Team of teams

Many small teams are joined by shared awareness of the whole and by trust across teams, so decisions can be pushed to the edge.

What it is

A team of teams is a large organization rebuilt as many small teams that can see the whole. The teams stay; how they connect changes. Information about the whole operation is made visible to every team at once (shared consciousness, in the authors' term), and decisions are pushed to the teams that hold the information (empowered execution). Liaison officers go to partner organizations, teams work from a common operating picture, and senior leaders enable, not direct.

Its profile by dimension, our judgment unless marked:

• Basis of grouping: product or purpose: teams formed around the mission.
• Specialization: medium: specialist teams are kept and joined.
• Formalization: low: freedom to experiment, not procedure.
• Centralization: decentralized, on one case study (Shultz 2016).
• Layers and span: flat, as theory: edge organizations often reduce the need for middle managers whose role is to manage constraints and control measures (Alberts and Hayes 2003, a practitioner design; McChrystal and colleagues 2015, a practitioner's report).
• Decision rights: selective vertical and horizontal decentralization (Mintzberg's Type D).
• Coordinating mechanism: mutual adjustment through shared awareness, as theory.
• Lateral mechanisms: direct contact and liaison roles, as theory.
• Differentiation against integration: moderate, with some integrating roles.
• Mode of exchange: clan (Ouchi's term; Ouchi 1980, a conceptual article): trust across teams carries what rules carried.
• Boundary permeability: spans selective and permeable; of the four boundaries, Shultz (2016) supports only the one between agencies.

Where it came from

General Stanley McChrystal, with Tantum Collins, David Silverman, and Chris Fussell, named the form in Team of Teams (2015), a four-author practitioner's book on the Joint Special Operations Task Force in Iraq, not a study. McChrystal's memoir is a different book, My Share of the Task.

The form answered how a hierarchy of elite but isolated teams could match an adaptive network enemy. Sector of origin: military special operations.

The edge organization of command-and-control research (Alberts and Hayes 2003) and the multiteam system (Mathieu, Marks, and Zaccaro 2001) are two earlier designs near it, though the book is not traced to either here.

Where it fits

Three cells rest on evidence, two on theory, and seven on our judgment, each with its premise; three are contested.

• Size. Theory: partial when small, fits medium and large; a small organization is already one team (McChrystal and colleagues 2015, a practitioner's report; Shultz 2016, one case study). The small level is our judgment.
• Age. Our judgment, contested. McChrystal and colleagues and Shultz: partial when young, fits established and old, a remedy for a hierarchy whose teams have grown into silos. Hannan and Freeman (1984), a theoretical argument: partial when old too, given older organizations' inertia and, on their assumption, the liability of newness that structural reorganization restores.
• Environmental uncertainty. Evidence: partial when stable, fits shifting and unpredictable. Shultz: raids rose from 18 to about 300 a month, with other causes credited; Nissen (2005), a computer simulation with no field data, found the edge organization faster and cheaper in one scenario but riskier; Lanaj and colleagues (2013), a study of 210 multiteam systems, found decentralized planning's gains outweighed by even stronger losses from excessive risk seeking and coordination failures, untested against the environment; Burton and Obel's (2004) model, the most developed scholarly fit model, fits a flexible structure to a turbulent environment.
• Environmental complexity. Theory: fits complex (McChrystal and colleagues 2015, a practitioner's report, as the publisher describes one task force); partial when simple or moderate is our judgment.
• Munificence and hostility. Evidence, contested. McChrystal and colleagues and Shultz, a practitioner's report and one case study: fits hostile, partial neutral and munificent, though the hostility was threat, not scarcity. Our reading of Burton and Obel, since no work names the form: partial throughout. High hostility calls for lower centralization, which pushed-down decisions match, and lower organizational complexity, which added lateral links do not; extreme hostility calls for high centralization and a simple configuration.
• Diversity of products and markets. Our judgment: fits a single business, partial related, strain unrelated, where there is no common picture to share.
• Strategy type. Our judgment: strain defender, partial analyzer, fits prospector, on the low centralization and formalization Burton and Obel give a prospector, though their prospector configuration is simple, ad hoc, or matrix.
• Technology and routineness. Our judgment: partial routine and mixed, fits nonroutine. Bigley and Roberts (2001), one inductive case study, found a bureaucratic incident command system also handling such work.
• Interdependence. Evidence, contested. Marks and colleagues (2005), a laboratory simulation of multiteam systems: partial pooled and sequential, fits reciprocal, since cross-team processes mattered more under high cross-team interdependence. Davison and colleagues (2012), a laboratory-like exercise with 233 multiteam systems: partial throughout, since coordination across component teams could hurt, and boundary spanners' and system leaders' action helped only when centered on the team most critical to the task. The middle level is our judgment.
• Knowledge intensity, global integration, and local responsiveness. Our judgment: partial throughout, the neutral value; nothing read ties the form to them.

Pennings (1975), a quantitative field test of the structural-contingency model naming no form, found environment-structure fit did not explain effectiveness; Donaldson (2001) lays such failures to methodological limits. Drazin and Van de Ven (1985), a quantitative study of 629 work units in two states' employment security agencies, found the interaction form of fit (one factor paired with one structure) unsupported and the selection and systems forms supported; the explorer uses selection.

What it does well

Speed is what its builders claim for it. As the publisher describes the book, giving small groups freedom to experiment and sharing what they learn lets a large organization respond faster and decide better.

Tempo rose in one case: Task Force 714's raids went from 18 a month to about 300 as it decentralized authority (Shultz 2016, one case study), with other causes credited too.

Cost favored it in a model: Nissen's edge organization was cheaper than the hierarchy in both scenarios and faster in one; its author calls the results preliminary.

What it costs

Attention goes to coordination. In Nissen's simulation the edge organization's coordination work was an order of magnitude greater than the hierarchy's.

Risk rises too: the same model gave the edge organization more than twice the project risk (0.78 against 0.36), with more tasks left incomplete.

Relief from load comes with hierarchy, for a time. Matusik and colleagues (2022), an experiment with 76 multiteam systems, found structural hierarchy aided multiteam learning by reducing members' cognitive depletion while weakening horizontal coordination; the depletion benefit faded across episodes, and egalitarian structures have advantages of their own.

Conflict inside teams and weaker team performance were found where members' interactions with other teams exceeded those inside their own, in Ziegert and colleagues' (2022) multimethod study of 44 multiteam systems of student teams; at the system level, a balance between the two enhanced success.

How it fails

Our judgment ties each failure to the Coordination Failures pattern in parentheses.

Empowered teams take more risk than the system can coordinate (local optimization against the global constraint). This is Lanaj and colleagues' finding (under Where it fits). On McChrystal and colleagues, three symptom readings say the form relieves decisions queuing at the top, warnings that never reach anyone who can act (our judgment), and slowness to market (though the book concerns an adaptive enemy, not a market). Lanaj and colleagues and Lee (2022), a quantitative study of start-ups in one industry where a flatter hierarchy could bring haphazard execution, dispute the first two (Matusik and colleagues also, for the queue); Burton and Obel's (2004) prospector configuration rule disputes the third.

Everyone coordinates with everyone (coordination overhead overrun). Davison and colleagues found coordination across component teams could hurt; Nissen's coordination load and Ziegert and colleagues' team conflict (under costs) show the same.

Teams turn inward and the cycle is never closed (siloed knowledge). The form was built to cure this condition, which Campbell and colleagues (2022) found in a coded comparison of 40 archived field cases, all failures: teams aligned within themselves and often left the action cycle incomplete, more so where systems crossed organizational boundaries or had physical goals, two conditions the study could not fully separate.

Its low formalization and decentralized authority fire eight misfit rules, all propositions not tested singly. None of the misfit rules names the form. One is undisputed: authority spread wide misfits an analyzer (Burton and Obel 2004 name the non-innovating one; the explorer's one analyzer level fires it for any, though the strategy cell reads partial). Seven are contested: few written rules in a large organization or a stable environment, and few written standards or authority spread wide in a defender, each disputed by Mintzberg (1980), a synthesis offering propositions without a new test, whose professional bureaucracy runs little formalized and decentralized in large units and stable environments (for the defender, our reading), the stable one also by another Burton and Obel rule; few written standards in an analyzer, disputed by the same book's simple configuration for a small innovating analyzer; routine work without written standards, disputed by Beekun (1989), a meta-analysis of 17 studies, where autonomous groups raised productivity more, with Pasmore and colleagues (1982), a review of 134 reported experiments, and Trist and colleagues (1963), several field studies in one industry, and by Hickson, Pugh, and Pheysey (1969), a multi-organization comparative survey, and Child and Mansfield (1972), a multi-firm comparative study that found size related to structure much more strongly than technology; and the reactor, a defender's strategy on a loose structure, a pairing built here by judgment, disputed by Burton, Obel, and Håkonsson's later book (2015) and, in our reading, by Snow and Hrebiniak (1980), a study of top managers' perceptions in four industries, where the other types outperformed reactors in competitive industries but not a highly regulated one, on data they call only suggestive. Burton, Lauridsen, and Obel (2002), a quantitative study of 224 Danish small and medium-sized firms, tested an earlier version of the rules as a set and found lower return on assets where misfits stood. Volberda and colleagues (2012), a survey of 3,259 respondents in 1,904 companies, found firms in quasi fit gained from improving contingency fit, while firms in perfect institutional fit lost a little striving for it.

What the research found

We found no study that tests the design as such (a search of eight major journals from 2010 on, with web searches), so the entry's evidence status is practitioner. McChrystal and colleagues (2015) is a practitioner's report; the health-care accounts (Zarzaur and colleagues 2020; Kwok and colleagues 2020) are practitioners' reports from single departments early in the COVID-19 pandemic, with no measured outcome in what was read; Zarzaur and colleagues blend the idea with incident command, a machine-bureaucracy variant.

The counterpoint is one longitudinal case study of a Chinese pharmaceutical company (Zhang and colleagues 2022): coordination ran through the leadership team's meetings in two crisis stages, then directly between component teams. The authors propose, untested, that each pattern supported performance in its stage.

Laboratory and exercise studies of multiteam systems test the form's parts, and later work cuts against earlier. Davison and colleagues (2012) qualified Marks and colleagues (2005), as Where it fits sets out. Lanaj and colleagues' (2013) result cuts, in our reading, against the book's claim for empowered execution; the study did not vary interdependence. Firth and colleagues (2015), an intervention study of 249 systems, found within-team and between-team coordination interdependent, not a simple trade-off. DeChurch and Marks (2006), a laboratory experiment with 64 multiteam systems, found leader training improved interteam coordination. Matusik and colleagues challenge nesting systems under a central leadership team. De Vries and colleagues (2016), a laboratory simulation with 236 multiteam systems, found vertical coordination with an integrating team critical for gaining generalist members' benefits without their costs. The 2022 studies by Campbell, Matusik, Ziegert, and Zhang, each with colleagues, are the most recent.

The new-forms debate disputes less-hierarchical forms in general: formalization can enable (Adler and Borys 1996, a conceptual argument with no new test); Foss and Klein (2022) argue in a book that companies need authority and hierarchy to coordinate work; bosses cannot credibly promise not to intervene in delegated decisions, which Foss (2003), one case study, traced behind the partial reversal of Oticon's spaghetti organization; team norms can control more tightly than bureaucracy (Barker 1993, one ethnographic case study); removing formal structure leaves informal hierarchy (Freeman 1972, an argument first given as a talk; Diefenbach and Sillince 2011, a conceptual analysis). The dissent panel disputes fit itself, and Donaldson (2001) replies.

The evidence ledger holds 17 studies filed under this form.

In practice: one published case

Shultz (2016) is one case study of Task Force 714, the United States counterterrorism force in Iraq and the organization McChrystal and colleagues describe. It draws on McChrystal's two books and on interviews with the task force's leaders, so it is not independent of their account.

When the task force faced an al-Qaeda in Iraq insurgency it could not defeat with its existing methods, it partnered with intelligence agencies in a joint interagency task force. It shed its top-down style of command for decentralized authority and problem solving from below, adopted a find, fix, finish, exploit, analyze, and disseminate cycle, and its leaders became, in the source's words, "eyes-on, hands-off enablers."

Its tempo rose from 18 raids in August 2004 to about 300 a month by August 2006, sustained from 2006 to 2009. Shultz reports that its operations seriously degraded al-Qaeda in Iraq's networks, and he credits the counterinsurgency strategy, the surge, and the awakening movement as further causes of the fall in violence.

In the source's conclusion, the task force succeeded by adopting the characteristics of a learning organization and transforming itself, reaching what General Odierno called the "irreducible minimum": the enemy greatly weakened but still able to carry out periodic attacks.

Source: Shultz 2016. Military Innovation in War: It Takes a Learning Organization. A Case Study of Task Force 714 in Iraq, JSOU Report 16-6, Joint Special Operations University Press, MacDill Air Force Base, FL; one case study.

Variants and near relatives

Multiteam system (Mathieu, Marks, and Zaccaro 2001): two or more teams that interface directly and interdependently toward collective goals, each pursuing its own proximal goals while sharing at least one distal goal. In our reading it describes such systems without prescribing how to join them.

Teaming (Edmondson 2012): the flexible, fluid collaborations through which, Edmondson argues, organizations learn, so the leader's task shifts from creating teams to leading teaming. It crosses shifting boundaries, where a team of teams joins standing teams. In our reading, teaming differs from the Adhocracy in keeping leaders, while the adhocracy, in its permanent kind, makes a shifting pool of experts the whole structure, with no stable line above it.

Edge organization (Alberts and Hayes 2003): power moves to the edge: information is widely shared and peer-to-peer relationships predominate. In our reading, its peer-to-peer relationships span the whole force, whereas a team of teams links standing teams through liaisons and a common operating picture.

The Linking-pin organization (System 4) is the nearest neighbor. It joins groups through people who belong to two: managers between levels and, in its cross-function work groups, a subordinate between functions. A team of teams places liaisons too, but in our reading it differs by sharing information about the whole with every team at once.

Relatives: the Team-based organization designs the whole organization as teams joined by integrating teams, where this form uses shared consciousness and liaisons; the Self-managing organization removes the manager-subordinate relationship, which this form keeps; and Agile at scale coordinates teams by a shared, fixed cadence.

Moving into or out of it

The task force made its changes over about two years (Shultz 2016).

Zhang and colleagues propose, from their staged case, changing coordination as conditions change; and Burton and Obel's rules call for high centralization at extreme hostility, maybe only temporarily.

In Hannan and Freeman's (1984) theory, attempts at reorganization raise death rates, and reorganization sets the liability of newness clock back toward zero. Amburgey, Kelly, and Barnett (1993), a quantitative study of organizational change and failure rates, find the effects of change vary by type and over time.

No study we found covers moving out of the form. Change & Transformation covers how to run the reorganization.

The thinking behind it

Stanley McChrystal, with Tantum Collins, David Silverman, and Chris Fussell, Team of Teams (2015): a network of small teams joined by shared awareness and empowered execution; the form's source, practitioner lore.

David S. Alberts and Richard E. Hayes (2003): the edge organization. Mark E. Nissen (2005) simulated it.

Michelle A. Marks and John E. Mathieu (2005): cross-team processes predicted multiteam performance. Leslie A. DeChurch (2006): leader training improved interteam coordination.

Klodiana Lanaj and John R. Hollenbeck (2013): decentralization's double edge, untested on this design. Robert B. Davison (2012): coordinated action in multiteam systems, which can hurt. Brady M. Firth (2015): representational gaps between teams, which training is theorized to narrow. Thomas A. de Vries (2016): vertical coordination through an integrating team. James G. Matusik (2022): hierarchy easing load but weakening horizontal coordination. Jonathan C. Ziegert (2022): balancing interaction within and between teams. Lauren N. P. Campbell and Stephen J. Zaccaro (2022): why multiteam systems fail, teams aligned within, not between.

Richard H. Shultz Jr. (2016): Task Force 714 as a learning organization. Ya-Wei Zhang (2022): coordination patterns changed as a crisis passed.

Amy C. Edmondson (2012): learning on the fly across shifting boundaries. J. Richard Hackman (2002): the conditions of one team's performance, taken as given here.

Richard M. Burton and Børge Obel (2004): the multi-contingency fit model and its misfit rules. Michael T. Hannan (1984): structural inertia.

Also called

Network of teams. The health-care reports write "team of teams approach" (Kwok and colleagues 2020) and "team-of-teams approach" (Zarzaur and colleagues 2020). De Vries and colleagues (2016) write "teams of teams" for the multiteam system; calling the multiteam system a variant, not a synonym, is our reading.

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