This is me repeating a story from memory I read 30 years ago in a magazine. I’m afraid I have no references, but I like the story a lot so I’d like it to live on.
What characteristics do your most productive people have? AT&T (I think) asked themselves that question and did a study on all their developers. They thought it was strange that some seemed to be magnitudes more productive than others, and it was consistently the same people. Before the study they expected the result to be a difference in education and/or experience. What they found wasn’t that.
The investigation showed that the most productive people were those who knew when to ask for help and knew who to ask. That was their superpower. That made those people not get stuck, but talk to the right person very early and find a good solution together.
I remember people getting annoyed by the story. “Shouldn’t education and experience matter? That would be to ridicule years of hard work, wouldn’t it?” I’m totally sure that those things matter a lot of course, but maybe if everybody has enough of it, it’s something else that matters more.
If asking a similar question today, I guess my spontaneous guess would be that it’s a matter of psychological safety. Maybe the AT&T-study actually is in line with that. If you don’t have psychological safety, there’s no chance you would ask a question that might be stupid. And you might be stuck for a long time for no good reason. Also, knowing when and who to ask could be seen as a step in the right direction toward better collaboration.
Finally, I’m aware of the trouble of defining “productivity”. But I think this fuzzy story is quite interesting even so. :)
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