Dunbar's Number and Organizational Grit (#95)
This Sunday is the National Football League’s (NFL) Super Bowl LV pitting Kansas City against Tampa Bay. Of course, everyone has been talking about the two great quarterbacks — Patrick Mahomes and Tom Brady — who will play in the game. As with most Super Bowls, I’m sure it will be a great game filled with excitement. Or, at least the commercials will be exciting. Either way, both teams have been characterized as having organizational grit to play through the pandemic, ensure that the players and staff remain healthy, and find innovative ways to win games.
Earlier, I talked about how the 1980 US Olympic Hockey Team, the 1990-1994 Buffalo Bills football team, and the 1997-1998 Chicago Bulls Basketball Team are all characterized as gritty teams. I definitely add the 2020-2021 Chiefs and Buccaneers to that list due to both teams playing through adversity this season. But what is one other reason that sports teams are characterized as gritty?
Dunbar’s Number
In the 1990s, Robin Dunbar, a British anthropologist, examined historic literature for group size information of 21 different hunter-gather societies, the Roman Army, and Hutterite religious settlements. The size of these diverse groups throughout history kept being right around 150 people. Combining it with research on primate and human brains, he concluded that humans had a cognitive limit of approximately 150 people that they can maintain stable social relationships with.
Military organizations for centuries have been built around Dunbar’s number. After the Marian Reforms in 107 B.C., centuries, comprised of 80 men became the backbone of the Roman Legions. Dunbar says that the 150 limit enables “orders… [to be] implemented and unruly behavior controlled on the basis of personal loyalties and man-to-man contacts.” With larger groups this is impossible.
I found this true in the modern US Army too. Platoons (approximately 40 people) and Companies (approximately 150 people) shared alignment, social bonds, and In both formations, I, as the leader, was able to know each member of the team. The grittiest organization I have been part of was C Company, 3rd Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment.
Malcolm Gladwell, in The Tipping Point, discusses the Dunbar number too. W. L. Gore and Associates is a $3.8 Billion in revenue per year company with 10,500 employees known for the Gore-Tex brand. It has been ranked as one of the top 100 Best Companies to Work For by Fortune Magazine for the past three decades. Gladwell uses it as an example because Gore discovered that if more than 150 employees were working together in one building social problems arose. More importantly, 150 people was the largest organization that could maintain alignment and “genuinely social relationship” between all members of the team. To keep the advantages of 150 people organizations, Gore built buildings that had a limit of 150 employees and only 150 parking spaces. When the parking spaces were filled, the company would build another 150-employee building.
Sports Teams
Back to the Super Bowl. Organizational grit is “the group’s will to persevere to achieve long term goals.” Organizational grit is forged by providing the team a goal and a purpose, a plan, a scoreboard, a gritty culture, and building trust in the team. Each of the teams in the Super Bowl possess all the components of organizational grit. Interestingly, a typical NFL football team has 55 players on its roster, along with 12 players on its practice squad, 22 coaches, and dozens of executives, managers, medical staff, and video staff. The average NFL Team travels with 140 people.
In addition to having a purpose and a goal, a gritty culture, and a tight team, another reason that Kansas City and Tampa Bay are characterized as gritty football teams is because they are a small enough groups that fans, reporters, and commentators easily recognize the social bonds between the team members and coaches. With larger organizations, sometimes these social bonds are much more difficult to see. Dunbar’s Number and its limit on social relationships plays a role in groups smaller than 150 people, and especially sports teams, being seen as gritty.