The art and wisdom of changing teams | Heidi Helfand (author of Dynamic Reteaming)

1. Embrace Natural Team Evolution

In fast-growing or shrinking companies, accept that teams will naturally morph and change. Instead of trying to maintain static team structures, embrace this evolution as it is often inevitable.

2. Prioritize the People Layer

Recognize that successful company building involves more than just product market fit; actively focus on the ‘people layer’ to create an environment where employees are delighted and included in organizational decisions.

3. Cultivate Inclusive Leadership

As a leader, reflect on the kind of environment you want to cultivate and how you want to involve your team. Strive to include employees in work decisions that impact their daily lives, recognizing their ability to solve complex problems.

4. Clarify Decisions with RIDE Framework

When undergoing change, use the RIDE framework to clearly define who is Requesting the change, who can provide Input, who is the Decider, and who will Execute the change. This brings crucial clarity to decision-making processes.

5. Visualize Reorgs for Transparency

When planning reorganizations, visualize future team structures on whiteboards and invite employees to provide input on the design. This transparency allows people to identify opportunities and discuss potential roles, fostering engagement and better outcomes.

6. Enable Open Self-Selection Reteaming

For strategic changes, allow teams to pitch their focus areas and enable employees to self-select into teams based on interest. This open approach provides choice, leading to greater fulfillment and engagement, as people are often delighted by unexpected opportunities.

7. Timebox Reteaming Discussions

When involving teams in reorg planning, timebox the discussions to be shorter rather than longer. This prevents prolonged deliberation and distraction, ensuring the process proceeds expediently.

8. Isolate Teams for Innovation

To catalyze new products or address emergencies, create an ‘isolated’ team in a separate area and grant them process freedom. Crucially, a senior leader must protect this team from distractions and bureaucracy, ensuring they report to someone with clear decision-making authority.

9. Build Redundancy for Team Mobility

Implement practices like pairing and shared ownership to build knowledge redundancy within teams. This frees individuals from being single owners of systems, making it easier for them to switch to isolated innovation teams or other roles without creating knowledge silos.

10. Encourage Team Switching for Growth

Promote team switching to foster learning, development, and fulfillment, allowing employees to experience new systems or colleagues. This practice can refresh individuals, extend their tenure, and build critical knowledge redundancy and fault tolerance across the company.

11. Foster Belonging for New Hires

For one-by-one changes (new hires), help them build a sense of belonging by pairing them with someone on their first day and encouraging them to talk about themselves. Also, inform existing employees about new joiners and coach them through the change, especially if new leaders are brought in.

12. Recognize Grow-and-Split Signals

Identify signals like longer meetings, harder decision-making, and divergent work as indicators that a team may benefit from splitting. Normalize the idea that teams can provide input into their future structures and decide to split for greater effectiveness.

13. Create Shared History for Merging Teams

When merging teams, facilitate a ‘story of our team’ activity where each team creates a timeline of their milestones and achievements. Sharing these histories helps build a shared sense of identity, fosters mutual learning, and aligns the newly merged entity towards a common future vision.

14. Don’t Disperse High-Performing Teams

Resist the temptation to dismantle high-performing teams by spreading their members across other groups. This anti-pattern often destroys the unique chemistry and energy that contributes to their success, rather than replicating it elsewhere.

15. Avoid Percentage Resource Allocation

Do not assign individuals to multiple projects with percentage allocations, as this approach is ineffective. Multitasking across many efforts leads to context switching and makes it difficult for people to focus and deliver effectively.

16. Communicate All Team Changes

Avoid sudden, unannounced team changes where people unexpectedly join or leave without prior communication. Lack of transparency around personnel changes is an anti-pattern that can cause confusion and anxiety.

17. Appreciate Current Team Dynamics

Recognize that team dynamics and company stages are constantly evolving, and nothing lasts forever. Cultivate gratitude and appreciate positive team experiences while they happen, as change is an inevitable part of organizational life cycles.

18. Value Company Success & Growth

Remember that being part of a successful, growing company, even with its inherent changes, is generally a positive scenario. Appreciate the broader context of company health, as growth often necessitates change and is preferable to stagnation.

19. Practice Co-Active Listening

Develop listening as a muscle by consciously shifting from internal thoughts (level one) to fully focusing on the other person (level two). Expand to global listening (level three) by observing body language, environmental cues, and subtle physical reactions as additional sources of information.

20. Prioritize Self-Kindness

Regularly ask yourself, ‘How can I be kind to myself?’ This encourages self-care, helps manage high expectations, and reminds you that it’s okay to slow down and decompress, rather than constantly pushing yourself.

21. Organize Community-Building Hack Days

Implement regular hack days where employees can self-select into teams and work on any project they choose. This fosters cross-functional relationships and community, making future reteaming efforts smoother as colleagues are no longer strangers.