Korva is a scroll of the internet’s best ideas.
What extreme ownership is
Bending Spoons calls the trait extreme ownership and treats it as nearly the whole game. A company with a strategy that makes sense, which most companies lack, and talented people who care tremendously about their jobs is already 80% of the way there. Everything else mostly takes care of itself.
How it spreads
Most people sit in the middle and could go either way. Surround them with a dense group who care, and the pull goes toward caring. So the company recruits for it, parts ways with anyone who does not care, and has its leaders demonstrate it at every chance. A manager who fails to show extreme ownership has committed the greatest failure. A bad decision made with extreme ownership beats a good one made without it, because people watch who gets more responsibility and better pay and see that the one trait everyone shares is that they care tremendously.
Why 80 is enough
Perfect is out of reach, and it does not need to be reached. Most companies sit at 20 out of 100 on this, and doing all of it well gets a company to 80. Nobody shoots threes perfectly in basketball either, but a team that hits 45% while most teams hit 38% wins the vast majority of its matches.
How does emotion spread through a group?
Psychologists Elaine Hatfield, John Cacioppo, and Richard Rapson described emotional contagion in a 1993 book, arguing that people unconsciously mimic the facial expressions, voices, and postures of those around them. The mimicry feeds back into the body and produces a matching feeling. In a 2002 study of work groups, Sigal Barsade found that positive emotion spread among members and improved cooperation.
Can one person change a group's behavior?
In Solomon Asch's line-judgment experiments of the 1950s, about three-quarters of participants went along with a group's wrong answer at least once. When even one other person in the room gave the correct answer, conformity dropped sharply. A single visible example was enough to change what the rest felt free to say. Asch published the first results in 1951.
How much can one bad member cost a team?
In a 2006 review, the researchers Will Felps, Terence Mitchell, and Eliza Byington concluded that a single member who shirks, complains, or acts rudely can drag down a whole group's performance. Teammates tend to respond by withdrawing or mirroring the behavior. The review drew on decades of studies of small groups at work.
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