The use of teams to deliver business value are at the core of most business models. In matrix organizations teams are generally viewed as mutable; being formed and reformed from specialty labor pools to meet specific contexts. Teams can be customized to address emerging needs or critical problems and then fade away gracefully. Examples of these kinds of teams include red teams or tiger teams. This approach is viewed as maximizing organizational flexibility in a crisis. The crisis generates the energy needed to focus the team on a specific problem. However, as a general approach, dynamic teams have several problems because of how the organizations are structured and how people interact and become teams.
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni identified two principles that directly highlight issues with dynamic teams.
- Team members are not easily replaceable parts.
- You can only have primary loyalty to one team.
Each person on a team is a set of behaviors, capabilities, opinions, and biases. For a team to be effective, the team members need to figure out how to fits all those different components together. This requires a combination of self-knowledge and knowledge of your colleagues on the team. When teams are established, members begin the process of learning each other’s biases and capabilities. This is often called team building. For a practical perspective, this knowledge is important for team effectively know how to allocate work and to identify warning signs when problems arise. Almost all team change models, such as the Tuckman model (storming, norming, and performing), recognize that teams become more effective when they build this type of knowledge. Continually disrupting teams stops teams from becoming more effective.
The second principle that Lencioni raises that directly impacts dynamic teams is loyalty. In a dynamic team, each team member needs to answer which team do they have primary loyalty towards. Team members will trust team members from their primary team more than others (boundary biases) and will try not expose attributes of that team that could be perceived negatively. When the needs of their primary team conflict with the need of their other team, one team will suffer. It is not hard to guess which will get the short end of the stick. The effectiveness of the team on the short end will suffer for two reasons. The first is obvious, their work will either not get done or require others to step in to complete. Second, team members that are not directly committed to the team will always be suspect. Their peers will always be looking over their shoulder waiting for them to drop the ball.
Even more basic are the cognitive biases which drive human behaviors. Cognitive biases are patterns of behavior that reflect a deviation in judgment that occurs in particular situations. Teams that are always learning the nature and behavior of team members often fall victim to social and attribution biases. These types of biases reflect errors we make when evaluating the rational for both our own behavior as well as the behavior of others. Team members that misinterpret behavior of other team members make mistakes. Mistakes reduce team effectiveness and deliver defects which reduce the team’s perceived value setting off a negative spiral.
Dynamic teams driven by matrix management are an anchor that reduces the effectiveness of teams. Creating static teams that can meet organizational needs efficiently and effective is not as simple as declaring that all teams are fixed.
April 19, 2017 at 12:42 pm
Interesting post Tom! I agree 100% with the two points presented. I have not read this book, but this particular topic is near and dear to my heart, since teams comprise the fundamental rock on which the house of our products/client satisfaction is built. When the team is cracking, the foundation is clearly compromised, and the effectiveness of the structure is at risk.
1) Team members are not easily replaceable: I find this to be absolutely true, especially in areas where SME (subject matter expertise) is necessary. Yet, the Agile tenants (at least in our implementation) seem to gloss over this basic understanding of the team dynamic. I often see the term “T shaped skills” thrown about by management as if that will impart skills to team members by wishful thinking. There is always the reality of boots on the ground where team members simply bring different skill sets, and the team dynamic needs to accommodate for both the positive and negative sides of those skills; if not, you risk losing both the engagement and problem-solving expertise of your most invested team members and possibly their tenure completely.
2) You can only have loyalty to one primary team: Again, spot on. With resourcing constraints and overwhelming workloads, I know people who are working on three or four teams. They essentially cannot keep up with any one of those teams. I imagine that somewhere thrown in this mix is a basic assumption that you shouldn’t be changing up team resources every few weeks or months. A resource on paper is not a resource in application.
The team, at least in Agile, is supposed to be self-functioning. But in areas where clear leadership is needed to resolve issue like these and the team dynamic is already dysfunctional or compromised, how can the team effectively champion for its own needs?
April 19, 2017 at 1:02 pm
Fantastic analysis. I particularly like the line “a resource on paper is not a resource in application.” I think I will use it in the next entry in this theme (with your permission).
In the end, I think people and robots are often confused by people creating schedules or estimates and then inflicting them on the team. There are better approaches!
April 19, 2017 at 2:25 pm
…I would like to hear about “better approaches…” 🙂
You are welcome to use my comments, of course.
April 20, 2017 at 11:55 pm
[…] provided a great summary of what is wrong with the idea that people are fungible in her response to Get Rid of Dynamic Teams: The Teams. Ariana stated, “A resource on paper is not a resource in application.” In most […]