People have always worked in small groups. Teams are small groups with tasks. Organizational hierarchies are natural team structures, where each member position has a place as part of a team composed of the boss and all direct reports. These team structures, which may function as resource or workflow teams, are interlocked because each manager with a team is part of a higher-level manager’s team, except for the root manager (e.g., the CEO).
Management teams are inherent in hierarchies, but are only the starting point for mapping all the specialized small groups—e.g., projects, committees, councils—that make up the working organization and the daily lives of the people in them.
All managers are line managers with respect to their direct reports in the organizational hierarchy who function, relatively speaking, as staff members to that leader. Executive leadership positions function simultaneously as representatives of organizations, leaders of teams, and staff members to a leader.
Teams as a unit of analysis are formal organization structures (i.e., authorizations, budgets, explicit shares of people’s time). As units, teams can be represented through the position acting in the team leader role. Hence a map of positions with reporting and other types of links can stand for the team structures and processes inherent in the organization.
However, within the organizational architecture, teams are very real and very concrete, traditionally represented in a shared team space. Which is why team rooms are so important.
