About Cohort Institute
Dr. Jessica Robinson spent over a decade studying project teams at CSULB. Semester after semester, the pattern repeated: smart students, clear assignments, predictable failure. Not from lack of talent — from invisible coordination breakdowns. Expectations misaligned silently. Ownership went unspoken. Problems accumulated until someone finally broke.
Eddie Zaldivar saw the same thing from inside data science and marketing teams. Experienced professionals. Clear goals. The same predictable failures. One person carrying the project. Roles overlapping while gaps went unnoticed. The intervention that could have helped always came after the damage was done.
Neither context lacked talent. Both lacked visibility.
What happens when someone who's studied why teams fail in the classroom meets someone who's lived why they fail in industry?
You stop treating it as a people problem. Talent isn't the issue. Effort isn't the issue. The issue is that implicit expectations stay invisible until they're violated — and by then, trust has already eroded.
The patterns are identical across both contexts. The cost scales differently.
Teams don't fail from lack of talent. They fail when coordination breaks down in predictable ways: ownership is ambiguous, expectations are unspoken, problems accumulate silently, and integration happens too late.
SQUAD makes these dynamics visible — and keeps them visible. Not through surveillance. Not through enforcement. Through structure that surfaces assumptions early, assigns ownership clearly, and creates enough visibility that problems can't hide until they're expensive.
SQUAD is in active beta with real cohorts. Instructors are using it to build balanced teams from student survey data, with every grouping decision visible and adjustable.
The research foundation draws on coordination theory, behavioral assessment research from Benne and Sheats, and team effectiveness work from Oakley and colleagues. Dr. Robinson brings her background in supply chain management research at CSULB — and a prior career at TNT and FedEx, where she saw these coordination dynamics play out at organizational scale.
We're validating the signals. One cohort at a time.
Let's talk about your next cohort.