The Culture of Small Groups

A number of years ago I was asked to run a workshop for a small UK company that had just been acquired by a much larger American corporation. When I walked into the room, there was a simmering silence, each group sitting apart from the other, arms folded.

Slowly, the tensions started to seep out - they were strange to say the least. “Why do you have so many plants?” an American demanded, angrily. “And a billiards table? When do you people ever work?” “Well,” replied one of the English employees, “at least we don’t sign our emails with our full names. Including the middle initial, that’s really weird!”

Interesting, I thought. Straight away my mind went to the work of Tönnies.

If you remember, Tönnies found that small groups were defined by personal relationships. Big groups in contrast were defined by their anonymity.

So it all made sense - the small English company put things in place to emphasise the human (plants) and to encourage relationship-building (the billiards table). The large American company had to put in place structures to manage the anonymity - in a company large enough to have any number of Michaels or Janes, a last name - and a middle initial - helped to manage the anonymity, by clarifying which one you were communicating with.

The building of personal relationships is the bedrock of small group culture. In a small group, people are constantly working on the group formally and informally. By being together and working together, they develop an awareness of each other’s strengths, weaknesses and boundaries. This allows them to create a safety net that protects against any negative results of risk-taking and innovation: because people are aware of each other’s habits, strengths and limitations (and hopefully of their own as well), they know who to turn to in an emergency, or if a plan fails, just as they know the right person or people to ask for help when creating a new project or working towards a goal.

Even if you work in a large organisation, this will be broken down into small-sized groups - the team. So building an effective small group culture - whether that’s the team or the small organisation - means strengthening those personal relationships.

In the next few posts, I’ll break down what that means specifically, and how to do it.