Positional Relationships in Swarm Teams

Positional Relationships in Rapid Action Swarm Teams

One of the key differences between intact teams and swarm teams lies in the nature of the relationships between team members. In intact teams, members have time to develop personal connections, while the speed and self-organizing nature of swarm teams means relationships are primarily positional.

Imagine two doctors working at a large hospital, Chris the emergency doctor and June the trauma surgeon. On an intact team, it's Chris and June working together, drawing on their personal relationship and knowledge of each other. In swarm teams, it's not Chris and June, it's ER working with Surgery.

That shift may sound subtle, but it has major implications for how we design and operate swarm teams. Below are three facets of positional relationships worth examining for anyone working in or on swarm teams.

Team-to-Team Stories Shape the Room

Even if Chris and June haven’t worked together before, they don’t meet as blank slates. Each carries stories about the other’s department into the encounter. Chris brings the ER’s view of Surgery; June brings Surgery’s view of the ER.

If those stories are positive, the swarm starts with trust and collaboration. If they’re negative, the swarm begins under tension — setting the stage for friction and territorial battles.

This means that the stories teams tell inside their own walls about other groups matter immensely. Good-natured humor has a place, but respect, trust, and shared purpose must be the foundation. Systems that depend on swarm teams should pay close attention to these background stories and deliberately work to improve them.

Swarm teams are Infinite Games, Not Finite Ones

A swarm team dissolves once the crisis ends, but its ripple effects continue. When Chris and June return to their departments, they bring back stories that shape the next ER–Surgery encounter. In finite games, the only objective is to succeed at the goals of the current game. Repeating or infinite games add a second objective: improving the ability of both teams to play on into the future.

While a particular swarm team will disband after working a specific problem, the actions Chris and June take when they return to their home teams (the stories that they tell about each other, for example) have ripple effects for future pairs of ER doctors and surgeons who work together.

This is what makes operating on swarm an infinite game, not a finite one. Success isn’t just handling this cardiac arrest; it’s also improving the ability of future teams to work together. Operators in positional relationships should always think beyond the immediate swarm. How you act in today’s event can set up — or sabotage — tomorrow’s.

Even in Roles, They’re Still Humans

From a systems view, it’s tempting to assume that “any ER doctor” or “any trauma surgeon” comes with the same training and readiness. But the reality in the room can be different. Maybe the ER doctor is covering a shift outside their comfort zone. Maybe the surgeon is coming back from leave. The positional relationship frames the role, but the human being inside that role still matters.

We can't let positionality erase humanity. The best swarm team operators remember that behind every badge or title is a person with strengths, limitations, and a story.

(There’s a fascinating frontier here when we start thinking about hybrid swarm teams that include AI, robots, or other non-human operators — but we’ll leave that for a future post.)

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Getting positional relationships right is a core responsibility of any system that fields swarm teams. The stories teams carry, the infinite-game perspective, and the recognition of humanity inside roles all shape whether a swarm succeeds or fractures.

For teams and systems, the work is clear: train not just for skills, but for the positional realities of how swarm teams come together under pressure.