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The small device that employees of a bank call center wear around their necks for six weeks records more than 100 data points a minute. It doesn’t listen in on what they say. It only measures who talks to whom, for how long and in what tone. The upshot is a recommendation that sounds almost too simple: let them take their coffee breaks together. An example of the Team Principle of Communication.
Same Teams, Different Results
Situation
Alex “Sandy” Pentland heads the Human Dynamics Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The manager of a bank call center comes to him with a question: Why do some teams achieve excellent results while others, seemingly identical, do not? The teams do the same work under the same conditions.
Connection to the team principle
The Team Principle of Communication states: a team knows only what its members tell one another. A call center seems like the place where that matters least. Everyone sits alone at their desk with a headset, talking to customers, not colleagues. That is exactly why the manager’s question is such a good one: if the individuals are comparable and the results are not, the difference probably lies between the people.
Sensors Instead of Questionnaires
Situation
Pentland’s team has developed what it calls sociometric badges, sensors worn around the neck. They record tone of voice, posture, and whom someone talks to, for how long and how often – not the content of the conversations. By Pentland’s own account, they have been used to track about 2,500 people in 21 organizations over seven years. In the call center, several teams wear the badges for six weeks. The finding: productivity is best predicted by two factors Pentland calls energy and engagement – specifically in the exchanges that take place outside formal meetings. Together, Pentland says, they explain one third of the differences in productivity between the teams.
Connection to the team principle
The good teams didn’t have better meetings. They talked to one another more outside meetings, and more of them joined in. No manual fully explains how to handle a difficult call. That knowledge sits in individual heads. It becomes team knowledge when one person tells another – and that rarely happens as an agenda item; it happens in passing, in the hallway.
A Shared Coffee Break
Situation
Pentland advises the manager to change the break schedule: all members of a team should take their coffee break at the same time, so they can talk to one another away from their workstations. The result, according to Pentland: average handling time per call falls by more than 20% in the weaker teams and by 8% across all teams. The bank then changes the break schedule in all ten of its call centers, with about 25,000 employees, and expects a productivity gain of $15 million a year. Employee satisfaction rises, in some cases by more than 10%.
Connection to the team principle
The manager didn’t train anyone, buy any software or schedule a new meeting. He created an opportunity. The knowledge was already in the building, just at separate tables. The weaker teams gained the most because they had been missing the most of what their colleagues already knew. You can’t order communication, but you can give it room and time.
What the Numbers Support – and What They Don’t
Situation
Pentland’s account appeared in the Harvard Business Review in 2012. It is a practitioner article without peer review, and the figures come from the author himself. The $15 million is the bank’s forecast, not a measured result. The work gave rise to a company for which Pentland serves as a scientific adviser. Peer-reviewed research supports the general direction but puts the emphasis elsewhere: in a 2018 meta-analysis, Shannon L. Marlow, Christina N. Lacerenza, Jensine Paoletti, C. Shawn Burke and Eduardo Salas found that the quality of communication is much more strongly related to team performance than its frequency. Working through information together has the strongest effect.
Connection to the team principle
So the coffee break probably worked not because people talked more, but because the right things came up: the trick for handling a difficult customer, the shortcut in the system. The team principle does not say “Talk more.” It says: what goes unsaid, the team does not know. One more point: putting sensors on employees’ bodies is intrusive. In Germany, it would raise serious data-protection concerns and would require approval from the works council, the elected employee body. You can use the study’s insight without adopting its method.
Key takeaways
Key Lessons
- Look at your team’s calendar: When is everyone free at the same time and in the same place? If the answer is “never,” you have a starting point.
- Create opportunities, not obligatory meetings. A shared break, a shared table or a fixed office day has a different effect from yet another meeting.
- Make sure everyone takes part. If it’s always the same three people talking, the team only knows what those three know.
- Ask specifically for individual know-how: “How do you handle that?” When strong performers keep their tricks to themselves, it’s not out of ill will – it’s because nobody asks.
- Measure success by the work, not by the amount of talk. What counts is what gets shared, not how much gets said.
Summary
In a bank call center, teams that were identical on paper performed differently. Alex Pentland traced the difference to informal exchanges and recommended shared coffee breaks; according to him, the weaker teams in particular became markedly faster. The figures are the author’s own and should be read with caution, but the direction matches peer-reviewed research. The example shows the Team Principle of Communication at its best: a team knows only what its members tell one another – so make sure they have the chance to do so.