Over a century ago, the agricultural engineer Max Ringelmann had people pull on a rope, first alone and then in groups. Each person pulled a little less as the group grew.
Psychologists came to call it social loafing. In a 2010 laboratory study of 140 students in 32 teams, larger teams loafed more. Among the mechanisms the authors tested were diffusion of responsibility, where everyone assumes someone else will step in, and a tendency to blame somebody else.
I always take this kind of research with a pinch of salt. Students brainstorming in a lab are definitely not your finance, IT, HR or engineering department. However, it does match what many managers recognise and talk to me about. Add a seventh person to a six-person team and the meetings grow faster than the output.
Smaller teams help. So does making ownership explicit: one name against each piece of work, and progress that everyone can see.
The research describes people doing too little. In my work, I mostly meet people doing too much. They are so overwhelmed by doing the same thing day in, day out, that another person with a pulse gives them the chance to breathe. But if the new person simply absorbs the workload, they absorb the habits behind it too, and the chance for change and a reduction in social loafing is lost.
Before you add another person to the rope, give the team a month to tell you what they would change instead. Another pair of hands would help. A day without pulling the same rope, in the same way, might help even more.
