Teams are often encouraged to choose a structure—either flatten decision-making to promote collaboration or rely on hierarchy to drive clarity and execution. New research from Lindy Greer, Michigan Ross professor and faculty director of the Sanger Leadership Center, suggests that the most effective teams don’t lock themselves into one approach. Instead, they adapt.
In the study Team Hierarchical Adaptability: Benefits for Team Coordination Behaviors and Performance Outcomes, Greer and her co-authors—Nicole Abi-Esber and Annebel H. B. De Hoogh—introduce the concept of team hierarchical adaptability. They define it as a team’s ability to repeatedly and bidirectionally shift how influence and decision-making are structured (more hierarchical or more flat) as tasks change, even while the formal hierarchy remains the same.
Across five multi-method studies—including field data from intact teams and a laboratory experiment—the researchers find that teams that could shift between command-and-control and flat modes coordinate more effectively and achieve stronger performance outcomes than teams that remain consistently hierarchical or consistently flat. The takeaway for leaders is clear: effective teamwork isn’t about choosing the “right” structure once, but about knowing when and how to adjust as work evolves.