During the 2003 World Athletics Championships’ final, the French women’s team won the 4x100m relay race. Yet, facing them, the American team gathered the fastest runners in the world. How to explain this apparently paradoxical result?

This French team performance stems from a better cooperation: each athlete was ready to set aside part of her energy geared at her individual performance to guarantee a better efficiency during the baton exchange, for example by shouting to indicate her precise position to her partner and to communicate her energy to her. To encourage such a state of mind in companies, we must be ready to review some organizational “best practices” that hamper cooperation. For example, it seems rational to precisely document the roles, to clarify the scopes of action and to measure the performance according to these well-defined scopes. Yet, in such a situation, what is the interest for the individuals to collaborate with their teammates or other departments? What do they gain by getting out of their scopes to help colleagues?

What is gained in clarity and rationalization is often quickly lost in smoothness. To remedy this, ask yourself the question: do all the job descriptions, all the processes and all the key performance indicators put in place encourage individuals to collaborate, or do they create obstacles and conflicts of interest?

Source: How too many rules at work keep you from getting things done, Yves Morieux, TED@BCG London, September 2015.