Should you always hold teams sacred?
Photo by sophiadphotography
When an organization adopts agile, there is typically a shift to forming cross-functional and self-organizing teams. Create persistent teams. Bring the work the team. It takes time to reach high performance, so don’t disrupt the team. Hold the team sacred because team members will learn, grow, and challenge one another in the safety that the team provides.
But what about teams that have been together for a long time and are not actively learning, growing, or challenging one another? That are not striving for high performance? The ones that are mired in destructive conflict? What do you do when complacency has set in?
I vote for disruption.
Change the work and what success looks like. Change the people. Change the environment. Change processes or communication to the team. Don’t change everything, but please change something!
Agile is about teams that are striving for high performance. For excellence. What does that look like? I like Lyssa Adkins’s high performance tree metaphor:
How do your teams rate? Are they striving for high performance or ripe for disruption?
