When it comes to team size, bigger isn’t always better.
According to a study from ThinkWise, 52% of executives at small businesses believe their team is achieving its potential, compared to just 35% of those at mid-sized organizations and 39% of large-sized companies. Once a team includes more than 50 people, 86% of executives believe their team is underperforming.
In some cases, you can split your team to shrink its size, but that isn’t always feasible. More often, you need to consider strategies that can give your team the intimacy and efficiency of a small team while utilizing the resources and capabilities that your large team has been afforded.
One powerful solution? Shared communication hubs.
These centralized workspaces promote a culture of openness and accountability. They help larger teams stay connected, ensuring that all members, regardless of the team’s size, remain engaged and aware of shared goals. This visibility can mitigate the disconnect that often plagues bigger teams, bridging the gap between team size and performance. Used well, shared dashboards help you recreate the small team dynamic that works so well.
If you need a little more convincing, here are 6 ways that shared team dashboards help large teams perform like small ones.
1. Recreating the ‘everyone knows everyone’ dynamic
My favorite TV depiction of this dynamic is the setting of the Gilmore Girls series, Stars Hollow. It’s the quintessential small town where everyone knows everyone else’s business, sometimes too well. Sure, the high level of transparency is maddening for some characters, but it also creates a sense of community. The town members know each other’s strengths and quirks, and because of that, they know who to call on for various challenges they face.
It’s the same principle for any small team.
People working with a handful of colleagues get a firsthand view of each other’s strengths, work patterns, and current projects. They know who works best with a difficult client and who currently needs support to meet an approaching deadline. It’s not the kind of interpersonal knowledge you can pick up during a weekly staff meeting. It’s a natural outcome of working closely alongside each other, day in and day out, sharing personal stories and experiences.
Once a team grows, you start to lose that sense of togetherness. You still get to know the co-workers within your immediate circle, but it’s harder to develop a deep knowledge of your entire team.
How shared dashboards help
A shared workspace provides greater visibility into the goings-on of everyone else in the company. When team members can see what projects others are working on or what success they’ve recently achieved, it provides more awareness of what’s happening outside of their own “desk clump.”
There is a line to consider, of course. The best tools include features like opt-in sharing and customizable privacy levels. The goal should be to help people understand how their work connects to each other’s and the company’s overall goals, without steamrolling their boundaries in the process.
You can use a virtual collaborative workspace to catalogue information like project timelines, current workloads, or even personal areas of expertise. Ideally, the result is a deeper knowledge of each other and the feeling of working on a unified team where you all have each other’s backs.
2. Encouraging accountability without micromanaging
Have you ever noticed that people in a group tend to work less compared to when they work alone? It’s a well-known, studied phenomenon that even has a name—social loafing. There are several causes of social loafing, such as feeling like your individual contributions aren’t valued or expecting other team members to overcompensate.
In a small team, the lack of meaningful contributions will be quickly noticed and addressed. But in a large team, low-effort work is often offset by the overachievers, so some people end up coasting while a select few carry the load (IYKYK). High-performers end up feeling burnt-out, underperformers feel invisible, and no one wins in the end.
How shared dashboards help
Dashboards provide a place for employees to share their progress and check in with the rest of the team, creating a natural sense of accountability without constant supervision or uncomfortable conversations. Greater visibility reminds team members that their work affects others.
3. Bridging communication gaps
Communication channels don’t just grow as a team increases in size; they explode.
https://getlighthouse.com/blog/developing-leaders-team-grows-big
Relaying important information can turn into a game of telephone, where the message has to go through nine different people and ends up distorted.
Last week, I finished the book I Hope This Finds You Well. (If you loved Anxious People or Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, I highly recommend it!) In it, thanks to an IT mistake, the main character is accidentally granted access to her entire department’s emails and DMs. Of course, there are a lot of issues with this, but it also results in a major improvement: she is able to see how information is shared across every team and find information silos that are slowing down progress.
In no way am I advocating for snooping, but it was interesting to read—even a fictionalized version—about how someone with all the information was able to get things done.
How shared team dashboards help
You can implement dashboards that act as centralized communication hubs: a single source of truth that everyone has access to. Doing so eliminates the need for information to travel through multiple channels and ensures all of the right context stays with each piece of information.
Here are some pieces of information that might include:
- Standard operating procedures for every department
- Threaded conversations
- Search functionality to access historical information
- Resources libraries with templates and guidelines
Your shared dashboard becomes a sort of company library, where all essential information is housed in an accessible location. I’ll share an example of a time I wish my employer offered such a resource.
When I was an elementary school teacher preparing for maternity leave, trying to find all of the relevant information was impossible. What forms did I need to fill out? How should I find a long-term sub? How did the upcoming holiday break affect my leave? Who should I contact about paying my insurance deductible during FMLA leave?
I wasted a good chunk of time hunting down the right information because, even in a field dominated by women, there was no central location to find what I needed. Information silos don’t just slow you down; they also add unnecessary stress and cognitive load. Centralized workspaces eliminate that friction.
4. Ensuring equal voice and participation
Susan Cain, the author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, writes, “If we assume that quiet and loud people have roughly the same number of good (and bad) ideas, then we should worry if the louder and more forceful people always carry the day. This would mean that an awful lot of bad ideas prevail while good ones get squashed. Yet studies in group dynamics suggest that this is exactly what happens.”
I’d be surprised if you haven’t seen this play out at work. In a team of 5, we notice if one person isn’t sharing their ideas, because we’re not hearing from 20% of the members. In a team of 50, it’s much easier for a voice to be lost in the crowd because one voice makes up just 2% of the team, and the loudest voices often win.
As Cain points out, “There’s zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas.”
How shared dashboards help
Dashboards can highlight whose voices are being heard (maybe even too much) and who is consistently missing from conversations. Using that data, you can find ways to balance participation so everyone has an equal voice.
For example, you might offer new ways to share input, such as collaborative documents or anonymous suggestion boxes. You might implement new conversation norms so everyone has a chance to speak during quarterly meetings. There’s no limit to the ways you can alter your company communication practices.
5. Allowing for faster decisions
According to Brooks’ Law, adding manpower to a late software project makes it later. Several different factors cause larger teams to work more slowly than small teams:
- Teams may face decision paralysis because they’re trying to consider too many different perspectives.
- Large teams often face bureaucratic delays that aren’t an issue in small businesses.
- Needing approval from your boss and boss’s boss (and maybe even your great-grandboss) makes real change maddeningly slow.
Dave Nicolette shares, “Every large IT organization I have seen so far in my career has had large project teams that spend almost all their time engaged in lines of communication overhead of one sort or another. It is no exaggeration to say it takes weeks for such a team to complete a few minutes’ worth of real work.” Large teams may spend more time talking about work than actually doing it.
How shared team dashboards help
Giving your entire team real-time data access enables them to make faster, informed decisions. When everyone can see the same information, you don’t need as many meetings to “get everyone up to speed.”
Many dashboards automatically report data, so employees can work on critical thinking tasks instead of mundane data entry. These team workspaces also help individual team members make choices without cutting through 4 layers of red tape. You might detail who has what decision-making power as well as who to go to when a decision is above their authority, empowering employees to get more done without getting leadership involved.
6. Emphasizing collaboration over competition
A healthy small team gives the sensation that everyone is in the same boat. Over time, the team develops a shared identity. Even if you don’t adore a certain colleague, you’re reminded of the fact that “we’re all in this together.” 🎶
In a large organization, team members can feel like they’re all competing for limited promotions, recognition, and resources. If someone else wins, it means you lose. And because of this, employees might begin to hoard information and resources instead of sharing them.
Competition isn’t inherently bad, but when it becomes an undercurrent that colors every interaction, it doesn’t leave any room for true collaboration.
How shared dashboards help
Seeing your shared goals reinforces the fact that everyone benefits when the team does well. Team communication tools can highlight team achievements, milestones, and progress toward your collective goals.
Conclusion
Having a large team isn’t a bad thing. For most people, it’s the goal. Growth means success! But it’s hard to replicate the feeling and efficiency of being on a small team all working toward a common vision, at least without the right tools.
It’s why shared team workspaces are so valuable to expanding businesses. They help you maintain the intimacy and accountability of your small team, even when dozens of people are spread across multiple departments. You don’t have to sacrifice closeness for scale.