????我和斯坦福大學(Stanford University)的同事哈吉?拉奧花了7年時間研究企業(yè)如何百尺竿頭更進一步。我們發(fā)現，這個過程主要是通過團隊帶動的。具體來說就是以正確的方式和恰當的速度推動新團隊成長，同時把公司上下多個團隊的努力編織在一起。

????即使對微小的年輕公司而言，這種動態(tài)過程也是至關重要的。創(chuàng)建于2010年的“新聞聚合器”應用脈沖新聞(Pulse News)就是一個絕佳范例。這家公司的員工只是增加到區(qū)區(qū)8個人之后，績效問題就開始接連爆發(fā)。有鑒于此，創(chuàng)始人阿克沙伊?科塔里和安基特?古普塔把公司員工分裂成3個小團隊。幾乎就在同時，這家年輕公司開始以更快的速度生產出性能更好的軟件。此外，公司的人際關系也變得更加和諧，員工們時常攜手解決彼此的問題。

????當脈沖新聞的員工擴張到12人（分為4個團隊，都在同一個房間工作）時，每支團隊依然通過公告板向其他員工實時傳達各自的工作進展。每天下午，每支團隊都會做一個簡短的發(fā)言，向公司上下匯報他們正在從事的工作，以及他們需要在哪些方面獲得指導和幫助。等到員工增長到25人，用戶人數突破3,000萬大關的時候，脈沖新聞繼續(xù)依靠小團隊的力量。2013年，這家公司被社交網絡巨頭LinkedIn收購，收購價高達9,000萬美元。

????無論你正在嘔心瀝血經營一家像脈沖新聞這樣的初創(chuàng)公司，正在開設多個新店面，還是正在一家現存的組織內推行全新的實踐方式，你都可以借助具有以下五大特征的有效團隊來推動企業(yè)茁壯成長或擴展某個項目的受眾群體。

????構建小規(guī)模團隊

????當團隊工作需要進行大量的信息交流和協調時，這一點尤為重要。對于大多數任務而言，4或5人是最優(yōu)人數，一旦超過10或12人，團隊表現和人際關系確實會受到影響。許多經過精心設計的研究表明，發(fā)生這種狀況的原因在于認知超載。比起3、4個人的團隊，協調10位隊友的活動、同時還要跟蹤他們古怪的行為和情緒變化，這個難度要大得多。為什么海豹突擊隊(Navy Seals)使用4人戰(zhàn)斗小組，麥肯錫公司(McKinsey)的項目小組通常由4名咨詢師組成？這就是原因所在。二戰(zhàn)期間，美國海軍陸戰(zhàn)隊最初采用12人戰(zhàn)斗分隊，但很快就恢復為4人小組。這是因為，士兵們突然變得萎靡不振，戰(zhàn)斗力隨之大幅下降。一項由哈佛大學商學院( Harvard University Business School)教授梅麗莎?瓦倫丁和艾米?埃德蒙森主持的研究發(fā)現，當一家大型醫(yī)院的急診科把醫(yī)生和護士分為4個不同的6人診斷團隊（而不是嘗試著作為一個大組進行運營）之后，醫(yī)護人員的溝通質量和信任程度大幅改善，就連病人等待就診的平均時間也從8個小時驟降至5個小時。

????使用層級結構擊潰糟糕的官僚主義

????隨著組織的發(fā)展，除了分割大團隊之外，為了把各支團隊的工作編織在一起，你還需要添加一些層級和流程。就以脈沖新聞為例。在他們分成4支團隊（每支團隊都有一個領導者）之后，他們使用公告板和午后簡報來促進4支團隊之間的溝通和協調。層次結構，流程和管理者有時候被人們看成是不好的字眼。然而，隨著組織變得越來越大，越來越復雜，只要小劑量使用并輔以適當的防范，它們都是必要的措施。Twitter公司首席工程師克里斯?弗萊強調指出，如果各種規(guī)則、角色和流程讓人們“覺得他們好像是在淤泥中行走”，明智的領導者會使用層級結構來修復官僚主義。

????My Stanford University colleague, Huggy Rao, spent seven years studying how organizations scale up excellence. We discovered that the process happens largely through teams -- by growing new teams at the right rate in the right way and weaving together the efforts of multiple teams across the company.

????Such dynamics are crucial to even tiny young companies. For example, Pulse News, maker of a "news aggregator" app, was started in 2010. Performance problems began to flare up after the company grew to just eight people. So founders Akshay Kothari and Ankit Gupta split Pulse into three small teams. Almost immediately, the young company started producing better software and doing it faster -- and people were getting along better and helping each other solve problems.

????When the company expanded to 12 people (working in four teams, all in the same room), each team maintained a bulletin board that communicated their current work to everyone at Pulse. Every afternoon, each team gave a short talk to the company about what they were working on and where they needed advice and help. Pulse continued to rely on small teams as it grew to 25 employees and 30 million users; the company was bought by LinkedIn (LNKD) for $90 million in 2013.

????Whether you are growing a startup like Pulse, opening multiple new locations, or spreading new practices across an existing organization, we identified five hallmarks of effective teams that will help you sustain excellence as you grow an organization or expand a program's reach.

????Keep teams small

????This is especially important when teams do work that requires intensive information exchange and coordination. For most tasks, four or five is optimal, and once teams get larger than 10 or 12, performance and interpersonal relationships really suffer. Many careful studies show that this happens because of cognitive overload. It is far more difficult to coordinate your activities and to keep track of the quirks and moods of 10 teammates than three or four. That is why, for example, the Navy Seals use four-person combat teams and McKinsey engagement teams usually have four consultants. In World War II, the U.S. Marines used 12-person combat teams at first, but quickly reverted to four-person teams because so many performance and morale problems reared their ugly heads. And a Harvard University Business School study by Melissa Valentine and Amy Edmondson found that when the emergency department of a large hospital assigned doctors and nurses to four different six-person pods (rather than trying to function as one big group), not only did communication and trust improve dramatically, waiting time for the average patient dropped from eight hours to five hours.

????Use hierarchy to defeat bad bureaucracy

????As organizations grow, in addition to dividing large teams, you will need to add a few more layers and a bit more process to weave together what happens across teams. Look at Pulse. After they divided into four teams (each with a leader) they used the bulletin boards and brief afternoon reports to foster communication and coordination across the four teams. Hierarchy, process, and manager are sometimes treated as dirty words. Yet as organizations get larger and more complex, these are necessary measures so long as they are used in small doses and with proper precautions. Chris Fry, who leads engineering at Twitter (TWTR), emphasizes that when rules, roles, and processes cause people "to feel as if they are walking in muck," wise leaders use the hierarchy to repair the bureaucracy.