Team performance: do we really know who knows what?
In a specialist team, a problem can persist even when a colleague already has the knowledge needed to resolve it. The management question is precise: does knowing more accurately who has which expertise help a team perform better?
What the literature establishes
Kyle Lewis (2003, Journal of Applied Psychology) developed and validated a field measure of transactive memory systems, encompassing knowledge specialisation, colleagues' perceived credibility and coordination. The concept describes a collective organisation of memory: individuals do not know everything, but the team knows whom to approach. The findings link this organisation to performance, rather than reducing performance to the sum of individual capabilities.
The mechanism: learning how to draw on others
Diane Wei Liang, Richard Moreland and Linda Argote (1995, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin) compared groups whose members had trained together or separately on an assembly task. Groups trained together performed better, and the analyses support the mediating role of transactive memory. Learning together therefore appears to involve learning about partners' expertise and how to coordinate it.
The premature conclusion
One might conclude that an expert directory is enough to improve performance. That would confuse a list of capabilities with a collective way of working that also requires recognising colleagues' reliability and coordinating their contributions. An expertise map can provide a starting point; it does not demonstrate that expertise has been correctly identified or will actually be used. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What the evidence cannot promise
An experiment involving an assembly task reproduces neither the uncertainty of a financial decision nor the constraints of an international negotiation. Nor does validating a measure in the field prove that publishing an expertise directory will cause performance to improve. Recognised expertise must also be distinguished from actual availability: identifying the right person does not guarantee that they can contribute.
A practical check in Genève
Within SHR's « Performance d'équipe » programme, a local team in private banking, an international organisation, luxury watchmaking or commodities trading could test the following approach: select a recurring category of requests requiring internal expertise. Before and after mapping expertise and available backup contacts, record the proportion of requests redirected because the first person approached lacked the required expertise, using the same definition and comparable observation periods. Tracking resolution time and corrections for errors alongside this measure helps avoid mistaking more direct routing for a genuine improvement; this remains a local test, not causal proof. To go further: explore the Team Performance training in Geneva, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: Team Performance in Geneva
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