Google, the perfect team, and internet comments

The New York Times published What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team earlier this week, and it's worth a read. My favorite part:

What Project Aristotle has taught people within Google is that no one wants to put on a ‘‘work face’’ when they get to the office. No one wants to leave part of their personality and inner life at home. But to be fully present at work, to feel ‘‘psychologically safe,’’ we must know that we can be free enough, sometimes, to share the things that scare us without fear of recriminations. We must be able to talk about what is messy or sad, to have hard conversations with colleagues who are driving us crazy. We can’t be focused just on efficiency. Rather, when we start the morning by collaborating with a team of engineers and then send emails to our marketing colleagues and then jump on a conference call, we want to know that those people really hear us. We want to know that work is more than just labor.

The article reinforces some of the things I've been mulling over, but what I actually want to talk about are the most common reactions other people have had to the article, based on its comment section.

I noticed two common criticisms repeated in the comments. The first, essentially, was "Obviously! How could those dummies waste all that money on research to prove something they should've been doing already?"

A couple thoughts. Why is a company caring enough about good teamwork and good management to spend money investigating them a problem? Good communication and effective management shouldn't ever be taken for granted, and I think a lot of places could spend more time nurturing them.

As was stated in the article, data makes it easier to convince people to change. Yes, the world is a big place and there are surely modern-day equivalents of Ebenezer Scrooge running amok out there, but the vast majority of people don't want to be lousy teammates and managers, and I'd bet that a chunk of those who are don't realize it and don't know how to improve.

It's fine to say "I knew that" – most of the article's points were pretty intuitive to me! – but saying "I already knew my way was right and you should've been doing it all along" is condescending, dogmatic, unscientific. Fact is, sometimes the conventional wisdom is wrong, and it's pretty hard to consistently improve without testing different ideas. If you're out to change hearts and minds, putting others down is a pretty bad way to go about it (citation needed).

The second common criticism went something like this: "Okay, the homogeneous young predominantly white male Google workforce wants to feel psychologically safe and they have plans for facilitating this; what about everyone else?"

For my money, this is a much more interesting point. Many companies, particularly in the tech industry, are struggling with diversity, but the criticism goes beyond this: even if there is diversity, how can the organization create an environment that welcomes everyone's backgrounds and contributions? How does a group create psychological safety when outside the meeting room, its members may feel very unsafe?

Is there any research out there getting at this?