The Successful Hybrid Team

INTRODUCTION

This book's journey started a long time ago, in a classroom in a small town called Dole, in France. When I was in primary school, from age six to age eleven, I was extremely shy and spent a lot of time observing my classmates. As I was watching my friends work on school projects in groups, I noticed how certain groups of children seemed to always complete their class projects on time, while others were always late or needed help from the teacher. At the time, I didn’t really understand why this happened, but I was certainly very interested in these dynamics.

A few years later, as I started university, me and my fellow students often had to work in groups to complete work assignments that were part of our curriculum. Again, I quickly noticed that these research projects were completed earlier and scored better grades when completed by certain groups of students, while other groups of students were often late and scored lower grades. I wasn’t quite sure what ‘magic' made some teams work better than others, but I was fascinated by my observations. The best teams were not just made up of smarter students; in fact, some of the best teams had some students that were only average as individuals. Likewise, some of the worst performing teams had some excellent students in them, so a team's success was not linked to the quality of each individual.

Shortly after university, I started working for a few technology companies in London, and I was curious to see if companies had ...