Metcalfe’s Law for staff?

Metcalfe’s Law, coined by Robert Metcalfe in 1980, says that:

“the financial value or influence of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system:

In other words, as you add more people to a network (like a phone system or Facebook), the value of that network goes up much faster than the number of people added. Using his example, if you have 10 people on a network the value is “100”, but if you have 20 people on a network the value is “400” — four times higher.

I tend to agree. With something like a social network, it becomes way more valuable as more of my friends join, as I suspect it does for you as well.

For teams too?

In a recent conversation with a few marketing friends, I came to the idea that this might also be true for the size of your team, but rather than increasing in value, it increases in complexity.

I’ve talked to a variety of people that have grown relatively large agencies, and almost all of them agree that their life with 20-30 staff is way more complex than it was with 10. It’s not 2 or 3 times harder, but more like 10 times harder. Adding staff creates more challenges at a faster rate than your raw headcount.

There are certainly going to be some exceptions, but it’s an interesting way to look at things. Do you agree? Does Metcalfe’s Law sort of work with team size as well?