---
title: "The Smartest People Together, Yet They Ruined the Team!"
description: "Margaret Heffernan, a renowned businesswoman and author who has served as CEO of five companies in the US and UK, shares insights from her TED talk with over 2 million views. She argues that a great team is not composed of a group of high-IQ individuals, but quite the opposite. The talk, about 15 minutes long, uses the story of 'super chickens' to illustrate how excessive competition can be detrimental, and emphasizes the importance of social cohesion, empathy, and mutual support in successful teams."
author: "New Distribution"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
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published: "2016-12-20"
language: "en"
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original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/mP6DOg5ctyR4iDCNbr7m7Q"
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---

# The Smartest People Together, Yet They Ruined the Team!

> Margaret Heffernan, a renowned businesswoman and author who has served as CEO of five companies in the US and UK, shares insights from her TED talk with over 2 million views. She argues that a great team is not composed of a group of high-IQ individuals, but quite the opposite. The talk, about 15 minutes long, uses the story of 'super chickens' to illustrate how excessive competition can be detrimental, and emphasizes the importance of social cohesion, empathy, and mutual support in successful teams.

Margaret Heffernan is a renowned businesswoman and author, having served as CEO of five companies in the US and UK, and previously worked as a producer at the BBC for 13 years. This article is a compilation of her TED talk, which has been viewed over 2 million times. She believes that an excellent team is not made up of a group of highly intelligent individuals, but quite the opposite.

**Video is about 15 minutes long. If inconvenient to watch,**
**you can scroll down to read the highlights.**
▼
**First**, let me tell you a story about chickens.
At Purdue University, a biologist named William Muir studied egg production in chickens. We all know that calculating chicken productivity is simple—just count the eggs.
But what he wanted to know was how to increase egg production.
So the doctor designed an ingenious experiment. He divided the chickens into two groups:
One group was average layers; the other was highly productive, which we might call "super chickens."
After six generations of breeding, what did he find?
The first group, the "average chickens," performed quite well. They were all sturdy, well-feathered, and their egg production increased dramatically.
What about the second group, the "super chickens"?
—Only three remained; the rest were dead.
It turned out that **those three chickens had pecked the others to death. Only by suppressing their companions could these highly productive chickens achieve success.**
Now, when I tell this story around the world, people almost immediately see the implications and come to me saying:
**"Our company is just like that super chicken group!" or "That's my life!"**
Indeed, we've been told all our lives that to succeed, you must constantly compete—get into good schools, find good jobs, be above others—but I never found these words inspiring.
For years, we've been running most organizations and companies on the "super chicken" model.
Many people think success comes from selecting top talent, just putting the smartest people together and giving them all the resources and authority they need.
But the result is exactly like the chicken experiment: **people become extremely aggressive, organizations become dysfunctional, and resources are wasted.**
So we urgently need another way, such as true teamwork.
What is a true team?
Results show that high-performing teams are not those with one or two exceptionally intelligent members, nor those with the highest average IQ.
Instead, successful teams share three characteristics:
First, they have high social sensitivity and empathy.
Second, successful teams give equal time to everyone, so no one dominates and no one can free-ride.
Third, successful teams have more female members.
Does this mean women have more empathy? We don't know, but importantly, this experiment confirmed our theory: **the key to excellent team performance lies in the relationships between members.**
In real life, this means interaction between people is crucial.
Because of high compatibility and responsiveness among members, their ideas continuously flow and grow. People aren't stuck on a single idea or waste energy on dead ends.
For example:
Arup, one of the world's best engineering firms, was the builder for the equestrian center at the Beijing Olympics. During the Olympics, the team was responsible for 2,500 high-quality thoroughbred horses that had just arrived by long-haul flights. They were severely jet-lagged and in poor condition.
But the bigger problem engineers faced was: how much horse manure to handle? That wasn't taught in engineering school.
Originally, Arup would have spent months talking to veterinarians, doing research, and adjusting spreadsheets, but instead they chose another approach: asking for help.
The team found someone who had designed a New York racetrack, and solved the problem in less than a day. What made Arup successful was this culture of mutual assistance.
Mutual assistance sounds unglamorous, but it's crucial in successful teams, often outweighing individual intelligence. It means: **I don't need to know everything, but I need to work among people who are willing to seek and give help.**
Although it sounds simple, so simple that we think mutual assistance happens naturally, it doesn't.
When I was running my first software company, we fell into a rut: nothing but friction.
Eventually, I realized that the smart, creative people on my team didn't know each other. They were so focused on their own work that they didn't even know who sat next to them.
So I insisted everyone stop working and spend time getting to know each other. Only then did we make breakthrough progress.
Today, many companies I've visited don't allow employees to keep coffee cups at their desks, because they want people to walk to the coffee machine and interact. In Switzerland, there's even a term for this: "fika," meaning a coffee break that's not just for rest but for social interaction.
And Idexx in Maine is even crazier: they built a garden on their campus so that people from all departments can come together to do farm work and understand the whole company's operations.
But are these people really crazy?
Quite the opposite. When things go wrong, people need social support and need to know who to turn to for help.
**Companies don't create ideas; only people do.**
What truly motivates people is **the connections, loyalty, and trust built between them. Remember, it's the mortar that matters, not just the bricks.**
Alex Pentland, known as the "father of wearable devices," once advised a company to synchronize all employees' coffee breaks so everyone could interact with others. As a result, the company's profits increased by $15 million, and even better, employee satisfaction rose by 10%.
No idea is born perfect; it's like a newborn baby—messy, confused, but full of potential. Only with generous help from others, belief, and overcoming challenges can your idea reach its full potential.
In a team, **conflict is inevitable, and frankness is the best way to resolve it.**
But in reality, we rarely nurture wisdom and creativity this way; instead, we tend to talk about star employees.
I've wondered: if we started cultivating talent this way, would we no longer have star employees?
But when I watched auditions at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, I was truly surprised. The examining professors didn't focus on individual performance but on the interaction between students—because drama is created through interaction.
Similarly, music producers who have made many hit albums told me: "Indeed, we have many music stars, but most of them don't stay famous for long. Only those who are highly collaborative maintain lasting fame."
Besides actors and singers, many companies are the same—I've visited many companies known for uniqueness and creativity, and I rarely saw star employees, because these companies don't need "super chickens." Everyone is important.
**Once you truly understand the importance of interaction between people, many problems will be solved.**
The management style that encourages talent competition is outdated. Today, cooperation and mutual assistance have replaced competition.
For decades, we tried to motivate people with money, but a large body of research shows that money undermines social connections. So now we should let people motivate each other, not be controlled by money.
Similarly, we used to think leaders should be saviors who solve complex problems alone, but now we should redefine "leadership." In my view, **leadership is the ability to create an environment where everyone can contribute their ideas.**
In environmental history, there's a famous agreement called the Montreal Protocol, which called for a global phase-out of chlorofluorocarbons that deplete the ozone layer.
Despite good intentions, people faced a challenge: how to find substitutes?
A team took on this challenge but proposed three key principles:
First, there should be no star players; we need everyone because everyone has unique insights.
Second, we follow only one standard: not the best, but better.
Third, the boss doesn't interfere, only ensures the team functions properly and upholds these principles.
In the end, it worked. This team far surpassed other companies and successfully handled this thorny issue threatening human survival. To date, the Montreal Protocol is the most successful international environmental agreement.
But besides the ozone hole, there are many urgent issues ahead.
If we only rely on one or two superhumans, we certainly won't solve problems. Instead, we need everyone.
Whether running a company or protecting the planet, only by recognizing everyone's value can we unleash greater energy, imagination, and motivation to create a new world.

**Source: Book List (ID: BookSelection)**
-END-
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