“In today’s complex and evolving business environment, many companies are creating flat teams…” 
XPLANE consultant Nina Narelle was interviewed for a short piece in Work magazine this winter in response to her piece The Silent Killer of Flat Teams The article reads…
“Without any one member directing the others, “these teams hold the promise of agility, innovation and speed – the magic trifecta in a rapidly shifting market”, says Nina Narelle. But flat teams often fail to liveup to this promise because businesses treat them like machines, applying rules and processes as inputs and expecting predictable outputs. Describing tensions between the horizontal nature of the teams and the hierarchical businesses in which they operate as “growing pains” in the evolution of new ways of structuring work, Narelle predicts that one day companies will continually move along a spectrum of organisational structures. Meanwhile, members of flat teams need to develop new ways of working. “To truly leverage the potential, each member must be willing to show up with all of their insights, curiosities and hesitations,” says Narelle. “They must be willing to hold each member of the team accountable, as well as be willing to be held accountable themselves.” Business leaders, she adds, can help flat teams succeed by explaining why horizontal structures require new behaviour and modelling this themselves.”
Interview originally posted in the Winter 2016 Work magazine.
Download a PDF of the Perspectives section of Work here.