SECRET OF SUCCESS: ADDED PERSONBYTE THROUGH TEAMWORK

Information is not the things that make it, but rather the pattern in which things are arranged.

The accident altered the form of my car into something unusable. Each and every part that made it was still there along the side of the road. However, the pattern in which it was arranged has completely changed. The windshield was no more attached to the metal body but rather scattered around. The tyres were flat and the air molecules that once filled it were free and happily dancing in their favourite Brownian motion along with their friends in the space around. This change in information has turned lakhs of my hard-earned Indian rupees into nothing. Which means, now I have to spend that money to get my car back to its original pattern of information. While the crash left me poorer in cash, it gave me a bit of wisdom. Information is not the things that make it, but rather the pattern in which things are arranged. We human beings are amazingly efficient in handling information. While the material that made my car had some value, the real value was in the information that shaped it. It took thousands of years of learning, hundreds of failures, litres of sweat to master every part that now makes my car. We pass information down the generation and develop on it. It is that ability of our species to stand on the shoulders of our ancestors that make us taller than any other.

It is that ability of our species to stand on the shoulders of our ancestors that make us taller than any other.

The knowledge that other animals gain in their life dies with them, well mostly. The genes transfer information while replicating, some information is passed on as epigenetic memory, but that is all. The invention of language, however, rapidly turned us from apes to … well… intelligent apes. Now we can transfer knowledge not only through memories but also through a medium that is completely outside our physical body. The cave paintings dating back to tens of thousand years were the first example of the external hard disk to transfer information not only between persons but also generations. Since then information has grown in both quantity and complexity. My broken car was much more complex and sophisticated than a primitive cart, and even more so than simply walking from Africa to India. How far can we stretch this complexity? Where is the limit? How much information can our brains store?

With help of stories, e.g. religion, nationality, etc., we have been able to bind a large group of people together, defying our cognitive limit.

César Hidalgo, a physicist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, coined the term “personbyte” to describe the amount of knowhow one person can reasonably have. The human brain has a cognitive limit of remembering around 150 people closely. In other words, it is the maximum number of persons you can maintain a stable social relationship with. You know each and everyone of them and can relate to them. This is the number that limited the tribal groups and hunters and gatherers. It is known as the Dunbar’s Limit. However, our social profiles now have thousands of friends, or so we like to call them. With help of stories, e.g. religion, nationality, etc., we have been able to bind a large group of people together, defying our cognitive limit. As a species, we have this uncanny ability to break all the limits set by nature, sometimes at a cost to us and nature itself.

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As we progress as a civilisation and discover more and more stuff, it becomes more difficult to find new ones. In our oil industry, it is getting harder to find new fields as the easy ones have already been discovered. We have already plucked the low hanging fruits of information. So, how are we finding new fields? By inventing new technologies, like high-resolution 3D seismic, or by specialisation. The need for specialisation lies in the fact that it takes a lot more time and effort now to master the existing information than ever before. To create something new we need to first master the ones already crafted by our previous generations. In other words, it is becoming more and more difficult to climb up and stand on the shoulders of our ancestors. It is only going to get more complicated with time. One personbyte per person is not enough. How do we break this limit set by nature? TEAMWORK!

The society acts as a team, and a team is made of talent/skills and teamwork/collaboration. In our work environment talent or IQ is essential and hence we go to the best institutes to recruit graduate trainees. However, there is one thing that is more important than talent, and that is teamwork. Teamwork depends on Social Quotient (SQ). The idea was first discussed by American psychologist Edward Thorndike in 1920. Like IQ and EQ, this ability to get along with others and win their support and cooperation is measured in SQ. Geologists can never get a well drilled alone. A lot of cross-discipline collaboration and interpersonal communication skills are required to achieve success. Hence a person having lesser talent but extremely good at collaboration is preferred over a highly talented individual who is reluctant to work as a team.

A team is more than the sum of the individuals who make it.

A 2018 research on employees of the recently merged advisory firm has shown that even a single apple can spoil the entire branch. Bad habits are contagious, especially among similar people. The study found out that the employees were 37 per cent more likely to commit misconduct if they work with someone with a history of misconduct, and twice as likely if the co-worker was of the same background or ethnicity. Bad behaviour does not necessarily mean an unethical act, it could simply be consistent rude behaviour, lack of motivation, negative gossips etc. Teamwork on the other hand increases the personbyte of a group. According to Tim Harford, “Teamwork gives us added personbyte“. A team is more than the sum of the individuals who make it. Together we can possess more knowledge. With the help of technology, like AI, Machine learning, cloud computing, IoT, AoT, Big Data, Predictive Analysis, etc., a diverse team can break this cognitive limit too and keep producing more and more sophisticated products.

To summarise, be it a company, or country, or humanity as a whole, we need to ensure that we build a team of diverse mindset and background and find a way to increase our collective knowledge. The sky is not the limit, only if you are a team.