Copyright forbes
Most teams fail not because of poor execution but because they were structurally doomed from the first meeting. The product launch meeting started like most Zoom meetings. Seven people joined the call. The VP jumped straight into the agenda: "Okay, let's review the timeline for Q4." No introductions. No context. No acknowledgment that four of the seven team members were new and likely didn't know each other. Within minutes, the two senior directors dominated the conversation. The junior product manager, who'd spent weeks researching customer pain points, stayed on mute and off video. The designer, who had critical concerns about the technical feasibility, convinced herself those concerns could wait. The meeting ended with aggressive timelines, unspoken doubts, and a plan that many on the call didn't feel was likely to succeed. Three months later, the product launch failed - not because of a lack of talent, but in large part because of the dysfunctional team dynamics set during that very first team-launching meeting. The Importance of the Launch According to research from the London School of Economics and Political Science, more than one third of meetings in the US are considered unproductive, at the cost at more than $250 billion annually. The problem isn't that we meet too much. It's that we're often getting the launch wrong. The way a team begins creates a work pattern that's remarkably difficult to break. Those first minutes establish the operating system for everything that follows. Whoever speaks first influences all members through conformity pressure. When the first speaker models dominance or closed thinking, those behaviors spread through the entire team. MORE FOR YOU The key to creating successful teams isn't off-site team building activities, though those can't necessarily hurt. The real key is to set in stone a great structure for the team so that it launches successfully and puts into place norms and habits that will serve the team well and enable the whole to be better than the sum of its parts. Here’s how to design launches that create productive patterns from minute one. Colin Fisher discusses these key strategies in his new book, The Collective Edge, and I had a chance to chat with him about his findings. 1. Right-Size Your Team The optimal team size is 3 to 7 members, ideally 4 to 5 – which Fisher refers to as “Hackman’s number” – paying homage to the renowned organizational psychologist and groups expert Richard Hackman. Beyond that, you're not building a team. Instead, you’re creating coordination costs and inviting social loafing. In a group of ten or more people, individual accountability dissolves. People assume others will carry the load, both in terms of participation in the meeting and tasks outside the meeting. In a group of four, everyone knows their role and knows that their contribution matters. The structure you set at launch becomes the operating system for everything that follows. Fisher reveals that many teams fail not because of poor execution, but because they were structurally doomed from the start. Try this: For your next team launch, see if you can pare down the team to 4-5 core members with clear reasons to be on the team. If others outside the team need to be kept in the loop, create a mechanism to share information. But don't unnecessarily inflate the size of the group. 2. Be Explicit About Group Norms Written goals and processes aren’t busy work. Instead, they’re critical tools to set standards and norms and make sure the team is on the same page. Successful teams often create a shared document that articulates the culture of the team, an explicit, agreed-upon team “contract.” Start with specific, measurable goals. For example, the goal of improving customer experience would be too vague and prone to disagreement. But something specific like “reduce checkout time to under 90 seconds” is specific and measurable. Next, clarify decision-making processes. It's critical to determine who has input, who has the final decision, and what the process is if the group disagrees. Establish working norms as well. What are the specific norms for responding to a message? How much real-time communication is expected and how long is it OK to go before responding to an email? These are the things that are important to agree upon and articulate because people can have very different preferences and styles because of their work experience or even national culture. Finally, define success. How will we know when we've achieved it? When you co-create written agreements, you eliminate the ambiguity that breeds conflict later. 3. Build Socially Intelligent Teams According to Fisher, teams with high social sensitivity excel across challenges because they can read the room, detect emerging problems, and adjust before small issues become crises. But even teams with naturally high social sensitivity need structure to access it. For in-person and video meetings, insist on cameras on for the first 10 minutes. Facial expressions and body language communicate what words don’t. Start with an open-ended check-in that reveals how people think and feel. Not “How is everyone?” (which gets “Good!”) but something like “What’s one thing on your mind as we start this project?” Watch who speaks first – that can influence everyone else through conformity pressure. If it’s the senior person shutting down exploration, you’ve just programmed your team for silence. Build in pauses. Ask questions like “What are we missing?” or “Whose perspective haven’t we heard?” Fisher emphasizes that asking what people are thinking and feeling is valuable in itself. By raising the question, you surface issues for the entire group—which can be more helpful than silently knowing the answer. 4. Use Competition Smartly Competition can energize teams without destroying collaboration. The key is to have team members compete externally and collaborate internally. When team members compete against each other for recognition, resources, or credit, this creates dysfunctional conflict where people hide information, undermine peers, and optimize for individual success over group outcomes. Instead, frame the competition externally. Say things like “Our competition isn’t each other—it’s the technical complexity of building this in 8 weeks” or “We’re competing against customer frustration that’s costing them hours per week” or “The challenge we’re up against is making something simple that's inherently complex.” It's also important to distinguish task conflict (disagreement about ideas, which is productive) from relationship conflict (personal friction, which is destructive). Make this distinction explicit with your team so healthy debate doesn't deteriorate into personal tension. 5. Schedule Time For Human Connection The danger with virtual meetings is that they can strip away humanity, reducing people to names in a Zoom grid competing for talk time. When that happens, social sensitivity plummets, trust never forms, and the team becomes transactional. The solution isn’t complicated, but it must be intentional. Start every launch with genuine personal connection. Not “How is everyone?” but questions that invite real answers like “What’s energizing you right now?” or “What’s been challenging this week?” Create space for informal conversation before jumping to business. Teams who spend the first 5-7 minutes on personal connection perform better on the task itself. Share something personal yourself first. Model vulnerability to signal it's safe. The Bottom Line Remember that failed product launch? It didn't have to go that way. If that VP had spent the first five minutes differently—introducing team members, establishing norms for participation, framing the project as a shared challenge rather than a top-down mandate—the junior product manager might have shared her customer research. The designer might have voiced technical concerns while there was still time to adjust. Those first five minutes weren't administrative overhead. They were the most important part of the meeting (and, one could argue, of the life of the group) - the moment when the team either gained access to its collective intelligence or locked itself into dysfunction. Editorial StandardsReprints & Permissions
