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Functional connectivity (of a team)

Ben Schmidt, PhD
Author
Software architect and founder. I build with AI agents every day and write about the hard part, which is knowing what to ask, and catching the machine when it’s confidently wrong.

Functional connectivity is a term I’m borrowing from my own dissertation. In the brain, it describes how well separate regions coordinate, not how powerful any one region is.

Teams work the same way. Capability is not the sum of individual skill; it is how well the parts stay in sync under real conditions. You can have brilliant people and a low-functioning team. The connectivity is the thing, and it is built by reps together, not headcount.

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