The dangers of a strongly connected team
It is possible (and common) for teams to become too well connected with each other. Photo by Antonio Vidal on Unsplash
While the focus on internal connections within a team is important and the foundation of great connections beyond the team, it also comes with a risk attached. It is possible (and common) for teams to become too well connected with each other. It's the classic Goldilocks metaphor. Too little connection within the team and performance suffers because members aren't able to work well together. Too much connection and teams can develop tunnel vision. As team researcher Michael West put it in a 2008 article, this can lead to teams becoming competitive rather than cooperative with other teams. They can become too defensive of their own team's approach and lose the benefits of external perspectives.
A great and succinct way that this is summarised in the book Team of Teams is when they describe world class military teams - Army Rangers, Navy SEALs and so on - who don't collaborate well. It was actually a by-product of strong connections within each of the teams. As one Navy SEAL put it..."the squad is at the point which everyone else sucks. That other squadron sucks, the other SEAL team sucks, and our Army counterparts definitely suck."
If this is the experience within your teams, beware. Without a deliberate approach you can easily create an echo chamber where you tell each other that you are great and doing great things while everyone else is hopeless. The danger is that this feeling is seductive. It's a feeling we are drawn to. In an interconnected world, it's a recipe for ineffectiveness. It is a path that can lead to less collaboration and more of the dreaded "silos"*.
In a further twist, the path out of this for your team is more and stronger connections - not less or weaker. If your team has strong internal connections, that is not something to lose. It's something to celebrate and leverage. Adding and strengthening the right connections beyond the team allows the team to be both internally and externally connected. It keeps enough different perspectives and interests in mind and can minimise the risk of your teams becoming overly insular.
Some questions for you to consider in your teams:
What would too much cohesion look like in your teams?
How would you know if your team was too well connected internally?
Who does your team need stronger connections with?
*while this isn't my favourite term, I do hear it often from those that I work with and seems to capture the experience well. I'd love to hear alternatives!