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Density is a ratio, one over however many people are on the team. It reduces to a single person only when the numerator and denominator are both one, and that is never the case. Companies recruit one human at a time, so attention drifts toward finding the individual 10X hire.
Great leaders and managers are better described as puzzle builders. They put together people whose strengths complement each other and then help them excel. The thing worth multiplying by ten is the team, with the individuals as its parts.
A client service firm can illustrate the limit: it cannot be a great service provider without a great client, because the client sets the bar. In the same way, an excellent person on a team that is not strong and supportive gets throttled.
How do coworkers change a person's output?
Economists Alexandre Mas and Enrico Moretti studied cashiers at a grocery chain and published the results in 2009. They found that a cashier's speed rose when a faster coworker joined the line of sight, and the effect was strongest when the faster worker was visible to them. Peer pressure and a sense of fairness seemed to drive it. The study gave quantified evidence that a person's productivity depends on who they work beside.
How does one weak link cap a team's output?
Economist Michael Kremer proposed the O-ring theory of economic development in 1993, named after the part whose failure destroyed the Challenger in 1986. In his model, output depends on every step succeeding, so one low-quality worker lowers the value of everyone else's work. The model predicts that high-skill workers cluster together and low-skill workers cluster together. It also implies that a firm gains more from raising its weakest member than from lifting its strongest.
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