This is How to Repair a Toxic Work Culture

Companies often confuse the disease of bad culture with symptoms like tech overuse and high employee turnover. Treating these symptoms often involves examining and addressing how teams work together. Google recently set out to understand the drivers of employee retention and positive team outcomes. The search giant announced the results of a two year study to understand, once and for all, the answer to the question, what makes a Google team effective? Heading into the study, the research team was fairly confident of what they would find that teams are most effective when they are composed of great people. As Julie Rosovsky, a researcher on the project, wrote, Take one Rhodes Scholar, two extroverts, one engineer who rocks at AngularJS, and a PhD. Voila. Dream Team assembled. Right? We were dead wrong. What did they actually discover? The individuals on a team matter less than how those team members interact, structure their work, and view their contributions.