Good for Routines, Might Be Bad for Breakthroughs: The Surprising Truth About Team Familiarity

In management, it’s taken as gospel: build a close-knit, familiar team and performance will soar. We invest time and energy into cohesion, assuming that the more people know each other—their quirks, strengths, and habits—the better the results.

But this common wisdom blurs an important distinction. Team familiarity is not the same as team tenure. It’s not about time served, but how deeply team members understand each other’s working patterns and decision-making.

What if that depth of familiarity — the very thing we try to build — can also hold teams back? Research suggests that while familiarity drives high performance in routine work, it can quietly suffocate innovation if left unchecked.

Here’s what we found in this paper: Team familiarity—Boon for routines, bane for innovation? A review and future research agenda by Muskat, Birgit, Anand, Amitabh, Contessotto, Christine, Tan, Adrian, Park, Guihyun in Human Resource Management Review

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Your Best Team for Routine Work Might Be Your Worst for Innovation

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A review of 42 studies shows that the effects of familiarity depend entirely on the kind of work being done.

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Familiarity is a Superpower for High-Stakes Routines

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When tasks are structured, time-pressured, or risky, familiarity is gold. Shared mental models mean the team can coordinate instinctively — finishing each other’s sentences and anticipating moves before they’re made.

• In surgery, familiar operating teams make fewer mistakes and deliver safer outcomes.
  
  
• In Formula 1, established pit crews execute flawlessly under split-second pressure.
  
  
• In corporate operations, seasoned project teams stay on time and on budget with minimal friction.
  
  

When consistency and reliability matter more than creativity, familiarity is your competitive edge.

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Where Familiarity Starts to Hurt

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But that same strength becomes a weakness when innovation is the goal. Highly familiar teams are prone to routine thinking, defaulting to “how we’ve always done it.” They risk drifting into groupthink, where comfort replaces curiosity.

Researchers describe this as an inverted U-shaped curve: performance rises with familiarity—until it peaks, then declines as habits harden and fresh ideas dry up. The problem isn’t competence; it’s complacency.

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How to Build Familiarity Fast (Without Waiting Years)

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You don’t need years together to reach deep familiarity. What matters is not time, but shared intensity—moments that create trust and understanding quickly.

Teams build familiarity fastest through:

• Shared challenges that demand coordination under pressure.
  
  
• Moments of success or failure that create emotional connection.
  
  
• Candid conversations that reveal how people really work.
  
  

NASA mission crews, for instance, use high-stress simulations to accelerate trust before launch. The same idea applies in business: run a short, focused project sprint; hold “Manual of Me” sessions where team members share how they operate; or use team rituals to debrief, learn, and adjust together.

The goal isn’t social closeness—it’s functional insight.

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How to Stop Familiar Teams from Going Stale

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Even great teams stagnate without renewal. Over time, comfort can dull curiosity. Smart leaders disrupt that cycle deliberately.

Sir Alex Ferguson did it at Manchester United, regularly refreshing his coaching staff to inject new thinking and prevent drift. Pixar takes a similar approach, rotating creative leads between projects to cross-pollinate ideas.

For managers, the same principles apply:

• Bring in an occasional outsider to challenge assumptions.
  
  
• Rotate responsibilities within the team.
  
  
• Introduce small experiments or new rituals to spark learning.
  
  

Familiarity should be maintained for coordination, but shaken up for innovation.

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The Takeaway

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Team familiarity is a force multiplier—but only if you manage it deliberately. Too little, and teams lack coordination. Too much, and they stop questioning.

The goal isn’t to maximize familiarity, but to match it to the mission:

• Deep familiarity for precision and reliability.
  
  
• Fresh perspectives for creativity and breakthroughs.
  
  

In short: keep your team familiar enough to run smoothly, but fresh enough to keep learning.

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