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

You want to build this redundancy in your teams. So when they have an opportunity to do something that could be really important to the company beyond one of these isolated teams, they can fade out and not be the only owner that has to transfer knowledge and then field questions for two years on how that system works.

Put the team in a different region, make it that area. Tell other people not to disturb this team. That's key. And hearing it from a leader is really, really important. No, you're not going to pull them into something else. They're working on this other thing.

Sometimes splitting though can create dependencies that weren't there when you were together as one team. So you inherit other problems or you might inherit challenges like, all right, the team decides it's far effective if they split into two or three, but we just have one product manager, we just have one designer.

Tuckman's model describes team development stages: forming (coming together), storming (conflict), norming (establishing rules), and performing (working effectively). "Switching pattern" refers to rotating team members between different teams.

Switching pattern is really tied to learning and development and fulfillment. It could be that you want to work with other people. Like forming, storming, norming, performing, Tuckman's model, he forgot the phase called stagnating. Sometimes it feels like we're in a team for too long.

Sometimes you have that awesome team situation. It's an enjoyable experience. People are learning. You're looking forward to it every day. But the thing is, maybe that's a small startup that grows and you need to grow because you have a bigger vision and it needs to be more than these 10 people.

Reteaming is hard. Reorgs are hard. You can't lump them all into one thing with oh, it's all great all the time. No, it's not. If we could just build the software, deliver to the customer, get the product market fit, hey, have we delighted them or not? If only it could be that easy. No, we have the people layer, so let's focus there too.

Sometimes we're going to have a say, we're going to be able to participate, sometimes we're not. And being clear on who the decision maker is in a change is really important.

"The drag" refers to the slower, more rigid processes and cadences of working on existing mature product lines.

Taking a team off to the side, giving that team process freedom. They didn't want us distracted from the drag. When you're working on an existing product line, you get this cadence and it can become a mature cadence. Maybe people work in two weeks or one week now, but when you're working on something new, you need faster iteration loops.

Nothing lasts. Sometimes I have a picture of myself holding an ice cream cone that's melting. Not to be a total downer, but appreciate it when you're on a team and you love it and it's amazing because these are our lives and we have to have gratitude and appreciate what we have because naturally things evolve and change.

Toyota Kata is a continuous improvement methodology involving four steps: understanding current conditions, setting target conditions, experimenting toward targets, then repeating the cycle.

There's no perfect org structure. It's like the Toyota Kata, like grasp the current condition. You'll experience you have challenges. What's the next evolution or the next target condition? How might you get there? And then you're there and you're like, okay, grasp the current target condition.