Speeding up team learning
Cardiac surgery is one of medicine’s modern miracles. In an operating room no larger than many household kitchens, a patient is rendered functionally dead—the heart no longer beating, the lungs no longer breathing—while a surgical team repairs or replaces damaged arteries or valves. A week later, the patient walks out of the hospital.

The miracle is a testament to medical technology—but also to incredible teamwork. A cardiac surgical team includes an array of specialists who need to work in close cooperation for the operation to succeed. A single error, miscommunication, or slow response can have disastrous consequences. In other words, surgical teams are not all that different from the cross-functional teams that in recent years have become crucial to business success.
We studied how surgical teams at 16 major medical centers implemented a difficult new procedure for performing cardiac surgery. What we found sheds light on one of the key determinants of team performance: a team’s ability to adapt to a new way of working. In corporate settings, teams frequently have to learn new technologies or processes that are designed to improve performance. Often, however, things get worse—sometimes for a long time—before they get better. Team members may find it hard to break out of deeply ingrained routines. Or they may struggle to adjust to new roles and communication requirements.
When a product development team adopts computer-aided design tools, for example, designers, test engineers, process engineers, and even marketers have to learn the technology. But they also have to create and become comfortable with entirely new relationships, working collaboratively instead of making contributions individually and then handing pieces of the project off to the next person.
Most teams become proficient at new tasks or processes over time. But time