An introduction to dynamic reteaming

Stable teams are overrated — changes are inevitable. Few teams remain the same for more than a year, so it doesn’t make sense to hold on to the idea that stable teams are the ultimate goal. This is one of the insights Heidi Helfand has gained and decided to talk about in her book Dynamic Reteaming.

Heidi Helfand coaches organizations and teams to create great products. Over the years, she recognized the inevitability of change and found five reteaming patterns. This resulted in her writing the book and gave leaders the tools to effectively handle team changes. She has been inspirational for other change agents, like Jurgen Appelo, who created the unFIX model.

Today, we are going to discuss the key elements of dynamic reteaming as an introduction. I do this to enlighten you on the opportunities that arise with team changes.

“Team change is inevitable. Get good at it.” — Heidi Helfand

What is dynamic reteaming?

We just established that team dynamics change. This is the premise of Heidi Helfand’s Dynamic Reteaming. According to Helfand, Tuckman’s stages of group development (forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning) don’t reflect reality. She advocates the eco-cycle, where teams follow repeating cycles of birth, adolescence, maturity, and disruption:

This ecocycle applies to different levels: individuals, teams, and companies. The patterns that emerge from this ecocycle apply to all these levels. Every time a person joins or leaves the team, the team starts a new cycle.

Patterns of dynamic reteaming

The patterns of reteaming are the core of Helfand’s concept. These are:

1. One by one  —  Adding or removing one person at a time
2. Grow and split —The team grows and needs to be split into multiple teams
3. Merging  — Multiple teams are combined into one team
4. Switching  —  People switch places from one team to another and vice versa
5. Isolation  — A small team is extracted from other teams

These patterns have distinct traits that all require a different response.

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Dynamic reteaming tactics

The patterns of dynamic reteaming reflect different types of impact on the teams. For each pattern, dynamic reteaming identifies best practices to ensure team effectiveness. I will now give a summary of these.

One by one

When someone joins or leaves the team, this impacts the entire team. You therefore wish to have tactics to address all of this.

A team can welcome a new member by:

• Having a buddy or guide to introduce someone to the team. This can even go so far as doing pair programming
• Have a team event where the new team member can talk about themselves and ask questions to others. This can help build belonging
• For each (new) team member, let them create a “user guide to me,” which allows the team to understand what the individual members find important. These can be things like working hours, communication preferences, what they need from a team, what they love, and what they struggle with

The people who are already there can fear a sense of loss or disorientation. After all, the team dynamics they are used to will change. It helps to facilitate re-belonging for these people and to take time to bring people along on the ride.

When people leave, the impact on the team can be guided by:

• Reflecting on what was unique about the person who left that we wish to carry on
• Reflecting and improving on offboarding and onboarding

Grow and split

When you split the team, changes to the team structure happen. This is why Helfand advises practices like:

• Visualize the workflow to derive agreements — The team needs to reinvent itself. By collectively visualizing how the team is doing the work, you can achieve mutual clarity and agreement
• Normalize conflicts — By allowing conflicts to happen, people have the opportunity to discuss the important but perhaps uneasy topics that stand in the way of being effective as a team. Normalizing conflicts is a sign of respect and allowing people to be critical thinkers
• Create conflict protocol — Conflicts may get out of hand though. This is where a mutually created and agreed conflict protocol helps
• Align on roles — When a new team arises, there may not be clarity around who does what. This is why the team needs to align on the roles within the team. Who does what? Who is the leader? Who is the facilitator? These are questions the team needs to answer

Merging

Merging is combining two or more teams into one. The result is a new larger team. Merging has some specific tactics too.

Helfand points out that big teams can be valuable. Small teams aren’t the answer to every question. Shifting needs and priorities can call for the need to have greater flexibility. By merging teams you can achieve this, having a greater variety of skills and talents.

It is often practical to let the team decide if they need to (temporarily) merge with another team. This empowers them to find the best ways to be effective and fosters creativity to find solutions to problems.

When teams merge, there’s often a neutral zone where people struggle to find a new beginning. Mentors can make this time of unease as short as possible. This requires fostering an environment of safety.

During the process of a merger, communication is key. You need to communicate to the point you are almost overdoing it. Patrick Lencioni, a leadership guru, says, “Say it seven times!”

People need time to adjust and find footing in a radically new environment. It is important to have patience.

Switching

Switching involves people swapping teams. There are a few tactics you can use for this situation.

Firstly, when people have the opportunity to develop themselves, they will be more likely to stay and have higher motivation. Therefore, this should be a deliberate tactic. The switching pattern brings the benefit of developing your people.

Switching not only helps individuals; it also helps spread knowledge. This leads to higher resiliency as the team will reduce the risks of siloed knowledge. The switching tactic helps to avoid team stagnation. Using the switching pattern at a cadence helps to make it part of the company culture.

You can go so far as to have switching pairs. For example, you can have individuals with comparable skills and a mutual wish to experience working in multiple teams. They could agree to switch teams every couple of weeks or months.

One way to foster switching is to expose all the opportunities within the organization. This allows people to make an informed decision before they switch. This only works when managers don’t hold people back.

The benefits of switching are, among others, that people gain more knowledge and that they can make themselves useful in a wide area of the organization. It is an anti-pattern to have persons that have a monopoly on knowledge. This doesn’t only limit switching opportunities. It also is not helping this individual in the long run, when the specific knowledge is no longer required.

Isolation

Isolation is a blend of several different patterns. It has elements of grow and split, merging, and one by one. Individuals from former teams join a new team. They will need to find their purpose and team agreements. The teams that see one member leave deal with this change too. They will experience the impact as with the one by one pattern.

Conclusion

This article has touched the surface of the topic of dynamic reteaming. I aimed to show you why stable teams aren’t always the best and how the dynamic reteaming pattern can help you find tactics to accommodate change.

There’s more to discuss that goes beyond the purpose of this article. If you wish to take a deep dive into the topic, I recommend reading the Dynamic Reteaming book.

Featured image source: IconScout

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