While it's natural to think that success might lead to more success, Tom Taiyi Yan and Elad Sherf in the Wall Street Journal detail how success leads teams to over-rely on their most influential members, making teams less adaptable and increasing their chances of failure.

Yan is an assistant professor of organization and innovation at University College London's School of Management, and Sherf is an associate professor of organizational behavior at UNC Kenan-Flagler.

How success can lead to failure

In their  study, Yan and Sherf looked at competitive teams in the National Basketball Association  over more than 60,000 games and 34 years using motion-tracking-camera data to examine how teams' passing patterns and shot distributions changed following wins and losses.

Following wins, teams became more reliant on their star players, passing to them around 6% more and skewing their shot distribution towards their stars around 15% more.

As a result, the teams' chances of winning their next game were diminished, as an increased reliance on star players made the teams more predictable and easier to defend, Yan and Sherf found.

Next, Yan and Sherf looked at the business world. They recruited participants to engage in multiple rounds of decision-making tasks in three-person teams, with each team having one person make their final call at the end of each round.

The researchers informed some teams they were performing very well following a decision while others were told they were performing poorly. Then, teams were asked who would make their decision for the next round.

They found that participants whose teams were told they succeeded gave the team member who previously held the most influence 30% more influence over decisions in the next task compared to the last.

How leaders can address this threat to success

Research has found that steep hierarchies can lead to negative results, Yan and Sherf write. One  analysis  that looked at 54 existing studies on more than 13,000 employers found that teams with a steeper hierarchy displayed lower overall performance.

Yan and Sherf offered three recommendations on how leaders can prevent these steep hierarchies from forming.

1. Build an egalitarian culture

In their research, Yan and Sherf have found that teams were less likely to develop a steep hierarchy when they started with a relatively egalitarian distribution of influence. Egalitarian teams are less likely to focus credit for success on specific people and instead on the team as a whole. Similarly, blame for failure is less likely to be attributed to specific individuals.

Managers need to pay close attention to their teams to ensure they're as egalitarian as possible, Yan and Sherf write, as oftentimes factors unrelated to expertise, like gender, ethnicity, or personality, can bias people's perceptions of who deserves influence on a team.

2. Review your results

Following a project, teams should hold a review of what happened and why, Yan and Sherf write. Research has found that a 30- to 60-minute debrief can help teams highlight all members' interdependent contributions, allowing teams to develop a better understanding of why things worked and avoid doubling down on certain team members or processes.

3. Think long term

Yan and Sherf's research has found that the desire to repeat short-term success could hurt a team by creating more inequality in influence.

Since teams often want to succeed again, they may double down on their stars, making their team more rigid and less adaptable. For example, when leaders are focused on the short-term, they're 12% less likely to listen to feedback from non-star team members than teams who are focused on the long term.

Managers have to shift their team's focus away from short-term success and set long-term goals, allowing teams to remain flexible, Yan and Sherf write. This gives teams time to experiment and allows employees the opportunity and incentive to take risks. (Yan/Sherf, Wall Street Journal, 4/14)