Do you know what kind of team works together most effectively? The kind that keeps some distance, it turns out. That’s what a new study on geographically dispersed teams suggests.
Two researchers examined how a distributed team’s configuration affects its dynamics -- and ultimately its quality. Does it work well to have teams with core groups at headquarters and then small clusters of experts elsewhere -- say at a research and development facility or client site? Or do these groups fall apart, each feeling underappreciated and not linked to the teams’ endeavors?
The question is timely given that such nontraditional teams are proliferating as corporations cut down on real estate costs, offer employees flexibility and tap into expertise from other places.
“It turns out that configuration does have a significant impact,” notes researcher Michael Boyer O’Leary, assistant professor of organization studies at Boston College. “But not exactly in the ways we expected.”
The study’s coauthor, Mark Mortensen, a career development professor at MIT, said the findings “can be acted upon by managers when they design their teams. Sometimes you don’t have a choice. You have to create a team with the people you have. But where you can make choices, don’t just think in terms of individual members -- think about their configuration.”
Mortensen and O’Leary, studying 62 six-person teams, found that including one member who is physically isolated -- in a different location -- benefits the team. The group becomes more disciplined in coordinating and communicating, which makes it more productive overall. For instance, team members are more likely to schedule the next conference call before the current one is over. You might think that “it’s too much of a hassle to include ‘Joe from Washington, D.C.,’ or ‘that colleague from New York,’ ” explains O’Leary. “But actually the teams tended to be more conscious about including that person.”
Mortensen and O’Leary also looked at teams that have members distributed unevenly across sites -- which accounts for at least 60% of all distributed teams. At what point, they wanted to know, does a configuration cause power struggles to flare up, creating an unhealthy us-versus-them dynamic?
It turns out that imbalance often does breed instability: The smaller groups “perceive more conflict with the rest of the team, don’t perceive that their contributions are being taken into account, don’t understand other team members’ expertise and don’t identify strongly with the team as a whole,” says O’Leary.
But the most severe imbalance of all -- one person in another locale -- doesn’t inflame antagonism but rather leads to positive behavior. This is because having one long-distance teammate produces a “novelty effect.” Other members can be enthusiastic, for instance, to learn more about a colleague based in another country. “But more importantly,” says O’Leary, “We think the teams were operating under the assumption that one person wouldn’t be a threat to the rest of the team.”
But if one becomes two -- if another coworker joins in from the same remote location -- the team suffers. The two satellite members begin to think of themselves as an orbiting “in-group,” the ones who really understand what is going on, not like “those guys at headquarters.” “The two coworkers in the office will bond with each other, but they won’t bond with the rest of the team,” says O’Leary.
The study encourages managers to pay attention to their teams’ configurations, as imbalances tend to lead to negative outcomes. O’Leary says, “Team leaders can do powerful but subtle things, emphasizing their interdependence, common goal, and that they will all be evaluated as a team. It helps to remind them that they are all in the same boat.”
For more information on this topic is available at http://sloanreview.mit.edu/smr/issue/2008/summer/03/