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By MICHAEL OLEAry, MArK MOrTENSEN and ANITA WOOLLEy

Working Together Effectively Before It All Goes Downhill

MULTIPLE TEAM MEMBERSHIP

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iEsEinsight52 THIRD QUARTER 2010 IssUE 6

Multiple team membership (MTM) is a reality in todays workplace, with high-value employees lending their ex-pertise to a variety of project teams. An estimated 65 percent of knowledge work-ers in the United states and Europe, for example, engage in MTM to some degree. But what is the effect of MTM on productivity and learning for individuals, teams and, ultimately, organizations? Ac-cording to the authors, three mediators context switching, temporal misalignment and intra-organizational connec-

tivity affect the allocation of attention and the flow of infor-mation at the individual, team and organizational levels, respectively. Understanding the role each plays is critical to ensure project success and avoid employee burnout. The authors suggest that MTM has an inverted U-shaped ef-fect at all three levels that is, there comes a point when the benefits derived from MTM tip over into costs. Mod-eration is key for managers hoping to bolster the effec-tiveness of MTM in their own organizations.

executive summary

So just how prevalent is MTM? MTM ap-pears to be the norm for at least 65 percent of knowledge workers across a wide range of in-dustries and occupations in the United States and Europe; some even put it closer to 95 per-cent in some industries. While MTM seems especially common in information technol-ogy, software development, new product de-velopment and consulting, it appears to be widespread in other spheres, too, including education, auto repair and health care. Given this prevalence, we propose a model to help managers gain a deeper understanding of the challenges and benefits of MTM, with the aim of bolstering its effectiveness in organizations.

Challenges and BenefitsMTM affects every aspect of the workplace at individual, team and organizational levels, introducing many significant challenges, risks and benefits.

At the individual level, MTM requires a high level of self-discipline and interpersonal com-petence, in addition to task-based expertise. Individual members must be able to multi-task and negotiate competing demands on their time, which is not always easy, as one person we interviewed attested: I am slapped about the head and shoulders regularly by different proj-ect leaders to spend more time on their task well, so then you feel bad, so then you try to put in a few more hours.

Despite such demands, MTM does provide opportunities for employees to shape their own careers by joining projects related to ex-pertise they have or want to develop. Another interviewee put it this way: A lot of what hap-pens in your work program is that you are an au-tonomous person, an entrepreneur within the confines of an organization that puts people to good use. Some of the projects that Im starting now are sort of seeds for additional things.

At the team level, MTM similarly involves scheduling challenges and time management issues. Conflicting demands mean that teams are constantly vying for each others time and attention.

T eams form an integral part of to-days organizational design. Al-though a lot of research has been done to evaluate optimal team structure, priorities and collaboration, much of this research assumes that people are mem-bers of one team at a time, able to focus all of their energies on that teams task without competing commitments. In practice, how-ever, people are often members of more than one team.

We use the term multiple team membership (MTM) to describe the situation in which in-dividuals are concurrently members of two or more teams within a given time. Individuals, their teams and organizations must learn to manage the challenges and benefits that arise from MTM, which is becoming commonplace as organizations become flatter, more project-based and more geographically dispersed. MTM offers the potential to enhance learning and productivity in organizations, but only if managed effectively. As the popularity of MTM grows, managers must focus greater attention on how to make these team structures work.

MTM affects every aspect of the workplace at individual, team and organizational levels, introducing many significant challenges, risks and benefits.

EXPERT insight Working TogeTher effecTively Before iT All goes DoWnhill

iEsEinsight 53 IssUE 6 THIRD QUARTER 2010

six WAys MArkeTing cAn chAnge The WorlD

But, again, theres a flip side: MTM can benefit teams through cross-project learning. As one interviewee noted, I think the projects benefit from members being able to bring best practices and lessons learned from other proj-ects to bear on their problems. In addition, projects operating in MTM environments ben-efit from being able to afford special exper-tise that would be too costly if acquired outside the organization or through a dedicated, full-time employee.

For organizations, MTM is complicated to coordinate. Not only must the total effort be estimated and matched to individual workers, but the timing of that effort must also be coor-dinated among projects. Slippage in one proj-ect can create a domino effect, as the work on other projects needs to shift to accommodate unanticipated difficulties or delays. Keeping managerial roles reasonable in such an envi-ronment is a challenge. With knowledge and

Michael OLeary is an assis-tant professor at Georgetown Universitys McDonough school of Business and for-merly assistant professor of organization studies at Bos-ton Colleges Carroll school of Management. He also worked as a management consultant for Coopers & Lybrand, and a policy analyst in Washington, D.C. He holds a Ph.D. in Organization stud-ies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Mark Mortensen is an assis-tant professor of Organiza-tion studies at the MIT sloan school of Management and at INsEAD in Fontainebleau, France. His research explores

new team structures that do not fit historical models of team dynamics, yet are increasingly prevalent in todays globally dispersed, fast-moving economy. He holds a Ph.D. in Organiza-tion studies from stanford University.

Anita Woolley is an assis-tant professor of Organiza-tional Behavior & Theory at Carnegie Mellons Tepper school of Business. Her re-search focuses on collabora-tive analysis and problem-solving in teams, collective intelligence, and managing multiple team memberships. she holds a Ph.D. from Har-vard University.

about the authors

expertise highly valued, managers are rarely able to just manage, but are expected and want to contribute as well. As a result, manage-rial roles become unwieldy and individuals be-come overextended. The detriment to doing (MTM) plus managing is quality of work life and home life. You are stressed and you dont have enough time, lamented one manager.

Having said that, in contexts where learn-ing is valued but opportunities for official promotion are scarce, MTM can enrich social networks and be a valuable motivational tool. As one interviewee commented, Ive gotten to a point where I am not going to go any higher in the company and I am at a point in my life where I dont want to spend time on something unless I enjoy the work and I enjoy the people so I find projects I enjoy.

Productivity and LearningFor MTM to have a positive impact, it must be employed in moderation. Otherwise, concur-rent membership in either very few or very many project teams presents obstacles to both productivity and learning.

At the individual level, members feel the effects of MTM most acutely when they fre-quently switch their focus from one team con-text to another. For teams, the effects of MTM on productivity and learning are experienced through temporal misalignment, meaning the lack of overlap or contiguous blocks of time in team members schedules prevents them from focusing on the task or engaging in real-time idea generation, problem solving or decision making. At the organizational level, MTMs ef-fects are mediated by the degree to which teams are interconnected through shared team mem-bers.

MTM increases context switching, tem-poral misalignment and intra-organizational connectivity, which, in turn, affects produc-tivity and learning. The effects on productiv-ity and learning generally follow inverted U-shaped patterns, with the highest productivity and learning occurring with moderate levels of MTM. See Figure 1.

For MTM to have a positive impact, it must be employed in moderation. Otherwise, concurrent membership in either very few or very many project teams presents obstacles.



context switching. As the number of concur-rent team memberships increases, the extent to which individuals must shift their attention between different team contexts increases. A teams context encompasses its tasks, technol-ogies, roles, locations and routines. No matter how similar any of the teams may be, the more teams one is on, the more context switching one will do. It is also important to recognize the variety in team contexts, as well as the dynam-ics and the frequency of the switches between them.

Research suggests that there is an invert-ed U-shaped relationship between context switching and individual productivity, result-ing from the competing benefits of load-bal-ancing and finding efficiencies, and the costs of shifting attention. When individuals are on only one team at a time, the natural ebbs and flows of the teams work may leave them with more free time in their schedule than is desir-able, or lead them to spend more time on tasks than is truly required. As such, MTM provides meaningful intervening work between proj-ects; employees can offset ebbs in one teams work with the flows of another.

However, too much switching or switching

between contexts that are too varied is detri-mental. As individuals become members of more teams, context switching can exact con-siderable costs in terms of time, mental energy and, ultimately, productivity. For individuals to be optimally productive, they must find the sweet spot of switching periodically among a moderate variety of team contexts.

Context switching also has an inverted U-shaped effect on individual learning. When in-dividuals are on several teams and those teams are reasonably varied, they can learn from the practices used and information gained in each team. This is akin to the benefits traditionally associated with job rotation, but those benefits are achieved much more rapidly with MTM. Conversely, when people are only members of one team at a time, it undercuts the poten-tial for them to learn in real time from team to team.

At the other end of the spectrum, when individuals levels of MTM get too high, they are so consumed by managing their switches among teams that they have insufficient time left to integrate and learn from the information that those teams provide.temporal misalignment. A teams temporal

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P: Productivity / L: Learning

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L

P

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Tipping the BalanceIF MTM IS NOT MODERATED, THE POSITIVE EFFECTS OF MTM ON

PRODUCTIVITY & LEARNING CAN BE UNDERMINED.

FIGURE 1

MEDIATORFEEDBACK LOOPS

Organization

Team

Individual

Better use of resources

More info flows

Tipping Point

Efficient work practices

Diversity of experiences, uniqueness

Too tightly coupled

Less info diversity

Coordination costs, less synchronous work

Difficulty integrating new team repertoires

Efficiencies, load-balance

More info and stimulation

Time loss, role conflict, overload

Too much info, no time to integrate

More people spread across more teams to leverage resources

Low productivity leads to more members being added to the team

Creates stars and experts who get recruited onto more teams

INTRA - ORGANIZATIONAL

CONNECTIVITY

TEMPORAL MISALIGNMENT

CONTEXT SWITCHINGP

L

Benefits Costs




misalignment is the extent to which team members do not have: 1) overlapping work schedules, such that members ability to work synchronously is limited, leading to schedule slippage; and/or 2) temporally contiguous blocks of time devoted to the teams work, such that team members are ready to receive a hand-off of work from a teammate and proceed with their portion of the task without a lag.

As MTM increases, so does temporal mis-alignment. When members have less than 100 percent of their time to work on any given team, productivity may face challenges. Team coordination processes are fragile, and high temporal misalignment can quickly drive down productivity.

However, MTM can have positive ef-fects on productivity as well, mainly when a team becomes more efficient by adopting and adapting successful work practices from members other team memberships.

MTM can benefit team learning by allow-ing members to have unshared experience and periodic time apart, which increases the uniqueness of their information.

One challenge that teams face with high levels of MTM, however, is that temporal misalignment stands to impede a teams abil-ity to integrate the diverse knowledge it has gathered. Again, moderation is key: moderate levels of MTM help teams achieve the highest levels of productivity and learning. intra-organizational connectivity. Just as MTM affects individual and team learning and productivity, it affects the organization as a whole, too. As the teams within an organiza-tion become increasingly interconnected via shared members, the organization becomes better able to shift staff fluidly and quickly from team to team without incurring the costs typically brought about by restructuring or re-assigning resources. Such sharing of portions of employees time optimizes resources by us-ing up organizational slack, which is the sup-ply of uncommitted resources in the organi-zation. Intra-organizational connectivity may also boost productivity by preventing redun-

dant work across projects, if team members recognize when doing a particular task would replicate something already done by another team.

As the level of MTM increases, however, the benefits diminish. Coordination costs increase, and delays or crises in one project can reverberate across other projects, as at-tention and time are diverted to deal with the problems.

Regarding learning, as intra-organiza-tional connectivity increases, organizations have more paths along which information can flow. This increases the likelihood that any two potentially complementary pieces of in-formation will be brought together, reducing the likelihood that potentially valuable infor-mation would get stuck in one part of the or-ganization and lost. People will carry lessons learned across units. Managers at higher levels will have more sources of information about various projects and their staff. More oppor-tunities will exist for the propagation of ideas across the organization.

But while intra-organizational connectiv-ity results in information diffusing more rap-idly, it also tends to reduce the diversity of that information. As argued by numerous scholars, the stronger and more multiplex the ties be-tween any two entities, the more homogenous and redundant their information is likely to end up being.

The extent to which these dynamics play out is moderated by a variety of factors. For example, individuals having some control over their own schedules and being able to make wise decisions about when and how to switch from team to team appears to be criti-cal. Among other things, switches appear to be less problematic when individuals do not do so mid-task. Granted, when it comes to a high-profile team project, individuals may have little choice but to shift their attention to that project. But for those with high levels of personal schedule control, the relationships among switching frequency, productivity and learning may be weaker.

Individuals having some control over their own schedules and being able to make wise decisions about when and how to switch from team to team appears to be critical.



The More the Merrier?In addition to the effects of MTM on individ-ual, team and organizational productivity and learning, there are feedback loops in which those effects increase the overall level of MTM. These feedback loops drive the rate at which productivity and learning benefits and costs accrue at each level.

At the individual level, both productivity and learning will lead to an increase in MTM. Individuals productivity provides an indica-tion of their ability to accomplish tasks, and their learning affects the extent to which they are viewed as an expert. Star individuals who are more productive across multiple teams are more likely to be noticed, sought after and placed on more teams, thereby increasing MTM.

By contrast, at the team level, productivity losses will spawn increased MTM as manage-ment responds to team difficulties by adding more staff resources to address the problem.

At the organizational level, productivity deficits will encourage more MTM but as a means to stretch current resources further and boost overall resource utilization.

The precise number of teams at which the tipping points between benefits and costs oc-cur will vary depending on work environment, but there do appear to be a number of things that individuals, teams and organizations can do to maximize the potential benefits and minimize the potential costs of multiple team membership.

Conditions for successThere are six conditions that will increase the chances of MTM yielding positive outcomes for individuals, teams and organizations.staffing. It is vital to recruit individuals with proper social and task management skills. With the right people, performance standards can be kept high by making people accountable for producing good work as they are effectively hired for each MTM project. structure. Task and team structure must be amenable to MTM. Projects ripe for MTM gen-

erally have the following characteristics: they are more mature (not early-stage); they are modular, in which individuals can work sepa-rately on assigned pieces to be recombined later; and they have predictable deadlines and a work pace punctuated by regular meetings or checkpoints. When the structure works, every-one knows it: We all came in and knew what to do The expectations were clear, the product was clear. If I showed up to work on something as someone else was finishing up, there was a system for leaving comments so I knew where to start. It was all well thought out and coor-dinated.trust. There must be high familiarity and trust among team members and between the teams and their clients. One interviewee said, Know-ing the people ahead of time is a critical success factor. We could not have done that project successfully if we were trying to cobble to-gether a team of people who had never worked together. communications. Appropriate and adequate or-ganizational information and communications systems are critical. As one interviewee noted, Most of the time, people juggle two or three projects so that creates some interesting challenges in terms of how do you get people together in a room to have a conversation? How can you most effectively use the technology, because a lot of the collaboration technologies are not available if you are working on a client site on another project? We have to be really resourceful and creative to make sure we keep everyone tuned in.

Centralized planning software, for exam-ple, can coordinate the workloads of individu-als involved in different projects. Some com-panies make e-mail, intranet and file server systems accessible from off-site, and provide employees with laptops to facilitate distrib-uted work.culture. Successful MTM depends on an orga-nizational climate that permits access to the information needed to match projects with individual skills. Open discussions about proj-ects, networking groups, topic-oriented list-

Projects ripe for MTM are generally modular, in which individuals can work separately on assigned pieces to be recombined later, with predictable deadlines and regular checkpoints.




n OLeary, M., M. Mortensen and A. Woolley. Multiple Team Membership: A Theoretical Model of Its Effects on Productivity and Learning for Individuals, Teams and Organizations. MIT sloan school Working Paper 4752-09.

n Mortensen, M., A. Woolley and M. OLeary. Conditions Enabling Effective Multiple Team Membership. In Virtuality and Virtualization, edited by K. Crowston, s. sieber and E. Wynn. Vol. 236 of the IFIP International Federation for Information Processing, 215-28. Boston: springer, 2007.

to know more

servs and intranet portals on which employees post their rsums or project information are all useful tools.

Our company has these networking lunch-es, explained one interviewee. Ive made a lot of contacts with people to find projects and find people to work on my projects.systems. The availability of a system to help load-balance project assignments ensures that MTM works smoothly. Managers might have weekly meetings with their staff and/or other managers to review project workloads and an-ticipate difficulties. Such mechanisms help to avoid the stress that workers often experience in MTM settings and ensure that projects get the effort and attention they require.

Tips for ManagersManagers actions make a major difference to how effectively these environments operate, and how well the relationships between MTM and context switching, temporal misalignment and connectivity are moderated. To maximize the upside of MTM while minimizing its down-side, there are several tips that practitioners should bear in mind. know your employees. Managers knowledge of employees team assignments is crucial to pri-oritizing when deadlines conflict.develop effective schedules. Managers can help employees and teams develop schedules and practices that keep context switching and team temporal misalignment at moderate levels. The provision of tools and systems that automate administrative tasks can also help to moderate levels of context switching and temporal misalignment.spell out roles. Managers who define differ-ent types of roles on a team can help employ-ees prioritize their time and set expectations about meeting attendance.understand what works. Understanding the attributes of individuals, and of project struc-tures that best lend themselves to MTM en-vironments, can increase the probability of success. Self-discipline, organizational skills and a high tolerance for ambiguity are likely

to be especially valuable in MTM environ-ments.avoid too many assignments. Although eager individuals may join too many teams for their own good, voluntary MTM is likely to have better results than mandatory assignment to multiple teams.encourage dialogue. Good information and regular, early, honest dialogue about every-ones commitments and goals are likely to improve the results of MTM. Information transparency is vital for teams to be able to schedule their members time and coordinate processes effectively. This is as important at the organizational level as it is at the individ-ual and team levels.

This latter point is critical. Yes, to get the most out of MTM, you must have the other systems and processes in place. But without transparency and accurate information, the feedback loops and inverted U-shaped rela-tionships described earlier are likely to lead to failure at multiple levels. MTM has the potential to generate its own vicious cycle, and managers must strive against fueling it themselves. Managers will know they have succeeded when their employees no longer feel slapped about the head and shoulders by their multiple team commitments.

Good information and regular, early, honest dialogue about everyones commitments and goals are likely to improve the results of MTM. Information transparency is vital.



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