The Teamwork of Westside Story
The Broadway musical, Westside Story was met with high critical acclaim. It featured a heart-pounding tale of doomed love in a time of prejudice. Maria, one of the main characters, had a brother who was a member of the Sharks, a fictional Puerto Rican gang. She fell in love with Tony, a member of the Jets, a rival white gang. Youth gangs were a new phenomenon at the time and a fresh theme not yet explored on stage. The Sharks and the Jets paced and fought on New York City’s multiracial, blue-collar Upper West Side. West Side Story was groundbreaking not only in theme but also form.
While the public witnessed the magnificent effects of the script, song, and dance, they did not see the tremendous level of teamwork needed to make the story come to life. This teamwork led to one of the most iconic and well-recognized musical scores in entertainment history.
Creating an Award-Winning Soundtrack
West Side Story’s soundtrack album still holds the record for most weeks in the number one spot on the United States charts. Six collaborators created the hit production: writer Arthur Laurents, composer Leonard Bernstein, director and choreographer Jerome Robbins, producers Robert E. Griffith and Harold Prince, and lyricist Stephen Sondheim. The first three were Broadway legends at the time. It was Sondheim’s first gig on a Broadway musical. Little did the public know, the group experienced distrust, disloyalty, and contained members with little track record of success. The show and theme were risky, yet as we know, the work paid off greatly.
How to Predict Teamwork Magic Using Q Theory
Researchers Brian Uzzi and Jarrett Spiro studied all the creative teams that made Broadway musicals from 1945 to 1989. They wanted to know if small world networks would influence the success of each production. Small-world networks are made up of tightly knit teams that have the right mix of seasoned experience, fresh perspectives, and previous collaborations.
What is Q Theory?
The researchers gave the value Q to quantify the degree to which a network showed small world qualities. In short, it is a combination of whether your friends are also friends with each other and how many people it takes to connect one person to another in a network, or how many degrees of separation are between you and someone in your network.
Why does Q Theory Matters?
Q values indicate what kind of relationships exist in a network. Connections amongst team members are called strong ties while connections between teams are called weak ties. These factors are also known as bonding and bridging, respectively. Bonds within a team create bridges with other teams. All these relationships of different qualities and strengths create social capital. Social capital refers to social relationships and the results of the interactions of those relationships. If a team is highly bonded but does not interact with other teams, it is isolated and works in a silo. Creativity is less likely to flourish. It has a low Q value. When a network has both bonding and bridges social capital then there is the potential for it to become a small-world network. It will have a higher Q value.
The Goal is “Bliss Point”
Uzzi and Spiro found Q levels determined both the artistic and financial success of a Broadway musical to a surprising degree. They mapped all the links between the production team artists, who were the core six to seven people responsible for masterminding the show. After statistical analysis, the researchers put a numerical value on collaboration and cohesion within each team and between the teams. They found a “bliss point.” When the right number of inexperienced newcomers join with artists who are experienced co-collaborators, the musical will succeed. If Q is too high, the positive effect decreases. If Q is too low, the production will be a flop.
Creativity is not just the result of a lone artist, working feverishly in an isolated cave. Creativity happens when artists bring their unique sets of knowledge to the group. When members and teams contribute to new production, innovation happens. Agreed upon recipes can be tweaked and made fresh and exciting, depending on the spices that each artist has access to. One artist’s routine dance move has never been witnessed by a fellow member of their team. That creates sparks.
The Takeaways:
The Q-Value can be applied across disciplines. When diverse sets of knowledge are more easily accessible via connections within the small-world network structure, a show is likely to succeed. Artists can learn from and riff on each other’s material. They watch each other’s performances and collaborate.
Assess your team’s Q-Value by checking for the following:
Who is willing to take creative risks?
Is there a mix of experienced and new members?
How strong is the bond between team members?
How well are new ideas accepted?
How heavily do members rely on old patterns?
Remember, there is more danger to a production’s success if Q is too low rather than too high.
See the full analysis on Q theory in my latest book, The Click Code.
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