Stable Team: Keep the Performance & Ability to Compete
This article aims to share a concept of how to approach the stable teams within your organization to keep both the performance and also the competitiveness of the stable teams throughout the time.
The so-called forming, storming, norming, performing model of group development defined by Bruce Wayne Tuckman describes how teams are formed. It was first published in the Psychological Bulletin back in 1965 and since then the model was developed further and additional stages of the model were discussed.
By understanding the inevitable stages during the development of a group and challenges an organism faces when it forms itself, you may facilitate the evolution and faster growth of the stable teams in your organization and avoid the application of common anti-patterns.
Now, what is a stable team❔
Among all the definitions and attempts to have the right description in place, I have found peace in going along with a rather general definition as it always depends on the context. And given the fact that stable teams are not at all limited to any particular field of expertise nor to any level in an organization, I consider the following definition inspired by Disciplined Agile toolkit as a good fit:
The stable team is a team that stays together over the life of a single project. The work is brought to the team, not the other way around when the team is formed around a project.
The stable team exhibits predictability and high throughput.
And also:
Team members are driven by intrinsic motivation and operate on a sustainable level of subjective well-being (happiness).
What could go wrong?
While many people get satisfied and think that with stable teams in place the world has been saved, it may sadly not be so. If you stay close to the teams, it may be observed that as time passes, the stable teams tend to lose the ability to compete with other teams that were formed later. Ultimately, the team loses the ability to compete with the other teams out there on the market.
Throughout the time, the stable team becomes a “prisoner” of its own limited experience. It is harder for the team members to get familiar with the latest technologies at a practical level and overall the stable team is used to tackle challenges all of quite similar nature. The amount of new uplifting experience obtained is often limited and results in the incapability to keep up with the new stuff on the market — the team loses its ability to compete with other teams, which can offer a solution that better fits the purpose taking into account their wider pool of latest knowledge available.
How to keep the performance and the ability to compete?
Induct various knowledge to the stable team. Continuously. Changing the ways of working within an organization to enable the adoption of the stable team concept is indeed an achievement. Unfortunately, it is not enough and it does not end there.
Stability rhymes with agility, stable teams are a key to success, stable teams are the best! — but only if you take care of them…
For the stable team to keep its competitiveness, it must be continuously fed by knowledge and experience that goes beyond their typical work assignments. And while internal learning activities, knowledge snacks and academies are great, sometimes its simply not enough.
Hence, it may be considered to inspect the setup of a stable team and to strategically let the team members organize themselves into two implicit layers:
😎 The Backbone
The Backbone consists of the team members who remain stable in the long run. Enforcing the agreed guidelines, the process of continuous improvement, the flow of work within the team. The Backbone keeps performance.
🕵🏻♀️ The Knowledge Agents
The Knowledge Agents change the teams more frequently (not too frequently though!). They infuse the team with diverse experience and unique knowledge that the stable team hadn’t had a chance to get to.
The Knowledge Agents increase the teams’ ability to adapt to new technologies/approaches and overall keep the team’s ability to be competitive with others.
Eventually, as the team and every single individual matures and evolves, a Knowledge Agent may organically blend into the Backbone layer and it works the other way around as well.
Bottom line
This concept addresses the possible struggle with competitiveness while at the same time keeps the advantages of a stable team.
Highlighted is the urgent need to continuously nurture stable teams and actively support their further cultivation and development.
Last but not least, it offers more various working environment for engaged individuals, where people have an option to profile themselves in harmony with their personalities and preferences.
Edit: You may want to check the Onboarding: 3 Tips How to Keep Knowledge in the Team for ideas on how to effectively onboard new team members.
We are ACTUM Digital and this piece was written by Martin Dušek, Director of Apollo Division. Feel free to get in touch.
