$$You$$re always reliable,$$ Nisha Nayad said to her colleague Mark Cruz as she entered the meeting room.

$$I got here a minute ago,$$ Mark replied, smiling as he opened his lunch. They both looked at the clock on the wall and laughed.

$$I think we$$re the only two people at Ness who show up early,$$ Nisha said. $$Glad you$$re on this team.$$

Punctuality wasn$$t a big part of the culture at the gaming company Ness Entertainment,$1$ so it didn$$t bother Nisha that her coworker Ben Lassner still hadn$$t arrived by a few minutes past noon. The three of them didn$$t typically work together, but they were about to$.$ As members of Ness$$s Innovation Board, a group selected from across the company to work directly with the executive committee on developing recommendations for line extensions and new titles, they$$d been given a new, highly visible assignment$$one that Nisha, a business development associate director, was excited about.

She, Mark, and Ben had huddled quickly a week earlier to lay out a work plan for analyzing customer data and the competitive market for one of Ness$$s hottest games, Sokontia, so that they could choose an appropriate follow$-$up story line and the timing for a sequel.

Nisha was happy with both her teammates$\mathrm{.}2$ Mark, an associate director of marketing, had an excellent reputation. And Ben, a quality control engineer, had been a friend since they$$d met during new$-$employee orientation. They still got together for lunch every few months, and because they were at the same level in different functions, they often traded notes and advice about their work at Ness.

QUESTION $1$: What are the benefits$$or the downsides$$of being on an ad hoc team, in which members often have no prior agreement on how to collaborate?