Team performance correlates weakly with average individual
Team performance correlates weakly with average individual intelligence and strongly with interaction patterns
Why This Is an Axiom
This is Woolley et al.'s empirical finding about collective intelligence — a research-backed, falsifiable claim about what predicts team performance. It cannot be derived from other axioms in the curriculum; it's a discovered fact about how teams work that contradicts common assumptions about intelligence and performance.
Source Lessons
Teams think collectively
A team is not just individuals — it has collective cognitive processes that can be designed and improved.
Artifacts reflect culture
Physical spaces, tools, documents, and digital environments are visible expressions of invisible cultural values. Artifacts do not merely reflect culture — they actively reinforce it by creating the material conditions within which cultural behaviors occur. An open office encodes the schema that visibility and accessibility are valued. A closed-door office encodes the schema that privacy and focused work are valued. Neither is inherently better — but each shapes the behavioral patterns of the people who inhabit it, reinforcing the cultural schema it embodies through daily, embodied experience.