Teams are the source and repository of organizational “how-to” practical knowledge. An organization’s purpose splits and cascades down through the executive strategic team levels and on into the tactical teams of line leadership and staff executing the work, which are the vast majority of teams.

Internally, it is the flow of work that dominates. As teams self-organize their work they chunk their purpose, which is what "goals" and "tasks" are whether named or not. Task chunks, then, are undertaken by one or more people of the team. For a complex assignment, there is a multiplicity of sub-teams where each team member plays a multiplicity of roles.

This process is often so fluid and “obvious” to members that there is no need to write down how tasks flow and what roles team member play to carry them out. However, what usually works in a collocated world does not in a virtual one. And organizations do not get any smarter when all the tactical knowledge of how something gets done walks out the door with the team.