Percentage of Extra-Dependent Teams in Organisations

Extra-Dependent Teams: an interesting anomaly or an unrecognised pillar in organisations? 

The need

When I was first interested in Extra-Dependent Teams (I hadn’t given them that name by this point), I thought that they would be a rare occurrence.  I was interested in them because I had been in several such teams, but no-one had ever acknowledged they were different from the norm.  

So when I set out to explore the numbers of teams that were Inter-Dependent or Extra-Dependent within organisations, I wasn’t expecting much.  

The method

My method was simple.  I approached three organisations where I knew people who worked there and who had an understanding of  Inter-Dependent and Extra-Dependent Teams.  I was also mindful to approach people from organisations diverse from each other in terms of industry and organisation-type.  I therefore approached a software development company with a global workforce, a division of a pharmaceutical company and a public sector organisation.  

I got people in each organisation to talk me through their organisational structure - their organogram - which consisted of line reporting relationships and job title.  We focused on managers and their direct reports.  Irrespective of the job title, I would ask the person if the direct reports consisted of people who did different things or similar things.  The organogram presented some clues, but I asked the person inside the organisation to decide based on their knowledge of each team.  No person knew every team in detail.  But they had a reasonable idea based on the way the organisation worked, and in two cases, we limited the organisation to a division that was familiar to the person.  

Together we categorised each team based on the following criteria:

• Inter-Dependent Team - for teams consisting of 80% people who fulfilled different roles
• Extra-Dependent Team - for teams consisting of 80% people who fulfilled similar roles
• Mixed Team - for teams below the 80% threshold in each case

The 80% threshold of similarity or difference was high to ensure that I could identify the teams as distinctly Inter-Dependent and clearly Extra-Dependent.   

The results

The results were very surprising.   In one organisation Inter-Dependent Teams accounted for 59% of all teams.  Based on various research that claim interdependence is a universal aspiration for all teams, this was what I was expecting to see, with the remainder consisting of Mixed and Extra-Dependent Teams, in that order of frequency.

However, the remaining teams were all Extra-Dependent.  There were no Mixed teams.  This was a pharmaceutical company.  Without being fully aware, the organisation had created teams based either on differences or on similarities.  

The other two organisations were equally surprising.  In the software organisation, Extra-Dependent Teams accounted for nearly the same proportion of teams as the pharmaceutical company - 44%.  In both cases Extra-Dependent Teams accounted for a significant minority of all teams.  

What made this even more interesting, was the proportion of Inter-Dependent Teams.  They only accounted for 20% of all teams within the organisation.  This was completely at odds with my expectations.   Even when the 28% of Mixed teams were added, they constituted less than half of all teams.  It suggested heavily that Extra-Dependent Teams were a major factor in how teaming happened in this organisation.  

But that paled into insignificance compared to the public sector organisation.  To my utter surprise, Extra-Dependent Teams accounted for 69% of all teams, with Inter-Dependent Teams only accounting for 12%.   

But what does this mean? 

The insights

I believe there are a number of important insights that this provides us:

1. Inter-Dependent and Extra-Dependent Teams are already present in a wide variety of organisations.  They haven’t been deliberately designed in.  But unconsciously, people put teams of difference and teams of similarity together.  The question this poses is, what potential could be realised if this unconscious design was conscious?  What silos could be pulled down?  What trust, energy and performance could be realised through how these two teams interact and create value together? 

2. Extra-Dependent Teams are prevalent.  They aren’t just an obscure anomaly.  Instead, their frequency indicates they hold key capabilities for organisations.  This poses the question if the organisation is treating them conventionally, what potential is not being realised through them being treated as if they are Inter-Dependent Teams?  

Conclusions

While I acknowledge that this is only three organisations, it is fascinating that all three showed very strong proportions of Extra-Dependent Teams.  Clearly this is an area for further study.  Practically, this might simply be a case of an organisation conducting its own research process to identify percentages of Inter-Dependent and Extra-Dependent Teams.  This would be powerful for that organisation, its Inter-Dependent and Extra-Dependent team leaders and team members.   It is particularly important to realise that for all the writing on teams and teaming in organisations, teams of similarity just aren’t recognised.  And the conventional approach of focusing on individual differences in order to develop a team, has far less to offer than we might initially have assumed.   What hidden potential could be realised if an organisation recognised the teams that made it and developed each type differently? 

 

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