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insight

MULTIPLE TEAM MEMBERSHIP

Working Together
Effectively Before It
All Goes Downhill

Illustration by LUCIANO LOZANO raya

By MICHAEL OLEARY, MARK MORTENSEN and ANITA WOOLLEY

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THIRD QUARTER 2010 issue 6

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EXPERT insight

Working Together Effectively Before It All Goes Downhill

MTM affects every aspect of the workplace

at individual, team and organizational levels,
introducing many significant challenges, risks
and benefits.

eams form an integral part of todays organizational design. Although a lot of research has been
done to evaluate optimal team
structure, priorities and collaboration, much
of this research assumes that people are members of one team at a time, able to focus all of
their energies on that teams task without
competing commitments. In practice, however, people are often members of more than
one team.
We use the term multiple team membership
(MTM) to describe the situation in which individuals 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 projectbased 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.

executive summary

Multiple team membership

(MTM) is a reality in todays
workplace, with high-value
employees lending their expertise to a variety of project
teams. An estimated 65
percent of knowledge workers 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? According to the authors, three
mediators context switching,
temporal misalignment and
intra-organizational connecieseinsight

tivity affect the allocation of

attention and the flow of information 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 effect at all three levels that is,
there comes a point when the
benefits derived from MTM
tip over into costs. Moderation is key for managers
hoping to bolster the effectiveness of MTM in their own
organizations.

So just how prevalent is MTM? MTM appears to be the norm for at least 65 percent of
knowledge workers across a wide range of industries and occupations in the United States
and Europe; some even put it closer to 95 percent in some industries. While MTM seems
especially common in information technology, software development, new product development 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 Benefits

MTM 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 competence, 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 project 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 expertise they have or want to develop. Another
interviewee put it this way: A lot of what happens in your work program is that you are an autonomous 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.
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EXPERT insight

Working
Six
Together
Ways Marketing
Effectively
CanBefore
Change
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World
Downhill

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.
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 projects to bear on their problems. In addition,
projects operating in MTM environments benefit from being able to afford special expertise that would be too costly if acquired outside
the organization or through a dedicated, fulltime 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 coordinated among projects. Slippage in one project 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 environment is a challenge. With knowledge and
about the authors

Michael OLeary is an assistant professor at Georgetown

Universitys McDonough
School of Business and formerly assistant professor of
organization studies at Boston 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 Studies from the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology.
Mark Mortensen is an assistant professor of Organization Studies at the MIT Sloan
School of Management and
at INSEAD in Fontainebleau,
France. His research explores

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third QUARTER 2010 issue 6

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 Organization Studies from Stanford
University.
Anita Woolley is an assistant professor of Organizational Behavior & Theory at
Carnegie Mellons Tepper
School of Business. Her research focuses on collaborative analysis and problemsolving in teams, collective
intelligence, and managing
multiple team memberships.
She holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University.

expertise highly valued, managers are rarely

able to just manage, but are expected and
want to contribute as well. As a result, managerial roles become unwieldy and individuals become 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 learning 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 Learning

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 to both
productivity and learning.
At the individual level, members feel the
effects of MTM most acutely when they frequently switch their focus from one team context 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 effects are mediated by the degree to which teams
are interconnected through shared team members.
MTM increases context switching, temporal misalignment and intra-organizational
connectivity, which, in turn, affects productivity and learning. The effects on productivity and learning generally follow inverted Ushaped patterns, with the highest productivity
and learning occurring with moderate levels of
MTM. See Figure 1.
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Working Together Effectively Before It All Goes Downhill

Tipping Point

FIGURE 1

Tipping the Balance

IF MTM IS NOT MODERATED, THE POSITIVE EFFECTS OF MTM ON

PRODUCTIVITY & LEARNING CAN BE UNDERMINED.

++
Benefits +

M E D I ATOR

F E E D B AC K
LO O P S

- --

Costs

Organization
P

Better use of resources

More info flows

Efficient work practices

Diversity of experiences,
uniqueness

Team

Individual
P
L

Efficiencies,
load-balance

INTRA ORGANIZATIONAL
CONNECTIVITY

TEMPORAL
MISALIGNMENT

CONTEXT
SWITCHING

More info and

stimulation

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

Too tightly coupled

Less info diversity

Coordination costs, less

synchronous work
Difficulty integrating new
team repertoires
Time loss, role conflict,
overload
Too much info, no time to
integrate

P: Productivity / L: Learning

context switching . As the number of concurrent team memberships increases, the extent
to which individuals must shift their attention
between different team contexts increases. A
teams context encompasses its tasks, technologies, 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 dynamics and the frequency of the switches between
them.
Research suggests that there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between context
switching and individual productivity, resulting from the competing benefits of load-balancing 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 desirable, or lead them to spend more time on tasks
than is truly required. As such, MTM provides
meaningful intervening work between projects; employees can offset ebbs in one teams
work with the flows of another.
However, too much switching or switching

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between contexts that are too varied is detrimental. As individuals become members of
more teams, context switching can exact considerable 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 Ushaped effect on individual learning. When individuals 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 potential 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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EXPERT insight

Working
Six
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Effectively
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It All
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World
Downhill

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.
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 handoff of work from a teammate and proceed with
their portion of the task without a lag.
As MTM increases, so does temporal misalignment. 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 effects 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 allowing 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 ability 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 organization 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 reassigning resources. Such sharing of portions
of employees time optimizes resources by using up organizational slack, which is the supply of uncommitted resources in the organization. Intra-organizational connectivity may
also boost productivity by preventing redun-

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third QUARTER 2010 issue 6

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 attention and time are diverted to deal with the
problems.
Regarding learning, as intra-organizational connectivity increases, organizations
have more paths along which information can
flow. This increases the likelihood that any
two potentially complementary pieces of information will be brought together, reducing
the likelihood that potentially valuable information would get stuck in one part of the organization 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 opportunities will exist for the propagation of ideas
across the organization.
But while intra-organizational connectivity results in information diffusing more rapidly, it also tends to reduce the diversity of that
information. As argued by numerous scholars,
the stronger and more multiplex the ties between 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 critical. 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.
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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.
The More the Merrier?
In addition to the effects of MTM on individual, 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 indication 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 management 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 occur 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 Success

There 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 genieseinsight

erally have the following characteristics: they

are more mature (not early-stage); they are
modular, in which individuals can work separately 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, everyone 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 coordinated.
trust. There must be high familiarity and trust
among team members and between the teams
and their clients. One interviewee said, Knowing the people ahead of time is a critical success
factor. We could not have done that project
successfully if we were trying to cobble together a team of people who had never worked
together.
communications. Appropriate and adequate organizational 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 example, can coordinate the workloads of individuals involved in different projects. Some companies make e-mail, intranet and file server
systems accessible from off-site, and provide
employees with laptops to facilitate distributed work.
culture. Successful MTM depends on an organizational climate that permits access to the
information needed to match projects with
individual skills. Open discussions about projects, networking groups, topic-oriented listissue 6 third QUARTER 2010

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EXPERT insight

Working
Six
Together
Ways Marketing
Effectively
CanBefore
Change
It All
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World
Downhill

Good information and regular, early, honest dialogue

about everyones commitments and goals are
likely to improve the results of MTM. Information
transparency is vital.
servs and intranet portals on which employees
post their rsums or project information are
all useful tools.
Our company has these networking lunches, 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 anticipate 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 Managers

Managers 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 downside, there are several tips that practitioners
should bear in mind.
know your employees. Managers knowledge of
employees team assignments is crucial to prioritizing 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 different types of roles on a team can help employees prioritize their time and set expectations
about meeting attendance.
understand what works . Understanding the
attributes of individuals, and of project structures that best lend themselves to MTM environments, can increase the probability of
success. Self-discipline, organizational skills
and a high tolerance for ambiguity are likely

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third QUARTER 2010 issue 6

to be especially valuable in MTM environments.

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 everyones 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 individual 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 relationships 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.
to know more
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.
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.
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