7+1=7?

I have been doing some reading on teams (I forget the title of the book but will post later)

Anyway the study mentioned talks about pulling a rope. You know, like in tug of war. It states that one person pulling exerts 100 percent, then when there are 2 it is 95 each person and decreases from there. By the time you get to 7, adding the 8th person does nothing due to the decrease of effort by the other members of the team.

The key is that you have to believe that all other members of the team are giving 100 percent then each member of the team will give 100 percent!

That is very difficult, people (In my experience)tend to have periods that they perform extremely high and other times they have some "off" times. That is not to say that they are slacking, rather the perform when needed and take some breaks during down times.

Anyway, it is interesting to think about.

Another way I would like to use the analogy is on meetings. More than 7 people in the room and you might as well have 100. No focus, no direction and limited leadership.