Building Collaborative Teams

"We found that the greater the proportion of experts a team had, the more likely it was to disintegrate into non-productive conflict or stalemate." This is a statement made by Lynda Gratton and Tamara J. Erikson in the Harvard Business Review article “Eight Ways to Build Collaborative Teams” from November 2007.

A lot of the projects I am involved with require a large number of experts on very large teams. Some of the projects I am involved have non-productive conflict and stalemate at certain times. However that may be due to selection bias: my expertise lies in large complex projects that are in trouble.

So I would like other readers and contributors to this Blog views on two things:

1. Anecdotal evidence that supports or not the primary thesis: lots of experts leads to non-productive conflict and stalemate.
2. Some specific ways they have mitigated or proactively prevented such conflict from arising.