1: “Julia Rozovsky was twenty-five years old and uncertain what to do with her life when she decided it was time for a change,” Charles Duhigg writes in Smarter Faster Better: The Transformative Power of Real Productivity.
After graduating from Tufts, Julia worked for a consulting firm, but she didn’t find it satisfying. She then worked as a researcher for two professors at Harvard, which Julia enjoyed, but wasn’t a long-term career.
“Maybe, she thought, she belonged in a big corporation. Or perhaps she ought to become an academic. Or maybe she should join a tech start-up,” Charles notes.
Feeling unsure of her next step, she decided not to make a decision right away and instead enrolled at the Yale School of Management.
Julia showed up in New Haven in the fall of 2010, excited to form meaningful connections with her classmates.
“Like all new students, she was assigned to a study group,” Charles notes. “This group, she figured, would be an important part of her education. They would become close friends and learn together, debate important issues, and discover, with each other’s help, who they were meant to be.”
Study groups are a staple of most MBA programs, giving students an opportunity to learn how to work effectively in teams.
“Each study group shares the same class schedule and collaborates on each group assignment,” Yale’s website explains. “Study groups have been carefully constructed to bring together students with diverse backgrounds, both professionally and culturally.”
Julia’s and the four other members of her group met daily during lunch or after dinner to review homework assignments, study for upcoming exams, and work on projects together.
“Truth be told, her group wasn’t all that diverse,” Charles explains. “Two of them had been management consultants, like Julia. Another had worked at a start-up.
“They were all smart and curious and outgoing. Their similarities, she hoped, would make it easy for them to bond.”
“There are lots of people who say some of their best business school friends come from their study groups,” Julia says.
“But it wasn’t like that for me.”
From the outset, group meetings felt stressful. “I never felt completely relaxed,” Julia told Charles. “I always felt like I had to prove myself.”
All of the members of the group wanted to be seen as leaders, so there was constant jockeying for position.
“People would try to show authority by speaking louder, or talking over each other,” Julia recalls.
“Maybe it was my own insecurities, but I always felt like I had to be careful not to make mistakes around them,” she says. “People were critical of each other, but they would play it off like they were making a joke, and so the group was kind of passive-aggressive.
“I was looking forward to making friends with my group,” she said. “It really bummed me out that we didn’t gel.”
2: So Julia decided to look for other ways to connect with her classmates.
She was intrigued when she learned that some students were forming a team to compete in “case competitions,” where groups devised strategies to address real-world business problems.
“Teams would receive a case study, spend a few weeks writing a business plan, and then submit it to high-profile executives and professors who picked the winner,” Charles writes. “Companies sponsored these contests and there were cash prizes as well as, sometimes, jobs that came out of the competitions.”
Julia’s case group included a former army officer, a think tank researcher, a nonprofit director, and a refugee program manager.
“Unlike her study group, everyone was from different backgrounds,” Charles observes. “From the start, though, they all clicked.”
They would meet in the library and work together “spending hours brainstorming options, assigning research duties, and divvying up writing assignments,” Charles explains. “Then they would meet again and again and again.”
“One of the best cases we did was about Yale itself,” Julia states. “There had always been a student-run snack store, but the university was taking over food sales, and so the business school sponsored a contest to overhaul the shop.
“We met every night for a week. I thought we should fill the shop with nap pods, and someone else said it should become a game room, and there was also some kind of clothing swap idea. We had lots of crazy ideas.”
Her study group had also brainstormed around their assignments, “but if I had ever mentioned something like a nap pod, somebody would have rolled their eyes and come up with fifteen reasons why it was a dumb idea.
“And it was a dumb idea,” she says with a laugh. “But my case team loved it. We always loved each other’s dumb ideas. We spent an hour figuring out how nap pods could make money by selling accessories like earplugs.”
The group ultimately decided to propose turning the former store into a micro-gym with space for exercise classes and a few workout machines. They researched pricing models and contacted manufacturers of gym equipment.
Their idea was chosen as the winner, and the micro-gym exists today.
Later that year, the team analyzed a chain of eco-friendly convenience stores that were looking to expand into North Carolina. “We must have analyzed two dozen plans,” she said. “A lot of them turned out not to make any sense.”
They ultimately proposed a slow-growth strategy that featured the chain’s healthy food options and placed first in the nation.
3: Julia’s original study group stopped meeting midway through their second semester.
The case competition team stayed together through graduation and added new students who wanted to join.
“Today, these people are some of her closest friends,” Charles writes. “They attend one another’s weddings and visit each other when traveling. They call each other for career advice and pass along job leads.”
So, what specific dynamics made these two groups different in how members interacted and worked together?
Both were comprised of bright, motivated people. Outside of group meetings, everyone was friendly.
Yet, one was competitive and stressful. The other was supportive and collaborative.
“I couldn’t figure out why things had turned out so different,” Julia told me. “It didn’t seem like it had to happen that way.”
More tomorrow when we’ll begin exploring the answer to this question!
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Reflection: Think about the teams you have been part of—at work, school, church, or in your community. What made some groups energizing and collaborative while others felt stressful or competitive?
Action: During your next team meeting, pay attention not just to what people say, but how they interact. Look for behaviors that encourage participation, curiosity, and support rather than competition or criticism.
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