. It seems there is a limit of our brain in managing multiple relationships in a relevant way.

Dunbar went so far as to detail the most commonly observed subsets of 150, namely 50, 15 and 5, to represent progressively more intense and important circles of interactions. In other words, 5 are the relationships that can be managed with the maximum level of intensity, to then rise to a maximum of 15 for the next level and so on up to 150.

💡 This concept, which is obviously a schematization, can in any case become a practical reference for sizing a business unit, for example by limiting it to 150 people, as well as a team that requires high emotional interaction (to achieve a peak performance in a very short time) perhaps consisting of only 15 members.

Let us know, if you want, in the comments your experiences, observations, curiosities. In #ilteamgiusto you will find further insights and case studies