Memories while working with outstanding people
Unleashing Creativity and Cohesion in High-Impact Teams
It has long been know that the period of a simple pendulum,
where L is the length of the pendulum and g is the gravitational constant.
One of the main reasons for the mechanical efficiency and low energy demand, since its governed by gravity, are the small corrections that it requires to maintain its swing.
Applied at resonance, this perturbation energy is maximized, requiring minimal input to maintain the pendulum’s amplitude:
I’ve been in the software industry for some time and I’ve worked with teams with different dynamics. If I had to chose a word to express the feeling I have when working with such teams it would be resonance.
Like in the pendulum example, communication, coordination, requests for help were effortful. Small corrections were sufficient to get things back in track.
That doesn’t mean problems did not exist or that work was not hard but the momentum created within the team was unstoppable. Usually quiet people went the extra mile to help the team. Nobody was afraid to communicate problems and everyone worked together to try to workaround them.
It was not about the company - there were other teams in which this kind of resonance just did not happen. And its not about the person - the same person in another company did not have other option than go through the motions like everybody else.
All I know is that I’ve seen it and felt this phenomenon - the results were there despite the corporate culture that surrounded us.
Here are some things that I noticed in those teams:
People were actually happy to be in the meetings
Everyone was allowed to speak their mind - there’s no mandatory “only work talk here”
People often cracked some jokes when under pressure
Everyone jumped in to help solve a problem - there’s was no blame culture
Mission and client needs oriented, no selfish agendas playing behind the scenes
Some people were more productive than others but everyone was respected, no playing favorites
Everyone was important - no one was excluded
I’m sure it’s possible to be productive in other types of teams - but most people spend a large part of their lives at work, and working in a boring or stressful team is not what most people think of living a fulfilling life.
Maybe the classic pendulum model is not the best example since this is a resonance phenomenon in a classic linear system.
Maybe resonant teams follow more a chaotic resonant model with order emerging from chaos, but not a destructive chaos, more like a dynamic and creative chaos, where energy flows unpredictably but constructively, allowing for spontaneous innovation and adaptive problem-solving.