Independence is Out, Interdependence is In: Q Theory Debunks the Idea of Solo Success
“Mariaaaa. I just met a girl named Maria.” These iconic lyrics were first sung on Broadway in 1957 at the West Side Story premiere. A heart pounding tale of doomed love in the time of prejudice. West Side Story was groundbreaking not only in theme, but also form. It set a new standard for integrating script, song, dance, and set.
Six collaborators created the hit production: writer Arthur Laurents, composer Leonard Berstein, 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.
Sondheim would go on to receive the highest civilian award in the United States, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, for being a master of the American musical. But when he joined the West Side Story team, he was 27 years old with no track record of success.
A few years prior to their West Side Story collaboration, Laurents and Berstein had both been reported for Communist activities and blacklisted. Artists on the blacklist were denied employment by Hollywood studios. Jerome Robbins was called to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities and the FBI pressured him to give up names of fellow Communist sympathizers. They threatened to expose his homosexuality if Robbins didn’t cooperate. He folded and gave up eight names. Some of whose careers suffered as a result.
After the terrifying McCarthy and blacklisting era ended in 1954, Laurents, Bernstein and Robbins all ended up working together to create West Side Story. Only after the musical was finalized did Laurents express his distaste for Robbins’ betrayal. “I told him I thought he was an immoral, indecent man. I don’t know how much it mattered to him.”
Despite disloyalty and reliance on an inexperienced lyricist, the team was wildly successful. Both artistically and financially. They explored intense social issues of the time and upended traditional Broadway forever. It was risky. They thought the show would only last three months.
Although their success may seem surprising and unlikely, their team had the right small world network score, or Q number. Using Q theory, West Side Story’s success could’ve been predicted.
Researchers Brian Uzzi and Jarrett Spiro studied all of the creative teams who 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.
Within these networks, communication between one team and another is easy — ideas and resources flow. For example, both Laurents and Sondheim created West Side Story (1957) and they also worked on Gypsy (1959) together. Their prior collaboration links the two creative teams and forms a stronger network. Uzzi and Spiro hypothesized that these small world networks cultivate creativity.
They gave the value Q to quantify the degree to which a network showed small world qualities. Q is calculated from the fraction: cluster coefficient (CC) over path length (PL). CC is a measure of if your friends are also friends with each other. PL measures 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. Plug in those values and you get a value of Q.
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. Also known as bonding and bridging, respectively. You bond with your team and create bridges with other teams. All of these relationships of different qualities and strengths create social capital. Social capital is social relationships and the results of the interactions of those relationships. Things like trust.
If a team is highly bonded, but doesn’t interact with other teams, it is isolated and working in a silo. Creativity is less likely to flourish. It has a low Q value. When a network has both bonding and bridging social capital then there is the potential for it to become a small world network. It will have a higher Q value.
Uzzi and Spiro found Q levels determined both the artistic and financial success of a Broadway musical. To a surprising degree. They found that a “bliss point” exists for Q. When the right amount 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. There’s more danger to a production’s success though if Q is too low rather than too high.
Creativity isn’t 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. It’s as Uzzi puts it, “an import-export business.” Each artist has experience with a certain set of tools, standards of dance, music and theatre in their respective fields. When they bring those standards to contribute to a 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.
When diverse sets of knowledge are more easily accessible via connections within the small world network structure, then a show is likely to succeed. At the bliss point of Q, a show is two and a half times more likely to be a hit than a show with the lowest Q value. Hit meaning it was a financial success. Artistic success, determined by the critics’ reviews, is three times more likely at Q’s bliss point. When the small world network level is at the sweet spot there’s the right mix of new folks, experienced ones and previous collaborators.
But an ever higher Q value is not the goal. Too much clustering between frequent collaborators stifles the entry of fresh ideas and perspectives. Creativity flounders. Shows are more likely to flop. As Lehrer notes in the New Yorker, Uzzi and Spiro’s findings are not so much a revelation about inner team dynamics as they are about inter-team relationships. When Q is too high, direct collaborators have worked with each other many times, and so have their extended networks. Instead of taking creative risks, they rely on old patterns. Safety becomes a hindrance rather than a spring board.
So is Q theory, the small world network framework, applicable to areas beyond the Broadway stage? Uzzi and Spiro say yes. Small world network theory is relevant in:
“…many kinds of networks where production is team based and roles are specialized, decentralized, and interdependent…project teams, boards of directors, voluntary and community service teams, small-size military units and other security teams, or government cabinets.” (493–494)
With Q theory, we can expand our thinking around teamwork beyond prioritizing talent alone. Sondheim was an unknown when he helped create the legendary West Side Story. Yet, he didn’t need to be a superstar talent to make important contributions to his team. Sondheim had talent, yes, but more importantly to his teams’ success were the relationships between the artists.
Those relationships bring in fresh ideas — a key ingredient for creativity. Social capital, or relationships, are what make small world networks tick. Not talent alone. The myth of independent success falls away. We are all embedded in interdependent networks and teams. The quality and type of those relationships is what our individual and collective success hinges on.
How “small worldly” are your teams and networks? Where do you think your team lands on the Q curve? Do you think there’s that magic mix of folks with experience and folks with fresh perspectives on your team? How easily does information flow amongst teams in your network? I invite you to consider these questions when you are thinking about team performance.
Let us know in the comments which answers to those questions spark your curiosity.
