Today I was doing some training with a regular group and this week we were going to have less people due to some work-related absence. So you would think when you have less people then less will get done as well. However, in this case we actually got more done oddly enough. This was primarily because we had less people there was less time to chit chat and so we just kept working. Less people also meant less time in making decisions that would need to travel amongst multiple people.
In the end you have to wonder if it is better to create smaller groups in an effort to increase productivity like in these examples. Of course if we are trying to run a billion dollar corporate with only two people versus say thousands then obviously less people would be less productive most likely. But I guess even for large business there is a point where having too many people can simply be a distraction.
Th stereotypical example is not from corporations usually but say the government where you have so many people to go through that barely anything gets done as they say.