Working on Multiple Teams at the Same Time: Positive or Negative?

Wharton Professor Martine Haas (a grad school classmate of mine) and Duke Professor Jonathan Cummings have published a new study about teams.  They collected original data within a multinational corporation about how people allocate their time among multiple teams on which they are serving.  According to Knowledge at Wharton, here is what they found:

The professors also discovered that highly skilled people were more likely to be involved in multiple teams, and that having members who were involved with multiple teams was associated with good team performance. A person with that kind of knowledge tends to be highly sought after, so his or her attention will likely be divided among many teams. And that's not necessarily a bad thing, says Haas. Teams composed of these valuable members also performed well. "That was a surprising result," she notes. "It's not necessarily causal, but it suggests if you take people who are assigned to several other teams already and bring them onto a new team, that team can benefit from their networks, knowledge and access to resources, even if they can't devote a lot of attention to the team. The exception is if the team members who are involved in lots of other projects are also very geographically dispersed -- in this case, the fact that they cannot devote much attention to the team makes the performance advantage disappear."

I find these results compelling, and they make sense intuitively.  I do wonder about one thing though.  Does it matter what TYPE OF WORK the teams are doing, or THE TIME CONSTRAINTS under which they may be operating?  Perhaps some types of work require more focused attention, while others benefit from people being able to access a wider network through service on multiple teams.  Similarly, perhaps working under a tight deadline could make it less attractive to serve on many teams simultaneously. 

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What Does a Business Apology Mean in Different Cultures?

Yesterday, I taught my case on BP and the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill here in Tokyo.   We had a very interesting discussion regarding BP's actions both before the accident and in the immediate aftermath.  Some Japanese executives felt that BP CEO Tony Hayward should have put forth a clearer, more direct apology immediately. Others were not so sure, pointing out that the US is a highly litigious society.

I brought up a study by Insead's William Maddux which he conducted along with Tetsushi Okumura of Japan's Nagoya City University as well as USC's Peter Kim and Northwestern's Jeanne Brett.  They have studied the meaning and function of apologies across cultures.   They found a difference between what they call "individual-agency cultures" such as the US and "collective" cultures such as Japan.  In the US, an apology means that one is taking the blame for a failure.  On the other hand, in Japan, apologies are "general expressions of remorse rather than a means to assign culpability."   Perhaps because of this difference in meaning, they found that the Japanese tend to apologize more often, even if they were not at fault for particular actions.  The findings definitely resonated with the Japanese executives with whom I discussed the BP case yesterday.   They acknowledged that apologies do take on a different meaning in their country.  As executives work and do business in different countries, they would be well-served to understand these key differences. 

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Will Non-Experts Fuel Future Disruptive Innovation?

Highly successful entrepreneur and philanthropist Naveen Jain has published an interesting essay on the Forbes website.  Jain argues that non-experts will fuel much of the future disruptive innovations.  He challenges Gladwell's emphasis on experts in his book, Outliers.  Jain explains that the experts won't necessarily be the ones to solve some of the world's most challenging problems. 

Jain offers two main reasons.  First, he explains that experts can often be quite myopic.   Second, Jain argues that information is widely available these days, not restricted to a few experts.   Moreover, technology is moving so quickly that expertise seems to become outdated much sooner than in the past.  Here is an excerpt that describes his thinking:

The human brain, or more specifically the neo-cortex, is designed to recognize patterns and draw conclusions from them. Experts are able to identify such patterns related to a specific problem relevant to their area of knowledge. But because non-experts lack that base of knowledge, they are forced to rely more on their brain’s ability for abstraction, rather than specificity. This abstraction—the ability to take away or remove characteristics from something in order to reduce it to a set of essential characteristics—is what presents an opportunity for creative solutions.

Do you agree with his arguments? 

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Elevator Groupthink

Thank you to Maria Popova for discovering this old video and posting it on her blog, Brain Pickings.  It's called "Elevator Groupthink." 

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Supermarkets Losing Market Share

The Wall Street Journal reported that supermarkets are losing market share in the United States.  Traditional supermarkets -  such as Jewel, Stop & Shop, or Albertson's - accounted for nearly 2/3 of all grocery sales in the nation a decade ago.  Today, those supermarkets generate only 51% of all grocery sales.  Where have the grocery shoppers gone?   Mass merchandisers (Target and Wal-Mart), Pharmacies (CVS, Walgreen's), and warehouse clubs (BJ's, Costco, and Sam's Club) have all taken a bite out of that pie.   Target, for instance, recognized that food may not be very profitable, but it generates traffic.  When people come to the store more often, they buy other higher margin items.   Traditional supermarkets are also feeling their profits squeezed because many are "caught in the middle" between premium players like Whole Foods and hard discounters such as Aldi or Dollar General. 

Interestingly, I read another article in the Wall Street Journal recently about Target collaborating with Neiman Marcus on some special designer collections to be sold in both chains.  It is a unique collaboration.  Target, of course, is pursuing this type of strategy because they continue to try to seek unique items for their stores.  They don't want to simply be selling the same items that you can find at Kohl's, Wal-Mart, etc.   That makes a ton of sense.  However, that triggered a thought in my mind... why don't more supermarkets pursue such strategies?  Why aren't more traditional supermarkets trying to create unique product lines that can't be found elsewhere.  A few players have done this successfully (think Trader Joe's and Whole Foods).  However, the mainstream supermarkets don't do this much at all.   They ought to be doing that, because otherwise all they are doing is competing on price.  The struggles recently at firms such as Supervalu show that price competition can be deadly. 

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Fewer Startups in Japan: Lessons for all Nations

I'm here teaching in Tokyo for a week, as I have each July for the past decade.   Therefore, I thought it would be appropriate to offer a reflection related to Japanese business.  Adam Acar, Associate Professor of Communication at Kobe City University of Foreign Studies in Japan, published an interesting op-ed today in The Japan Times.  The article was titled, "Why Japan Hosts Fewer Startups."  He cites the fact that a study by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor found that Japan had the lowest entrepreneurship activity of 37 countries studied.   Professor Acar offers several possible explanations for the low rate of startup activity in Japan:

1.  Japan is a collective society, with less emphasis on individual self-achievement.

2.  Japan is a "high power distance" society, meaning that it's tough for young entrepreneurs to deal directly with senior executives at various organizations that might provide financing, supply key inputs for their products, etc.    

3.   Many Japanese value job security a great deal, perhaps even more so than securing the highest compensation possible.  

4.  Many Japanese worry about disappointing others and worry that a failed startup would harm many peers and colleagues. 

5.  Japan's low rate of social network usage relative to many Western nations means that potential entrepreneurs have lower social capital to draw upon as they seek customers, partners, investors, suppliers, employees, and the like. 

One may or may not agree with each of these explanations, or characterizations of Japanese society.  However, I do think all countries and regions should consider these hypotheses as they think about how to stimulate entrepreneurial activity.  

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Curing CEO Disease

The Wall Street Journal's Joann Lublin wrote a terrific column this week about "CEO disease."   Specifically, she writes about how some executives become isolated, overconfident, and stubborn when they become CEOs.  They ignore suggestions and recommendations, and they let their ego get in the way of making sound business decisions.  Her column offers a few suggestions for curing CEO disease:

1.  Surround yourself with highly capable people.

2.  Encourage dissent and discourage people from behaving as yes-men.

3.  Regularly admit and fix your mistakes.

4.  Treat every employee with respect.

5.  Find an objective sounding board outside the office.

I think it's a terrific list.  Moreover, I think it applies to managers at all levels of an organization, not just at the CEO position.   Front-line managers should also cultivate an objective sounding board, encourage dissent, and surround themselves with talented subordinates.   In fact, if people engage in these practices early in their managerial career, they may be less likely to catch CEO disease if and when they rise to the top.

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