Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

A simple equation provides some insight into how culture must change with the number of people in the group.

Years ago, the late author and consultant Jerry Weinberg told me of a little equation he used to note the shifts in culture in groups of people. The equation is 3^N. If that doesn’t translate to the browser or whatever you use to see this, the equation is 3 to the power of N.

Start N at 0, go up, and we have 1, 3, 9, 27, 81, 243, 729, 2,187 …

What works when I am working alone probably won’t work when there are 81 persons in the group.

Well, of course not. Who in the world would think otherwise? Well, it appears that many people think otherwise. Companies grow from half-a-dozen persons (3 to the 3rd power) to 6,000 or 10,000 (3 to the 9th or 10th power). Those companies flop and flail like fish out of water. There is no innovation, no progress, nothing resembling a startup. Instead, they are like a government bureaucracy abiding by the Iron Laws of such.

Well, of course not. No one would think they could run a 10,000-person company the way they run a three-person team. Still, when 3 becomes 10 and then 30, things fail badly. And the opposite is true as when 300 becomes 100; things fail badly.

Watch the numbers. Watch what we do everyday, i.e., our culture. I like to do what I like to do. We all like to do what we like. What works for everyone, however, probably isn’t what I like to do. As the number of people in our group changes, what we do should change as well.

This does not apply to general principles: (1) honesty, (2) integrity, (3) trust, etc. This is day-to-day details like the length and number of meetings and how we conduct meetings and how we keep one another informed of what is happening.

Let’s all consider this little equation and the principle. When the size of our group changes, we should change our culture.